Harvard Eye Surgeon’s Incredible Journey from Atheism to Faith
Inside This Episode
In this powerful interview, world-renowned eye surgeon Dr. Ming Wang shares his extraordinary journey from poverty in China—arriving in America with just $50 and a dictionary—to becoming a Harvard and MIT–trained doctor who has performed over 55,000 surgeries. Dr. Wang reveals how studying the incredible design of the human eye shattered his atheist worldview and led him to Jesus.
Watch Angel Studio's film SIGHT for free ➜ https://www.drmingwang.com/about/movie-sight.html
Connect with Dr. Ming Wang ➜ https://drmingwang.com/
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Transcript
Eric Huffman: How did a young immigrant from China, arriving in America with just $50 in his pocket, become one of the most respected eye surgeons in the world? And how did studying the science of vision shatter his atheism and lead him to Jesus?
After training at Harvard and MIT, Dr. Ming Wang has given sight to millions, and in the human eye, he found compelling proof of a creator.
Dr. Wang, thanks so much for being with us. I'm honored to be able to talk to you, and I'm really excited to get to know you better and to have our listeners and viewers get to know you better.
Let's just start at the beginning, because your backstory is incredible. It's remarkable. And I just want to start there. So take us back to your childhood and what that was like for you growing up in China.
Dr. Ming Wang: Thank you, Pastor Eric, for the opportunity to be on Maybe God podcast show. I grew up in China in the 1960s, and I come through this very difficult period of time called Cultural Revolution. From 1966 to 1976, for 10 years, the government shut down all universities and colleges of entire China and forcefully deported to some of the poorest part of the country and condemned each one of those high school graduate to a lifetime of poverty and hard labor.
Over 20-year period during Cultural Revolution, they deported 20 million youth for life. So I caught that in the mid-1970s. I was 14 in 1974, and I was not allowed to go to high school, despite being a straight student. And together with 20 million others, I was gonna be sent away to labor camp for life.
In order to avoid that devastating fate of being sent away to labor camp for life, I found that, actually my parents helped me find that if I could play a music instrument, Chinese violin called erhu, E-R-H-U, or if I could learn to dance, I might be able to get into the government's song and dance troupe, therefore avoid being sent away to labor camp.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Let me just interject here before we get too far into the story and just talk about... so it sounds like your family might've been part of lower middle class, impoverished part of China, is that correct? Because you were being sent off to these camps, and you said that was most of the poor kids.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah. Actually, all the youth, every single high school graduate was sent away, not just whoever they did not like. But my parents happened to be intellectual. My mother is a teacher, and my father is actually a doctor, but very poor. Everybody was poor during that time.
To give you a sense how poor we were, the combined salaries of my parents, every month, the combined salaries for both of them, for family of four, me and my younger brother and my parents, was only 15 US dollars.
Eric Huffman: Wow, that's not a lot.
Dr. Ming Wang: That was very poor.
Eric Huffman: Goodness.
Dr. Ming Wang: In that time, yeah.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. So what was the angle for the government at the time? What was their reason for wanting to shut down universities and schools and keep a generation of young Chinese people from learning?
Dr. Ming Wang: I think they did not want to have anybody challenge their dictatorship. Anybody with knowledge and education could challenge them.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. So, without any criminal charges or justifications, a young person like yourself could be sent off for a lifetime of forced labor?
Dr. Ming Wang: Right. Every single high school graduate for 10 years. Universities were shut down for 10 years during Cultural Revolution.
Eric Huffman: And if I'm doing the math, that started when you were about six years old?
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes.
Eric Huffman: What's your earliest memory from that time in your life?
Dr. Ming Wang: It was chaos. As you see in the film, Sight, distributed by NG Studios, that the Red Guards came to ransack the university, and my parents had to put me in the closet in order to escape, you know, otherwise I could be killed by the Red Guards.
I was like eight or so when that happened. And it's interesting, years later, as you see in the film, Sight, that situation that I was locked up in a medical specimen closet, actually, I saw a jaw, a baby in the jaw. That was what gave me the inspiration decades later to develop the amniotic placenta contact lens idea to restore eyesight in the blind.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Amazing how God works in the most dire circumstances sometimes. We'll talk more about that process and that discovery in your work in a bit. And I do hope that everybody watching checks out the movie, Sight, that is based on your life story. It's incredible and it's done very well. Anybody watching that wants to know more about you can find your story there.
As a child, I can only imagine how harrowing and scary that must've been. What do you remember about your parents, specifically, and how they sort of got you through that time?
Dr. Ming Wang: I actually published a Sight, the movie Bible Study, is a movie called Sight. So it's about seeing beyond. The movie talk about seeing beyond five things: seeing beyond our circumstance, ourselves, our own culture, and seeing beyond the challenges we face in life.
So seeing beyond circumstance. And that was what my impression was as a child, seeing my parents. Despite the poverty, they were still insisting me, Study, study, study, believing that there could be a better circumstance for their kids for the future.
To give you one example, I was about three or four and I remember vague recollection, I was playing on the ground. We had a little apartment. The whole family of four living in one room, no kitchen, no bathroom, no telephone. So I remember we could only afford eight watts of electricity every month.
Eric Huffman: Eight watts?
Dr. Ming Wang: Eight watts, only quarter of your normal average one volt. That's all we could afford every month, eight watts. And my father was trying to decide how high or how low he should hand us a wide little tube, light tube. If he hung too low, then he could read the books. He's a doctor after all. But the whole room is too dark.
If he hung the little tube too high near the ceiling, the room is illuminated, but he couldn't read. It's too far away from his books. So he was very inventive. He put two chairs, one on top of each other, he climbed on top of the second chair, and so he hung the light very high. So he's very close to the light tube in the middle of the room near the ceiling.
