MTP 06: Greg Williams, Part 1, How is Engineering Compatible with the Christian Faith? The Importance of Embracing Doubt and Seeking Understanding. Greg is a Lecturer of Coastal Engineering at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Greg talks about his love for bluegrass music, learning to play the banjo, and an embarrassing moment from his college days about being “pantsed”.

He shares the stabling influence of his grandparents on his early faith, the importance of finding like-minded peers, and the role of scripture in his life. 

Greg reflects on the compatibility of his engineering mindset with his faith and the importance of embracing doubt versus ignoring it. 

Learn more at MeetTheProf.com:  https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/greg-williams/

email: williamsgl@uncw.edu

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Transcript

Hey professors, hope you guys are doing well.

So with you as, obviously, Christian professors, how do y 'all incorporate your faith and just your beliefs into sometimes the curriculum that may necessarily not be all, they just have Christian beliefs, it might be secular. So how do you do that? Appreciate your answering this question. Hope you have a good day.

Shane (00:19)
Well, hey everybody and welcome to Meet the Prof. Hey, I'm Shane Hartley and my friend Spence Hackney and I have been collecting questions like you heard there from college students and then we interview Christian professors and our mission is simple. We want to encourage Christ -centered conversations on the college campus. So I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for listening. And we have a treat of being able to hear from Dr. Greg Williams today. We sat down with Greg and...

He is a professor of Coastal Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He's a full -time Lecturer there and it's in the Department of Civil Engineering. And I think one of the things I appreciate most about Greg, he just seems to be an expert at creating in his classroom, this relatable and approachable environment. I think you'll really enjoy getting to know him. And please, if you like this, subscribe or follow on your podcast app, share it with someone you think it might be helpful with.

And without further ado, here is our interview with Greg

Shane and Spence (01:21)
Well, Greg, welcome to the podcast. It is great to have you with us. And I learn something every time I read on MeetTheProf.com. And even though I've known you for a while, I just learned that you play the banjo. So I would like to hear the story behind that. What's the story behind you playing the banjo?

Greg Williams (01:44)
Well, so we have to be careful to not suggest that I am more at banjo than I am. So yeah, so I'm from Western North Carolina and I have grown up loving bluegrass music. Just one of those things. I love music in general, but I just love that kind of music and the banjo is kind of that, at least from my perspective.

Shane and Spence (01:52)
Good bro.

Greg Williams (02:12)
Each person in a bluegrass band would argue maybe the fiddle is most important or guitar or the bass But I think the banjo has a very distinctive and unique sound and so I've always just loved the banjo and I've talked about it For years and I mentioned it to young lady at work one time and she had a banjo and she said well I'll bring it in let you borrow it and she brought it in the next day and then I had this banjo and I didn't Do anything with it for a while and my wife said, Alright, either you start playing it

or give it back to her. So I said, okay, fine. So I started playing it and I have no musical background whatsoever. I mean, in North Carolina, everybody, at least back in my day, everybody played the recorder in fifth grade. I don't know if you guys. So that's the only musical experience I had was playing the recorder in fifth grade. And so the banjo was like really starting from

Shane and Spence (02:44)
Wow.

I don't really do that.

Thank you.

Greg Williams (03:08)
And then I started doing a couple of things that just had that sound that I just love. And finally tried for a longest time to get an instructor in Wilmington. I never could find one. So, um, but finally I've gotten instructor from Louisville, Kentucky, um, that we do by zoom. And so I've done a few of those and absolutely love it. He's helping me with things and I can play some stuff that are, that is not altogether horrible sounding. Um, my wife hates bluegrass music, but she

is my biggest encourager to continue practicing. So I do 30 minutes or an hour almost every night of banjo playing. I think it's cool. So.

Shane and Spence (03:43)
Wow. That's true love. That's awesome. I'm impressed. All right, so it's like the first thing you played that dueling banjos from Deliverance. Was that in there? Do, do, do.

Greg Williams (03:56)
That's not the first thing I've played, but I am working on it and I can play some parts of that if you walked in and I just started playing that, you would go, that's Dueling Banjos. So that's what I'm saying. It's not altogether horrible. So I've got a few things that I'm continuing to learn.

Shane and Spence (04:00)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah

Greg Williams (04:17)
All of my learning up to this point for about two years has been one way from YouTube. So I can copy what somebody else is doing, but I'm not getting any feedback. Well, now that I'm taking a lesson, I've got an instructor that's saying, oh, OK, do this or let me help you with this. And it's just I feel like my mind is just exploding now with understanding chords and things that from somebody that doesn't know music, I just never really had a grasp of.

Shane and Spence (04:44)
I don't even have to hear you play to say I am truly impressed with an engineer learning picking up a new instrument.

Greg Williams (04:49)
Well, yeah, so there's this really cool book I read a year or so back called The Laws of Brain Joe, and it's a neurologist who plays the banjo. And he talks about how the two biggest things you can do to stave off mental decline as you get older are learn a language or learn a musical instrument. And that's not why I started to play the banjo, but it's

Shane and Spence (05:13)
Mmm.

Greg Williams (05:17)
using parts of my mind that I've never used before. And I embraced the struggle. Like I told my instructor last night, my fingers hurt from fretting, but I like it because it lets me know I'm doing something. Memorizing, remembering, you know, again, I'm doing things that I've never done before and it's really fun. I'm really having a blast.

Shane and Spence (05:40)
So you've inspired me. I'm gonna go on Amazon and order myself a kazoo and a recorder. No, you're not. And I'm gonna figure out which one I can master. I think I'm like world to fifth grade recorder level with my musical ability. That's awesome.

Greg Williams (05:45)
There you go.

That's where I was, but I'm a little past that now.

Shane and Spence (05:57)
I love it.

Well, so we love to launch with this question of, Greg, tell us what is something that you did or experienced in college that was an embarrassing moment for you?

Greg Williams (06:13)
Oh, God. So here's my embarrassing moment story. So I was an RA. I went to NC State and I was an RA in a dorm. And so the closest friends I have are all RAs because we just we went through stuff together. That's kind of how you forge friendships is going through stuff together. So every year in August before the semester started, all the RAs had to come back early.

Shane and Spence (06:27)
Hmm.

Greg Williams (06:39)
We did training and we had to do room inspections. And so there's a great time to really develop these relationships when nobody else is around. It's just us RAs. And so this one particular summer, I think students were moving in maybe the next day, or maybe even students had already started showing up on campus. We had this big social gathering on this place at State that doesn't exist anymore. It's called Harris Field. There's this big open lot. We're playing volleyball. You know, it's August. It was hot. And one of my...

dear friends came out and pantsed me in the middle of the volleyball game. Um, fortunately, and, and of course I needed to do laundry. I did have on underwear, but it was like that underwear that's the last in your drawer that you use. So it had colorful designs on them and stuff. And so besides getting pants, the, the way that they all laughed at me because of the underwear I was wearing has humiliated me for

50 years almost. . . 40 years almost I should say 40 years. so yeah that's my well not a not a nickname but it is something when we're all together it is a memory that always comes up hey remember that time we were playing volleyball and we

Shane and Spence (07:40)
Oh, that is a literal nightmare of mine. What's your nickname? Like Under Ru Williams or something after that? I mean, what was it like a running joke?

Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, that's great. How many people were there?

Greg Williams (08:06)
Oh God, on Harris Field there was probably 50 or so. Yeah, I mean, it was a big event. My pants did not stay down long because I quickly pulled them up. So not everybody saw, but my friends did.

Shane and Spence (08:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. And what'd you do right afterwards? Did you run away or what'd you do?

Greg Williams (08:26)
No, I just stood there and I'm sure my face was every shade of red and because everybody or all my friends anyway were all laughing and just I mean dying laughing because of the underwear that I was wearing and it just I mean I have this underwear I it's burned into my memory it's this green underwear briefs that I just can't because I remember that's what I was wearing I think I proceeded after that day to take them back and when I showered I threw those away so I would never have them again.

Shane and Spence (08:38)
Yeah.

may check Google every once in a while, just make sure there's no picture that pops up for that.

Greg Williams (08:59)
Well, fortunately, this was in the day before cell phones and everybody having a phone or it would have made it would have been it would be on YouTube for sure.

Shane and Spence (09:02)
That's true. You're saying.