And I remember it was summer day and very, very hot, my father was in shorts, bare-chested. And I was playing on the ground, three or four years old, looking up, saw my father holding the book and with this eight-watt light tube right in front of his head. And he was close enough to read the book. And on his back, I saw hundreds of these pearls of sweat. So from very early on, he imprinted, my parents imprinted me about seeing beyond the circumstance and persevere.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, working hard and studying no matter what. And it probably got to a point where it was dangerous for your father to even study, and certainly for you to study. So you had to do so in secret, I would imagine. But again, you persevere. That's what you learned early on.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah, I learned from my parents, yeah.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, it's one thing to tell your kid to persevere, but to show them.
Dr. Ming Wang: That's correct.
Eric Huffman: That's even more powerful.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I'm sure it made an impact. How exactly did they get you out of the trap you were in of being forced to serve in these labor camps?
Dr. Ming Wang: They tried everything. They tried to have me play the instrument, learning dancing, to try to get into government song and dance propaganda troop, therefore avoid being sent away to labor camp for life. That did not work.
They then illegally smuggled me in into the medical school my mother was teaching. I became an illegal medical student to study medicine with no prospect of becoming a doctor, just to hide away from government finding me and sending me away to labor camp.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Dr. Ming Wang: Then I was discovered by the medical school. I was illegally studying medicine, so they kicked me out. And then I tried music. I tried everything. Everything that my parents and I tried to avoid being sent away to labor camp failed. So I was gonna be sent away to labor camp for sure. Right around then, that was 1976, I was 16, the Cultural Revolution ended.
Eric Huffman: What ended it?
Dr. Ming Wang: The leader died.
Eric Huffman: So China woke up, realized what a tragic mistake it has made by shutting down universities and colleges for 10 years and having destroyed the future of one whole generation of young people. So they quickly reopened all the colleges. I remember I only had like junior high school education. When I was 14, I got kicked out of the school after ninth grade. So I didn't attend senior high, was not allowed to.
And then my parents came on with a newspaper. My father showed me that now the university are reopened, you may be able to go back to school. I thought I would never be able to hear that. I said, "When?" He said, "Tomorrow." I said, "Should I go back to ninth grade? You know, three years ago, I got kicked out after ninth grade." He said, "No, go back all the way tomorrow to 12th grade."
Eric Huffman: Wow. "You want me to jump ahead three years overnight, having never studied 10th, 11th, 12th?" He said, "Correct?" I said, "Why?" He said, "Then you can apply for college right away." I said, "Even if somehow magically I became a 12th grader overnight, jumping three years ahead overnight, what's my chance of getting in? What percentage? What percent of the graduating 12th grade could get into college?" My father said, "This year, there were 10 times more applicants because all the students who were deported prior to that all coming back for applying for college right now because college was shut down for 10 years."
So we had 10 times more applicants. It's probably less than 1% chance of the 12th graders, the graduating class could get into college. I said, "Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You want me to jump three years ahead magically into 12th graders who have never studied 10th, 11th, 12th and somehow compete against other 12th graders for the 1% chance or less than 1% chance of getting into college?" He said, "Correct." I said, "You guys are crazy."
And my mom said, "We're not crazy." She said, "How long did the government shut down colleges?" I said, "10 years. She said, "Okay, is there any guarantee? They open the college now, but is there a guarantee they will not shut down college again next year for another 10 years?"
So you see, for people who did not have freedom, when freedom briefly came, they appreciate it. And that also applies to our country today. We live in a free country, but for folks who are born here who always had freedom, sometimes it's human nature to take that freedom for granted.
Eric Huffman: That's correct. And a lot of us are guilty of that. I wanna talk more in a minute about how you ended up in the United States. But first, that's a fascinating story and just a reflection of a loving parent's heart that as unlikely as it was, the 1% chance, 1% is infinitely greater than zero, I guess. And they knew that as quickly as times had changed in the past, they could change again. And so let's take our chance now and go for it. That's powerful.
Your parents strike me as people of faith, but were you raised with any kind of faithful worldview? Were you raised religious? I mean, what was that like?
Dr. Ming Wang: My family as was over 95% of Chinese families were all atheists. And even today, 95% of Chinese are still atheists today. The worldview is the atheist worldview, but a world that pay lots of attention to education, scholarship.
So that was very fortunate because, as I mentioned that despite the poverty, my father, my parents insisted education. So he did expose me to lots of world literature, lots of books which were banned from the West. So I got a glimpse of Christian faith from some of the novels that I read as a kid.
Eric Huffman: Wow, I can only imagine that was probably a dangerous thing to do during the Cultural Revolution.
Dr. Ming Wang: All these books from the West were banned.
Eric Huffman: How did you and your father even have those? Were they hidden?
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes, yes. I remember in our home, just one room, entire family, four crowded in one room. And on the shelf, there were all these government books. But behind some of those red books, government books, there were these Western books.
Eric Huffman: The old hidden book trick. Do you recall having any personal thoughts or reflections or curiosities about a higher power as a child? I mean, I don't know what that's like growing up in a culture like that.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah. I did not grow up with that understanding. However, I was curious because of the limited exposure to Western culture and the novels written by folks here in the West, because my father managed to let me in some of these, illegally was all banned, these books. So I was curious. In terms of the understanding that perhaps there's a creator, there's a larger power influencing our life.
It's interesting that decades later, after I became a Christian... oh, by the way, you might have seen the film, God's Not Dead. A wonderful Christian film. In that film, the student who came from China, surviving Cultural Revolution, riding a bicycle in the beginning of the film, did not believe in God. But at the end of the film, he was the first one stood up in a classroom declaring God is not dead. That student's story is inspired by my life story.
Eric Huffman: That's amazing. I mean, what kind of life do you have to live to have not one movie, but two based on your story? Just incredible. Another reason why I'm so honored to be able to talk to you today.
One more question about your childhood before we move on to coming to the US. There is a universal human inclination toward prayer. Every civilization has had an element of prayer, historically speaking, but in an enforced atheism sort of worldview that you grew up with, what happens to that inclination or that instinct to pray when times are hard or when you're hungry or whatever? Who do you pray to, if at all?
Dr. Ming Wang: It was such a great question, Pastor Eric. Absolutely. I noticed that as a universal human inclination to wanting to send wishes to a higher power to bless their lives and all that. During this atheist China, what government wanted is that power is the leader of the communist party. And so if you have trouble, you want help, you ask the leader to help. It's a human being rather than a power beyond human being.
So, in that case, I think it's many of those atheist countries are similar in the sense that it's a human being who's trying to take the role of the powerful.
Eric Huffman: I've heard that about Russia or the Soviet Union under Stalin, where kids were forced to or taught to pray to Stalin to give them candy or whatever a kid wants. And they would close their eyes in a classroom and be led in a prayer to Stalin. And then when they opened their eyes, the candy would be on their desks in front of them. It was highly manipulative and a way of supplanting that God-shaped hole in our hearts with a human being.
Dr. Ming Wang: Correct. It's just like North Korea today.
Eric Huffman: Right, yeah. These patterns repeat themselves, don't they? People are predictable sometimes. Okay, so let's talk about how you ended up in the United States. At what age did you migrate and under what circumstances? What was that like?
Dr. Ming Wang: So, during Cultural Revolution, as I mentioned earlier, that was my parents' help. I was very fortunate. They were really dedicated in helping me. I managed to get into college, jumping through practically the senior high school. And then I got enrolled in University of Science and Technology of China, which is like the MIT of China, your technical college. I studied chemical physics, laser physics.
And then in 1982, with $50 borrowed from a visiting American professor, I was dropped at National Airport, Washington, D.C., came to America with that $50, with a Chinese-English dictionary, knowing no one in this country, could hardly speak English, even though I was nearly penniless. But guess what? I was happy. Why? I was free.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, I can only imagine what that was like. But how did it happen? It seems so unlikely. Did someone intervene for you and make that possible?
Dr. Ming Wang: I was very fortunate that university decided they're going to send some students with better, good grades to America. But I have to find my own opportunity in terms of supporting myself financially. They wouldn't give me any money.
So there was a professor who was from America visiting our university in China. As you see in the film, Sight, I was trying to impress him, this American professor, hope he will help me to come to America at university to study. I was trying to impress him with my English, but my English was so poor that he didn't understand what I was asking.
I got embarrassed because I couldn't pronounce it right and he couldn't understand what I was saying. But I kept on repeating the same question over and over. But finally, he was impressed, all right, not by my English pass or lack of, but by my persistence. So at age 21, 1982, was the money that he lent me, $50. That's how I came.
Eric Huffman: What did you do when you landed with $50 in an English-Chinese dictionary in your pocket?
Dr. Ming Wang: Out of $50, $30 some dollars was used for a taxi drive from National Airport to the University of Maryland campus. So when I actually got to campus, I only had like $15, $16 left. And even though, together with two other guys in similar circumstance, even though three of us were very poor, we all were very well-dressed because my mother spent two months of her salary to have bought me a three-piece suit.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Dr. Ming Wang: She said, "You're going to America. They're dressed very nicely."
Eric Huffman: "This is how they dress in America."
Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah. Only three of the poor students on campus in America, but we were probably the best-dressed. But people were laughing. We were way too formal. So by then, I only had $10 left. So how could you dress like American with only $10? Well, as you see in the film, there was two Salvation Army. So we went in, came out with a quarter. [00:20:28] I can bear a used pair of pants. We came out of the Salvation Army dressed like Americans, all right, but we don't more or less because that was 1982. We were dressed in the used clothes people used to wear in the late 1960s. Bell-bottom pants, bright color shirts.
Eric Huffman: Like the disco or something.
Dr. Ming Wang: Right.
Eric Huffman: Oh, that's great. What a great story. But you had to persevere through that too, I guess. Even as people laugh, you just walk your way to class in your bell-bottoms.
Dr. Ming Wang: That's right.
Eric Huffman: What did you decide to study at Maryland?
Dr. Ming Wang: Laser physics. I got my PhD in laser physics. And then after that, postdoc at MIT. So at age 26, I was a young physicist with a doctorate degree in laser physics. I was ready to continue my career as a laser physicist, except that my dream of becoming a doctor, which I had that dream as a child, just like, you know, emulating my father, in China, I was not even allowed to go to high school.
So here in America, I said, "Oh, maybe my dream of wanting to be a doctor can be realized in a free country." So I actually met a professor here in America who actually looked down upon me. I gave him my resume. He was a mission director of a very famous medical school. And he didn't look at my resume. He looked at me. He said, "Where are you from?" I said, "China." He said, "Do you know how hard it is to get into medical school, even for American-born student? You're from China, don't waste your time. You have no chance."
So I almost gave up. I was so discouraged. But I thought, 'Well, after Cultural Revolution, I fought once for my own future, now I can fight again. This time, not just for me, but also for anybody who has been discriminated against just because of the color of their skin." So I worked even harder, and eventually I got into Harvard Medical School and MIT joint MD program.
Eric Huffman: Goodness.
Dr. Ming Wang: In 1991, I finished. I actually invited my parents over to thank them for having brought me up. So the film, Sight, is dedicated to my parents.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Wow, that's amazing. It's one of those stories you hear and you're just... I'm in awe and I'm wondering what I'm doing with my life and all this privilege I've had in my whole life, given how hard you've worked and how much you've overcome.
I'm also married to a woman who was a foreign exchange student when I met her from Ecuador. And I know firsthand, as much as I could know, just how difficult it is to be so far away from home at such a young age. I can only imagine you went through some pretty dark times, I mean, even as you were accomplishing so much.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes, indeed. I remember for months, probably for a whole year or so, my dream... I lived a daytime in America in the university studying. My dream and night were always back in China. I was living a double life. It was very fascinating and very interesting period of time. I remember that my roots were so tied. My parents were back home. I was the only one here. And this challenge of language, challenge of economics, I didn't have money and everything, and I didn't know anyone.
Oh, by the way, Pastor Eric, I learned that learning a language is not just learning language. You have to learn the culture. Now, if someone said, "Michael Jordan," you cannot say, "Who?" You know, you have to know the culture as well. So I have to learn both culture and the language quickly. And I found the best way: watching movies.