Yeah. I do. I do wonder how anybody runs for like political office today, because today there's figures of all this stuff you did when you were younger.

Greg Williams (09:12)
Oh, I know.

I know, I know. Yeah, I've told my kids many times, I said, boy, I'm glad there weren't iPhones when I was in high school and college because it would be really embarrassing for them to see their father and the goofball I was.

Shane and Spence (09:27)
Yeah. Well, Greg, tell us some about your childhood. You shared online that your grandparents were a very critical part of stability for you. And you said there's stability that you didn't get at home. Tell us more about that as much as you're comfortable.

Greg Williams (09:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I don't mean to suggest that I was in a difficult home life. I did. My parents loved me. It was actually my dad, my stepmom. It was a loving house. There was support. I have a great relationship with my dad and my stepmom still to this day. It's just it was not a Christian household. And and so my dad had grown up, obviously, with his parents and he was of the

Shane and Spence (10:08)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Williams (10:17)
the generation where they were forced to go to church every Sunday and he kind of went kicking and screaming he didn't like and that's Kind of his that's kind of who he is He doesn't like being told what to do even all the way back when he was a child So as soon as he was old enough and did not have to go to church He didn't and he And he's not anti-christian. It's just that he just he's kind of uh Live and let live and i'll do what I want to do and you do what you want to do and we won't get in Each other's way kind of thing and so There was a period in high school when well

Shane and Spence (10:25)
Mm-hmm.

yeah that makes sense

Greg Williams (10:47)
So I came to know Jesus when I was in ninth grade because of a girl, a girl I wanted to date. Her dad was a pastor, so I went to church with them. And in classic Southern Baptist world that night, he was preaching directly to me. So that's when I came to know the Lord, but I didn't follow and walk with him for a while because I didn't really know what that meant. I really didn't have the family,

Shane and Spence (11:05)
Hmm.

Greg Williams (11:16)
life, so to speak, to kind of nurture me. So I knew that I knew who Jesus was and what He did, but I didn't really know what that meant as far as a lifestyle. But I knew my grandparents went to church and I desired, I knew, you know, I'm younger, they're not going to be around very long. And I really selfishly started going to church with them as a way to just spend time with them because I knew that they went to church. So I would meet them at church and I'd sit with them at church. I did this for all through high school. And then we'd go to eat

dinner after church on Sunday afternoon. And it was just a way to just spend time with my grandparents, who I just thought just were, and they were, they were just fabulous people, married together a long time, just a great salt of the earth, you know, country people. And so that really, I guess, gave me the stability for my faith a little bit during that time. And then I was blessed when I went to college to surround some of these same friends that I just described that

that pants me were very strong Christians. And to this day, I mean, one of our friends has a daughter who's in college and she had a medical condition over the holidays. And so we're group texting this group and we're all praying for each other and asking to pray for each other and checking up on her and all that kind of stuff. So it's wonderful that I can see God's hand in my life when I was not in the environment at home. Again, it wasn't a bad environment. It just wasn't a Christian environment. And my grandparents kind of

kind of bridging that gap between I came to know the Lord and before I went away to college. And I got that friend group, that peer group that really not said, Greg, we're going to hold you accountable, but by their lifestyle and wanting to be friends with them and just the relationship you have when you're in college, we held each other accountable in that way. And I was no angel in college, but I knew who God was and I knew what Jesus had done.

Shane and Spence (12:54)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (13:14)
And so I had that kind of foundation all throughout college.

Shane and Spence (13:18)
Yeah. All right. So what would you have a really interesting story? So what would you say to a student who goes to the Baptist Church and hears the sermon and says, this is Lord talking to me, but doesn't have the Christian background? Okay. And they're at UNCW, so there's no grandparents. Like what, how would you say they grow then? What would you say they do next? How would you coach them?

Greg Williams (13:36)
Right.