There was Round House Theater in Washington, D.C. With $1, I could see two feature films, old Hollywood films. So for the whole almost two years, I went to their theaters all the time and I saw hundreds of American films. I've probably seen more classic Hollywood films than most average Americans.
Eric Huffman: I imagine so.
Dr. Ming Wang: Like, It's a Wonderful Life, you know, and Wizard of Oz, you know. It's just Wizard of Oz. And it's just amazing. So I had to learn the language quickly. Here's the interesting thing. Sometimes we as human being, we do not know the purpose of the suffering and difficulty we go through, the purpose of it. However, only God knows. But looking back, sometimes realize that God has a purpose for us, even though at the time we did not realize.
Now looking back, I realize that coming to an entirely different country, traveling literally from one side of the earth to the other, dramatic different language, culture, everything, the tremendous difficulty of leaving my home, family back home, in some ways, it is actually an advantage. Because what it is is stretching to very thin, at age 21, I had to work so much harder. But as a result, I ended up being able to build determination and perseverance, the character, and exposure to a wider range of culture at a young age.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. You mentioned God and His role in our suffering. That's one of the age-old questions is, is it God's will for us to go through some of the most difficult things we go through? Was the Cultural Revolution in China God's will? And it's just one of those things we'll never quite know for sure how that works. But we do know for sure that God works in whatever we go through to redeem it and make sense of it, and oftentimes to make it right.
As you've experienced, who knows if it was God's perfect will for you to go through what you did, but certainly He showed up. So let's talk about that for a second. How did you go from being a born and raised atheist and having that worldview to being a believer in God and specifically a believer and follower of Jesus Christ?
Dr. Ming Wang: Just as in the film, God's Not Dead, the student who came from China was atheist, eventually at the end of the film became a believer who declared in the classroom, the first one classroom declared God is not dead. That was inspired by my life story, as I mentioned.
I came here after surviving Cultural Revolution, came to a free country. I was not interested in anything except science. And I felt that science will save the world as an answer to everything. But it's interesting, after PhD in laser physics, I started studying medicine.
It was in Harvard Medical School in the study of medicine where I was exposed to God. It's interesting. Because I remember with a PhD degree and I studied MD, so I want to be a laser eye surgeon because I combined the laser physics expertise with medicine. So I was studying the structure and function of human eye. I realized it was so complex that I realized that the more I study, the more impossible that I could explain everything I was studying based on atheist worldview of random events, random collisions.
In fact, I learned that the number of cells in our brain that are involved in visual processing is more than half of our entire brain.
Eric Huffman: Goodness.
Dr. Ming Wang: That's how important vision is for our senses. But not only that, the number of these cells involving vision, capturing and processing in each of our head, the number of cells is greater than the number of stars that we have ever discovered in the entire universe.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Dr. Ming Wang: So here's the trouble. All these stars has to line up within the short span of nine months from inception to birth of human being. And there's so many, many, many chances this alignment could be called, in fact, it will be called Galileo-Everett goal, right? And if any of those cells did not align well, the person will be born blind. But then most of us born, we can see. So I was in crisis.
My atheist worldview of random events collision cannot explain such a complexity of human eye and yet conform in such a nearly perfect fashion and most of the time. So I was doing a rotation at Harvard Medical School, and I asked a professor, I said, "Why this case?" And after being asked this question for a while, he ended up as a Christian, but I didn't know at the time. He took me out to lunch, He said, "Ming, what's across street?" I said, "There's a car." He said, "What's the difference between a car and a human eye?" I said, "Human eye is a lot more complicated." "Can you imagine a pile of random pieces metal on the street form itself into a car?" I said, "No way." He's landing over, he said, "How about human eye?"
So in one instant, he opened a window in my life, making me realize that the reason the human eye is so complicated yet conform nearly perfectly almost every time is because it did not form out randomness. It was formed with a purpose. And that purpose is vision. And there's a designer behind it.
Now, going from that point, realizing there's a creator to eventually realize that creator has a name in Jesus Christ, that took me several more years, right in my autobiography, From Darkness to Sight, which eventually turned into a movie.
Eric Huffman: I want to talk more about that process of going from God, generally, specifically to Jesus, but that's a very interesting thing for a Harvard professor to say. As you said, you learned later he was a believer, but you didn't know it at the time. I'm not an expert at all in Darwinian theory or anything, but I do recall him stating at some point that the was a challenge to his theory.
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes, actually, at the end of his book, the evolution of the Survival of the Fittest, Darwin himself realized that the complexity of the eye and inability to explain the eye to evolutionary theory is his Achilles tendon. He actually admitted that that is the weakest point of his evolutionary theory.
It's interesting, 100 years later, I found the same thing independently myself, that studying us through the structure of the studying of human complexity, human eye, I arrived at the same... came up with same realization: it is impossible for atheist worldview to explain the random collision, to explain the complexity of human life.
Eric Huffman: What about the argument that, you know, we're talking about billions of years or however long it's been since evolution began and, you know, over that span of time and all the many, many, many generations of different species leading up to the human species, again, in the evolutionary mindset, this could have happened? Is that beyond the pale for you? Is it impossible in your view?
Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah, it's impossible. That was my very trouble because the number of cells is so vast and the alignment has to be so nearly perfect. It would have taken trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years. The universe has only been in existence for 13.6 billion years, much, much shorter.
And so in other words, the mathematical impossibility of the vast alternative probabilities of recombinations of these brain cells, those retinal cells, ganglion cells in the head, you know, visual processing, make it impossible that these can form together, so in a such short period of time. That is the mathematical argument, because I basically, found evidence of existence of creator. Suicides. [00:32:41]
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Is there something unique about the human eye then? Because other species have less complex, you know, eye and visual systems, I guess, again, speaking as a pastor, not a scientist. But it seems like there are less complex, more simple eyes out there in other species that could have led to the human eye. Is there something that sets the human eye apart?
Dr. Ming Wang: It's such a great question. such a question. As a scientist, I studied the material basis of the world and the scientific logic. At the same time, as I mentioned, I became a believer. The question is ultimately what sets human being apart from other, not just the structure of the eye, but the entire human being.
And I've come to realize that there's a fundamental difference because it's just this notion, the understanding, the soul. It's hard to explain. However, we do know that as human beings, it's not just merely the physical presence. We have certain intuition, there's certain understanding and certain connection to the Creator that give us a sense of purpose. And that is absent in animal world. I think not only human eye is unique, meaning uniquely complex, but also the human being is uniquely soulful.
Eric Huffman: Fascinating. So I can only try to imagine what this was like for you when you realized there might be a God behind creation, behind the universe, behind the eye. You stood to lose a lot by professing such a belief. I mean, not just your family, which, you know, was adamantly opposed, I guess, to such an idea, but friends back home. Professionally, I suppose it's not the norm to be a professing believer in God in your line of work. Did you have any hesitations about opening your heart to that possibility of God?
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes, I did, and I still do have hesitations. For example, I was in China recently. We have this China Bible project and we bring Bible to China. And I brought the film, the film Sight. It's banned in China because it depicting Cultural Revolution and the Christian faith.
So I took the film, the DVD back home, and I show, you know, secretly to friends and give them Bible. I've been doing the China Bible project for two decades. And so it's always back to our mind, you know, that could bring trouble to me.
However, I feel that as Christians, we all realize that God paid the ultimate price, you know, by dying for our sins at the cross. Any of those small sacrifices as a Christian that we should make if it's going to help spread the word of Jesus Christ.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Dr. Ming Wang: ...to a country that need that believe so much today. China's economically developing so fast. With economic development come corruption. I was approached by a few Chinese officials over the decade with our China Bible Project, you know, why do you want to spread Christian faith? I said, "Do you know the difference between a believer and not a believer?" And these government officials said, "What?" I said, "Somebody who truly believe in Jesus Christ is going to behave different." He said, "In what way?" I said, "If someone who truly believe in Jesus Christ knows that even when no other human being is looking at him, Jesus is. So there's some fundamental sense of accountability." So that curtail a reduced corruption in China. I said, "Oh." I said, "See, it's good to believe."
Eric Huffman: Wow. That's a risky thing to say, I would imagine, given what little I know about how life is working in China these days and the attempts to suppress Christianity. But as you said, if we're following Jesus who laid His life down for everyone, we should be willing to do the same as much as possible to spread the word.
When did that transition from believing in God generally to Christianity happen? Was there someone that led you across that threshold? Do you remember a moment when you became a Christian?
Dr. Ming Wang: It was a period of time when I was spending time with a group of Christian physicians and see their model behavior as compassionate physicians who are believers and also take great care of their patients. And through spending time with them, I learned resurrection, I learned this powerful incident where God laid down His life for all of us. And realized that Christian entity, faith in Jesus Christ is a very specific form of proving existence of Creator that I can relate to, and there's a human action that I need to follow. And also these believers actually manifest the true spirit of Christian faith, serving people as physicians and such.
So it was through the inference over a period of time by these Christian physicians that eventually led me to Jesus Christ specifically.
Eric Huffman: Wow. I love hearing different stories about how God reaches different people in different ways. A lot of times, you know, it's a story like this where it's very pragmatic. It's you see the outworking of Christian faith in your peers that you admire and it seems to work for them and the people around them in such powerful ways that you want more of what they have and then you sort of live your way into it.
But was there ever a personal encounter you had with the Holy Spirit or with Jesus where you were confronted with your sin, that sort of classic conversion story, and you received Christ in some supernatural way? Or was it actually a pragmatic walking out of faith that just fit for your worldview?
Dr. Ming Wang: It's mostly pragmatic walking step closer, step closer to Jesus Christ overall. But I did have one overarching realization that years later after Camp America I realized is when I look back, my suffering during Cultural Revolution as a child, as a teenager, at the time I did not understand the purpose of those sufferings.
And it was later, after I became a Christian, I realized looking back, perhaps God did have a purpose for me going through those sufferings were to help me build my character, determination, be able to sustain and persevere through challenges, but also being connected with blind orphan children, the kids who suffer in darkness. That's why I build the foundation to help them. And that's the basis of the film, Sight.
So, in other words, there is an overarching realization over time that perhaps God had the purpose for me to go through those difficulties. And there is such a powerful realization, the cement to my believe.
Eric Huffman: And then to turn it all around and help others. I want to talk more about that in just a sec. One more question about your conversion to Christianity. Did you talk to mom and dad back home about becoming a Christian? And if so, how did that go?
Dr. Ming Wang: Yes, I have been. In the film, God's Not Dead, the student who went from atheist to believer, as I said, it was based on my life story. That he fought against his father who objected to the notion of Christian faith. And it was true for me too.
It's interesting that over the years, I've been trying to expose them to Christian faith, but they pretty much stayed the way they were. However, when the film God's Not Dead came out, I made a point of showing that film to my parents. And my parents saw me in that film, God's Not Dead, and saw the transforming effect that Christian faith has placed on me. They saw in real eyes, only in the U.S., but also in a film, the powerful way.
Actually, after film, I asked my dad, I said, "Your son is a believer. He didn't turn out to be too bad, didn't he?" And, you know, he said, "I thought that really has kind of start changing their heart, seeing the transformation and change of their son, who went from just, you know, my purpose is for myself to a larger purpose than my purpose is to help those kids, blind, orphaned children who needs the most help. And they saw that foundations worked over the decades in real action.
So I think my trying to become a truly good Christian and a doctor helping the kids, blind, orphaned children, helped impact my parents as well.
Eric Huffman: I mentioned earlier, I hope I didn't speak out of turn when I said your parents strike me as people of faith. I didn't mean to imply that they're by any means Christians or anything, but anyone who sacrifices so much for their children in such a selfless way and who values and prioritizes understanding and learning over, you know, even in the face of danger from government or, you know, officials and things, that suggests something about their character that is just a half step away from true faith and true God. It's the heart of God on display. I think that's fertile ground to have that conversation with someone who's already inclined in that direction.