Well, so, so I think what's really and I use my story a little bit as an example is, is to find people that you can hang out with that are like minded. So, you know, I when I went to school, I had friends that went to church and they openly talked about going to church and reading the Bible and I said, I want to be a part of that. And so, so I would hang out together, we would go to church together. And, and so that

peer group that was kind of example I used with a student I talked to the other day that was walking the way I wanted to walk. I came alongside and walked with them and thus we held each other accountable. We walked together. I didn't do it on my own. I could not do it on my own. It was that friend group that and they

Shane and Spence (14:13)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (14:32)
My guess is they would probably say the same thing about me. You know, if left to their own devices, they probably would not have been walking with God. But because we were all like-minded, we kind of walked together. And so, peers, people my age that were going through the same, you know, taking classes and having tests and all the stresses that go with being in college, but going to church on Sunday and living a...

Shane and Spence (14:44)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (15:01)
better way than others we were around were living most of the time. That peer group is probably the most critical thing, I think.

Shane and Spence (15:11)
That's awesome. So it's just having people that will go on this adventure with you and kind of encourage you and hold you accountable. What you kind of, you mentioned the Bible really quickly there, what role did scripture have in this for you?

Greg Williams (15:17)
Yeah.

Well, other than knowing, and there's one of the group of us that kind of ran around together who was probably the strongest Christian, we always talked that he was our moral center, and knowing that God's Word was part and parcel of his life, you go in his dorm room and his Bible is open, you know, and so that knowledge, I don't think I truly grasped the significance of

Shane and Spence (15:41)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (15:54)
God's Word and that's how he speaks to us until actually Peg and I got married. She was a really strong Christian and when we were at the first church we really were members of in Mississippi and that's when I was really hearing it preached about God's Word. So that college time into before I got married, I knew it was there but I probably I was I know I wasn't active in reading like I should have been.

Shane and Spence (16:13)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (16:21)
But I just knew the importance and significance of God's Word.

Shane and Spence (16:26)
You know, it occurs to me, most of us live off of secondhand scripture. Yeah. And that's kind of what you described too. Like I knew this eating it and I was seeing his scraps or like what came out of his life. He was sharing it with me. Um, and then it sounds like later you said, Hey, I want to eat this firsthand. Like I want my own, like I won't. Yeah. That's that's.

Greg Williams (16:30)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Right.

Yeah, and I think there was a bit of me that I wasn't, I didn't have the maturity. I was a kid all through college, you know, I mean, I was stupid. I knew who God was, but we all did, well, I did stupid things, you know, as many college students do. But it wasn't until I kind of got a little older and Peggy, my wife, was fabulously patient with me and I could see how important the scripture were to her.

And I'm like, wow, I need to figure this out. And then that's when I really started devouring God's word and just seeing how rich and deep. And one of the things I love is just the connectivity between the Old Testament and the New Testament is when references to Jesus in the Old Testament, in Isaiah, and then you see those connections that just make it just, my mind just kind of explodes and thinking about that

that common theme that runs throughout all of scripture, not just the New Testament.

Shane and Spence (17:47)
And how old were you when you met Peggy? Like, were you in college?

Greg Williams (17:52)
I was in grad school, so I was 23, I think. 23, 24, somewhere in there.

Shane and Spence (18:01)
Well, ya'll were children together then, right? You grew up together. You met early. That's great. I'm picturing you.

Greg Williams (18:04)
Yeah, yeah, we have a whole interesting story on how we met too, but that's probably not appropriate for here. No, it's not inappropriate, but it's just kind of odd.

Shane and Spence (18:17)
Anything's appropriate. Yeah, yeah. We can always edit it out. So tell the story. If it's not funny, we'll just cut it out.

Greg Williams (18:23)
Well, so we met, it was a girl that I had dated was friends with Peggy and I had broken up with her. And so this girl had told Peggy just through their friendship that all this zero guy, Greg Williams, he's a real jerk. You don't want to, you know, not that Peggy was even interested. She just in conversation, you know. And so the first time I ever saw Peggy, so I was a like an assistant resident director on

Shane and Spence (18:29)
Okay.

Greg Williams (18:50)
in the dorm. This was at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. And Peggy was over visiting this young lady who lived in the dorm. And this lady had kind of swiped one of my NC State sweatshirts. And Peggy was over, it had been raining, or I can't really remember the story. And she loaned her my NC State sweatshirt. So the first time I saw Peggy, she was wearing my NC State sweatshirt. And she didn't know who I was from Adam.