I really appreciate you sharing your testimony as you have because I think people need to hear it. It's not everyone comes to faith in Christ by Damascus Road, you know, lightning experience where everything changes all at once. Sometimes it's the living out of faith and seeing the fruit of Christian living that actually leads people to discipleship.
Dr. Ming Wang: Absolutely. I think this is one of the most powerful, yet sometimes undervalued way of we as Christians can behave because through our own action, we can influence the non-believers, help them see God through what we do ourselves. And on the other hand, it's also no weaker statement of faith by Christians. We do things in an un-Christian way because they will have the opposite effect. So it's so important for us as Christians to truly live in a Christ-like way.
Eric Huffman: Jesus said, by your love, they will know that you're my disciples. And sometimes we just want to say, you know, we just want to tell the world what's right instead of showing them and preach at them instead of just living like Christ and letting that be our witness. And so that's a good reminder for us all.
How has that Christian inspiration to live a life of love and sacrifice for others impacted your work as you got into your career as an eye surgeon, specifically the laser surgeries, corrective vision surgeries? How did that desire to help others shape your career as it is today?
Dr. Ming Wang: I mean, in two specific ways. One is after years of training in medicine, Pastor Eric, guess how many years I have come to school. 31 years. From age 6 to age 37, I, you know, keep on going to school and training. I got two doctor degrees, as I mentioned, one PhD in laser physics, one MD from Harvard and MIT.
So after 31 years of studying, I finally got it down. I was ready to work and to make a difference, I realized that very quickly, a sense of purpose that instilled in me from Christ. That is, I need to use my science, the hard-earned science, to help those who need the most help, these blind orphan children. And in many ways, I realized that God allowed me to go through the difficulty during the Cultural Revolution, those dark days. As a teenager, I saw no future in my life. My life's outlook was dark. Now I can connect that feeling to the situation of these kids who are living in darkness, I can relate to them and I want to help them.
So that's God instilled the purpose for me. And so I want to use my science to help them. So that's the first specific impact.
A second specific impact is in the process of helping these kids, as you see in the film, Sight, I saw this five-year-old Indian orphan who was intentionally blinded by her own stepmother, like India, who was trying to make a job, the five year old orphan, a blind orphan child who then can sing on the streets, who can back and get more money.
Eric Huffman: She's blind and singing on the street, she'll get more compassion and more money.
Dr. Ming Wang: Right.
Eric Huffman: Got it.
Dr. Ming Wang: It was malicious. She was maliciously blinded, but then she was found to have no talent in singing. Singing. She couldn't sing. That's why she was abandoned in a train station. That's how we found her. And now our foundation brought her to America, as you see in the film Sight.
So the film Sight is Kajal's remarkable journey to try to come from darkness to light. So when I first saw Kajal, her eye was completely scarred due to the intentional blinding incident. And there was no treatment for scarred blood vessel grown human eye. And so I started research. I really wanted to help Kajal, help bring her out of darkness because I used to be in darkness myself.
So I found that the only way to restore her eyesight, reduce the scar is to study human fetus because an unborn child can heal without scar. But how could you do research on human fetus, unborn child to help patients like Kajal without hurting the fetus? They say there's no common ground between science and faith in that regard. And this actually speaks to the larger issue today with rapid development science, genetic engineering, stem cells, and many young people leaving faith because they don't believe faith offers solution to this conflict between science and faith and surgery.
So I wanted to do research on fetal tissue, but I want to help Kajal but at the same time preserving life at the same time. So it's too much prayer. Eventually I felt that God was giving me an idea. And I was working with a group of scientists that perhaps the way to tap the fountain of youth, the fetal scarless healing, is to use the placenta.
Because before birth we were all surrounded by the placenta, the amniotic membrane. Maybe the amniotic membrane used to surround all of us before birth is what gives the unborn child the ability to heal without scar. So I got lots of placenta donated to me by mothers after giving birth to children. The placenta is discarded anyway. And I brought those placentas back in the laboratory and started doing research.
Eventually I developed the amniotic placenta contact lens. When I put this amniotic placenta contact lens onto injured eyes, miracle happened. The eye stopped behaving as if it were not born yet. It started healing and regenerating without a scar.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Dr. Ming Wang: Then I asked myself, did I invent the amniotic membrane contact lens? Interestingly, I concluded no. Because I did not invent the placenta, I did not invent the amniotic membrane. God did. As a physician and scientist, I was privileged to have given this opportunity by God to catch a little glimpse of part of His original creation. So the glory belongs to Him.
So what I decided to do is to donate my pattern. So I donated my patent, I put on online so everybody saw it. In fact, I went around the world over 20 years period, free of charge, taught over 10,000 eye doctors throughout the world in over 50 some countries, how to use this technology.
Today amniotic membrane contact lens has helped restore eyesight in millions of patients are used worldwide. And it's a $5 billion a year industry. Some friends that all mean you're stupid, you don't need my patent beginning. I said, because it's not only a scientist, but also a Christian, I realized that where the credit should really go.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Wow. That is such a powerful story, Dr. Wang, because you're right, the world is polarized on an issue like stem cell research, for example. You've got maybe secular scientific folks that say, we should help as many people as we can and do the research necessary, even if we have some questionable ethical issues with fetal tissue. Then you've got, you know, some conservative Christian voices and other conservative voices saying we should stop all this research because even if we can help people, we shouldn't mess with fetal tissue.
Just another example of how Jesus Christ in His infinite wisdom helps us find that common ground that you value so much, which is the desire to heal and help as many people as possible and the desire to honor life. A lot of times those answers are there if we'll look for them as your research has shown.
Dr. Ming Wang: Absolutely. A moment ago, Pastor Eric, we talked about what is... there's no more powerful example that demonstrates the power of faith by Christians who live out life like Jesus Christ. But also opposite is true. There's no weaker statement of our power of faith by Christians who acted out in the un-Christ way.