And I walked up to her and said, you should feel privileged to wear that shirt. And she thought, what an arrogant, ugh. And so her first impression of me was not good. And then she realized I was the guy that her friend had been telling her about. She's like, yeah, this guy, ugh. So somehow I convinced her to go out with me and maybe because I wouldn't leave her alone, she just said, okay, fine.

Shane and Spence (19:33)
Two strikes against you.

Uh, so, so now, now I've got really high regard for your powers or persuasion. If you, if you turned that around, pretty good job.

Greg Williams (19:44)
Thanks for watching!

Well, I think that's all God. I think because I think it was left to Peggy. She's like, yeah, you did not get off to a good start in a number of ways. So.

Shane and Spence (19:54)
Thank you.

Yeah,

you. Well, Greg, so you have an engineering mind. As you were growing in your faith, how did you see any friction, or was there any conflict as you want to honor God and live a life of faith, and yet you're naturally bent towards engineering, knowing how things

knowing what you see and how did you find those being compatible or they're being friction there?

Greg Williams (20:32)
Well, so one thing is, I see God, I have a very high view of God in the fact that God's creation, the creation of everything, and so I can see God's hand in things, in the logic and how things work out, and the way things go together. And I'm not a biologist, I'm not a physicist, so I don't understand those things, but the

The logic, when I read God's word, and kind of like I was alluding to the connection from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and the law and how the law was given to prove that it wasn't enough, that it's by grace, and as Matt at our church preached this past Sunday, even the Old Testament was saved by God, not through what they did, you know, talked about.

when salvation came before the Ten Commandments. And so I see that. To me, it's logical. It flows. And now there's some parts about Jesus' life that are illogical, like love your enemy, but I think that's just because God is on a higher plane than the rest of us. But being able to see the flow of the story.

to me kind of fits with the, you know, you read a passage of scripture and you see words, you're like, wow, this, this doesn't sound, I'm not sure I understand. So what do you do with that? So I had a great one of my friend I told you about that was such a strong Christian. I asked him one time about what you do with doubt. You know, if you're like, you know, this, I don't know about this passage or I don't know, this just doesn't seem right. And he said,

You use that to drive to understand. If you don't do anything with doubt, you have a question, you just go, I don't understand, therefore I'm just gonna ignore it and not paying attention anymore, then that's the failure. He said, there's nothing wrong with having doubt and having questions, it's just what do you do with it? So I kind of took that to heart. And whenever I would read passages or that I didn't understand, I dug in to try to understand. I'd read commentary, I'd talk to somebody that knew more than me. I said, how is this? A great example is,

you know, Galatians and Romans, you know, the whole justification by faith. But I'm going to show my Bible ignorance here. I always like Galatians because I always said Galatians is like Justification 101 in Romans is like graduate school justification. But is it all the passage is talking about just your faith is justified by works.

And I'm like, wait a minute, we just learned that it's not by works. And then, you know, talking to somebody that can explain that and why the two are compatible, you know, makes me oh, okay, so if I just read that and said, yeah, the Bible contradicts itself, and yeah, I'm not, I'm not taking this stuff, then that's the wrong approach. So. So when I see those things that make me scratch my head, as I don't just dismiss them, I try to dig into them.

Shane and Spence (23:36)
Yeah.

Greg Williams (23:49)
The other thing that I think, and this is me personally, and Peg and I have this conversation a lot, things that are really, really deep or, you know, like in a general sense, Revelation, you know, can be really hard. I don't have a problem of just accepting that as, this is what God said, I'm not going to question it. Some people can't do that. Some people have to, and I'm not that kind of engineer that has to get into the weeds and explain every little thing.

Some of the things that I can't understand, I have been fairly comfortable with just saying, you know what, God's ways are not my ways, and I love Jesus and I follow God, and I'm willing to accept that this is what the Bible says and that's what it is. And maybe it sounds like a cop-out, but that's kind of how I've, you know, kind of gone through some of that.

Shane and Spence (24:27)
Hmm.

Mm.

Shane (24:43)
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and you can learn more as well as read about other Christian professors on our website, meettheprof .com. And you can search for professors by name or by state or even by college campus. And you can also find many helpful resources about questions that were in the interview and other ways of answering tough questions at Cru.org and that's Cru.org. And college students,

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