And in the realm of polarization and division in our country today, unfortunately, many Christians are living in the opposite way as Jesus Christ. They are some of the worst polarizers. And I think it's important for us to recognize that being a Christian ultimately means emulating Christ, live in a Christ-like way. Christ has found the common ground with us, and He saw us as a human being. He actually became one of us. That's the ultimate way of seeking common ground. He died for our sin at the cross. He became one of us because He wants to feel what we feel, to suffer what we suffer.
So to be a Christ means exactly what Bible said, love your neighbor, love your enemies. We're able to love the people despite the difference, work together despite the difference. That's actually the most powerful way of showing the power of Jesus Christ and the opposite is true. If a someone who was polarizers and the person who is the least tolerant of people are different from him or her, that is actually the weakest statement of the Great Orthodox.[00:52:24]
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Sometimes we let our own insecurities and prejudices get in the way of being truly Christian witnesses. And sometimes it's fear, I guess, but we shouldn't be afraid. We should leave with love like Jesus did, you know, while also honoring the principles of Scripture, like, you know, the sanctity of life. And you found a way to do that through your work.
Going back to Kajal, I've watched the movie, so I kind of know the story, but for folks that haven't seen the movie, if you plan to watch the movie, if you're watching this interview and you plan to go watch the movie, speed ahead a few minutes in this interview so you don't get a spoiler here, but tell us how Kajal's story unfolded and what you learned from her.
Dr. Ming Wang: As I said, the film Sight is about Kajal's remarkable journey to try to come from darkness to light. And how in the process that she as my patient has also helped me come from my own darkness to light emotionally and spiritually. That helped me find a way to be at peace with the past and move on. And so that's the essence of the film Sight.
And the Kajal, because of inspiration, they're trying to help her and her suffering and many other patients I helped over the years, I developed this amniotic membrane contact lens technology. In the film, there's a powerful scene that shows that Kajal's the one who taught me. There's more to life than what we see.
Every one of us has two kinds of sight, the physical sight, which I spend every day helping people to restore, the medical, but also the spiritual sight. And we need both. We need both. So Kajal is one that shows that even when no light is coming in from outside, light could emanate from within if one has Christ in one's heart.
Eric Huffman: Amen. Were you able to fully restore Kajal's sight?
Dr. Ming Wang: I was hesitating, Pastor Eric. We want to encourage people to watch the film. That's why I kind of basically didn't answer the question of what happened to Kajal. I would say this way, I would still want people to see the film because I think the transforming effect of watching a film is powerful. But I'm in the process of reconnecting with Kajal. And guess what? She returned to India after a remarkable experience in America, helped by our foundation. She went to college. She even got a master's she was loved when she was here.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Praise God. I know that you have done a ton of charity work. Could you just talk about how wide-reaching that's been and how important it is to you in addition to your practice and being a movie star and all of that? But you have a lot of international work that you're doing even today.
Dr. Ming Wang: I am not a movie star. I always say that I'm famous in my house. Everyone knows me. First of all, what I realized that science is necessary as a tool. But Jesus Christ is the purpose. And every one of us, God will give us different purpose depending on what we do, our life's journey.
For me, suffering through Cultural Revolution, came to America as an atheist, find freedom and the faith in America. The purpose I realized God has for me is utilize my 31 years of studying medicine to help those who need the most help, which are blind orphan children. And that is my why, why I devote my life to help these kids.
And I do two kinds of surgeries. One is regular laser vision correction for people like you and me. The goal is to treat near-sightedness, far-sightedness, astigmatism. We can also treat the presbyopia. We can get rid of reading glasses now. Also basically one surgery, I published the first two textbooks, is able to, one, surgery for patient over age 45, we can correct all the problems. The [inaudible 00:56:40] and PresbyOP and one will never develop cataract either. So it's one surgical forever young lens. So we have been involved in doing that research and helping folks.
At the same time, another part of my life is the charity work to help little kids. And the foundation has been going on for 20-some years. We have health patients from all over the world, in 50-some countries. And these foundation patients, the medical care is free. However, it's interesting, I mentioned earlier during Cultural Revolution, I have to learn to play the musical instrument, Chinese violin, erhu, and learn how to dance to avoid being sent away to labor camp.
Now, these things I learned in Cultural Revolution to survive, it's been useful. I combine my dancing skill I learned in Cultural Revolution to survive with my medical charity. I create a concept called The Eyeball. It's a medical fundraiser. to raise money to help these kids. Even though the medical care for these kids are free, we raise money for their travel, schooling, and living. No medical cost.
And also the instrument that during Cultural Revolution I learned, you know, Chinese violin to avoid labor camp has become a hobby and I use it to connect East and West.
Eric Huffman: Also, to connect with Dolly Parton, of all people, which I saw her performing with her on one of her songs, as if you haven't done enough with your life, you also get to accompany Dolly.
Dr. Ming Wang: She was my patient. I did her eyes and one day she walked in, she said, "Dr. Wang, I'm not here for my vision." I said, "Why are you here for?" She said, "I heard you play this main little Chinese violin. I want to make music with you." Now I look at this legend in front of me, I said, "You, you want to make music with me?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Let's do it."
She took me to the Blue Ocean Studio, it's a music world here in Nashville. And that's first time I saw this big, huge room with tens of thousands of buttons. And she said, "We're going to make music." And her idea was she was going to sing a country song and I was going to play a Chinese violin. We have this unique East and West combination. So we did it. We actually produced a song. She sang an old country song. I played the Chinese violin, Arhu. And when the CD came out, you see, it's Dolly Parton CD. It's got all these famous country stars listed, Dolly Parton, Alison Cross, and da da da da. The last name is Ming Wang. Who is that?
Well, it was a really fun collaboration that what I love about it is bringing East and West. It's a shared humanity.
Eric Huffman: Common ground.
Dr. Ming Wang: Our common ground.
Eric Huffman: That's right. That's so good. If you don't believe in God, just look at Ming Wang on Dolly Parton's album. What an amazing story. What a wonderful life to bring back one of your favorite American movies that you have lived. That is awesome. We have people watching Maybe God from all over the world, a lot of missionaries watch, for example, and I'm just thinking they might know someone who might benefit from the Wang Foundation and your work, and if somebody wanted to support your foundation, how would they find more information about that?
Dr. Ming Wang: Our mission is to help blind, often children from around the world. We work with many, many missionary groups. So anybody who's traveling around the world in developing countries and poor parts of the world, if they see a child fit that criteria, the first step is to communicate with us through email. I have my email address. And you can get from Maybe God-
Eric Huffman: Yeah, we'll put it in the description.
Dr. Ming Wang: Great. Email me and we'll get as much information as we can through online to make an assessment. What's the chance we will be able to help? It looks like likely we can help, then our foundation take over and we go from there. As I mentioned, we have to help patients from all over the world, over 50[01:00:36] countries.
Now, regarding how to support the foundation, the best way to support right now, guess what, is to share the free Sight movie link that Pastor Eric and Maybe God will put on the screen. It's a free link because if you pass this free Sight movie link to as many folks as you can, it helps the foundation spread the word about our work so more people will realize these blind orphan children, many of them do have hope and there's a place they can go for help. So that's literally to expand the scope of foundation work and allow the impact more.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Amen. Thank you for that. And we will be sure to get all that information in the description of this video so everybody can find more information about that. Let me just ask one or maybe two more questions about... I'd like you to go back in time in your mind and think about six-year-old Ming and the Cultural Revolution getting underway and all the difficulty that lays ahead. What would you say to him? Knowing what you know now about your life and God and Jesus, what would you say to him, knowing how scary a time that was? If you could, by some miracle, go back and talk to yourself, your younger self, what would you say?
Dr. Ming Wang: I would say to a six-year-old me that life is hard right now, indeed. And you end up not being able to go to senior high school and send away to labor camp like 20 million others for life. But there's a powerful creator who's looking after you, even if you don't see it. The difference between us, model human beings, and God is we can only see the things that already happened to us, but He can see the things which are about to happen to us. So, God, believe there's a purpose for the suffering right now, the difficulty.
And ultimately, I want to tell the sixth-year-old me that as human being we can only see what's immediately in front of us, but there's more to life than what you see.
Eric Huffman: Wow. That's so good. And it's actually something that so many people need to be reminded of, especially folks that are growing up in difficult circumstances. And we might have some folks in such places and situations watching right now. And I hope you heard that message loud and clear from Dr. Wang.
What would you say now, last question, to someone like me, to people who have only known privilege and freedom and sight and have gotten in the habit of taking such things for granted? What would you say to the rest of us, especially Christians, about how we're living our lives?
Dr. Ming Wang: Thank you for your question, Pastor Eric. I feel so passionate about this particular question. That, you know, my fellow Christians, do know who appreciates sight the most? Those who used to be blind. Who appreciate freedom the most? Those who used to not have freedom.
So, my life story as Pastor Eric and I discussed on the show, Maybe God, is a journey of someone who used to not have freedom, who came to realize that how precious the freedom we have in America and how important for us not take for granted. Human nature is to take for granted good things when we always have had it. So can we appreciate freedom before we lose it?
So along the line, we are living in the unprecedentedly polarized and divided nation and world today. We are increasingly fixated on differences rather than appreciating what we all have in common as fellow human beings. We are increasingly unable to work across political hours, racial divides, and ethnic divisions to solve the problems that we truly need to solve as a nation. You know, think about all the problems of gun violence, opioid crisis, environmental disasters, poverty, racial tension, education, healthcare, jobs.
So we can only solve these problems by being able to work together despite the differences. And humans being so polarized divided because human nature for power, money and control. So the story, the film Sight is ultimately about this message.
In order to come together as a nation, in order to truly be able to work together across difference, to truly solve the problem we so urgently need to solve as a nation, to rebuild America, to restore our nation, the way to do it is to rise above human nature for power control money, which is what divide and polarize us, and heed a higher calling from Jesus Christ.
That is, Christ has demonstrated to be the ultimate common ground seeker. He saw the common ground with us as human beings. He became one of us. He traded places by becoming one of us. He demonstrated empathy towards people in a low-stron society, women by the well, in the Bible.
Nobody wants to talk to her. [01:05:51] Jesus did. He paid the ultimate price by dying for our sin at the cross. And finally, he just, not just talking about it, He actually put into action. He saw the common ground as human beings, suffer what we suffer, feel what we feel.
So, I think this is a critical moment for all of the Christians to realize that we have a decision to make. We can still, you know, behave humanly, worldly way, letting our country, the world, sliding towards the deadly spiral of polarization, which ultimately result in self-destruction of humankind, or we can realize that if we are truly Christians, we should be like Christ. We should rise above human nature for power, control, money, and division and polarization, and be like Christ to help bring people together, to find a common ground because ultimately it's Christ's love, love for fellow human being. That is the most powerful message from Christ.
Eric Huffman: Wow. That's pretty good, Dr. Wang. You're preaching and I'm ready to vote for you for president. That was so good. You brought me to tears. Thank you for sharing that. Who would have thought that a young poor boy growing up in the south of Shanghai, in the Cultural Revolution, almost forced to work his whole life in a labor camp, growing up atheist, who would have thought that young boy would grow up to be the man who just said what you said and who's reached millions through your work and your witness. Only God, I think, could do something like that.
And we're grateful for you, your testimony and your time today. And I hope everybody watching or listening will find more about you online in the show notes, but also will go and watch the movie Sight and share it with others because they'll be blessed by it.
Dr. Wang, thank you so much.
Dr. Ming Wang: Thank you so much. I want to thank you, Julie and Pastor Eric, you and Maybe God show. And once again, let's share the free Sight movie link to as many folks as we can, because they're literally helping our foundation spread the word, our work, so we can help more blind, orphan children.
Eric Huffman: Amen. We'll do what we can. Thank you, sir. Have a great day.
Dr. Ming Wang: Thank you.