Sergio da Silva has a healthy respect for the role of faith in one’s life, including one’s health.

“People of faith often feel better health wise,” he said, “and we know that there are factors that play into that: the place of prayer and meditation, having a support group, the fact that hope is a very healthy thing to have and even factors still unaccounted for.”

Yet the Calvin psychology professor also knows that faith is not a panacea.

“Faith also can be a source of stress,” he said. “C.S. Lewis talked about not embracing faith thinking it’s only going to be good for you. It can be painful.”

It is this sort of dynamic that first drew da Silva into the psychology profession.

“There are important connections between mind and body,” he said simply.

Now, he explores those connections in his own research and in the Calvin classroom where he teaches introductory and upper-level psychology courses.

A native of Brazil, da Silva came to Calvin in the fall of 2004 after working on his doctoral degree at Central Michigan University. Coming to Calvin seemed for da Silva the natural development of a dream that had driven him for two decades.

Da Silva worked many years for Trans World Radio, an international mission organization that uses radio to reach people for Christ. He fulfilled a variety of duties for Trans World, everything from producing and writing shows to offering counseling.

Eventually he began to dream about integrating the many things he was doing, specifically “to reach out to thinkers, to the people of faith interested in thinking deeper.”

He said: “In Brazil I felt like this was a group somewhat neglected by the church.”

So he first pursued a master’s in social psychology in Brazil, from the University of Sao Paulo. Then, after waiting for his two children to grow a little older, he and his wife (a Saginaw, Mich., native he had met on the mission field) departed for Mount Pleasant, Mich., where he worked on his Ph.D.

When he heard about the job opening at Calvin in the psychology department, he was thrilled.

“Here,” he said with a small smile, “I can try to integrate my faith, my love for theology and my academic discipline.”

He also hopes to bring some of his Brazilian heritage to the Calvin classroom. “Brazil is different from the U.S. Not better, not worse, but different,” he said. “So I hope when I teach to bring some of those sensitivities to what I teach and how I teach. I often try to bring examples from Brazil and other places I’ve been to give students a more open perspective culturally. Interestingly many of my students seem to have traveled abroad but often on short trips. So my experience having lived abroad may still add to their learning.”

He also brings to the classroom his ongoing research interests. Da Silva is studying attention and emotion, and how they interact in the brain, and he also continues his research on sleep, particularly sleep apnea. He has had a special place in his heart for that latter course of study since his brother-in-law died in his sleep several years ago.

This spring da Silva plans to introduce a course at Calvin on health psychology, examining wellness and the interactions between the mind and the body, including faith.

For da Silva, it always comes back to faith.

“It is the basis for all I do,” he said. “It’s why I want to learn, why I want to teach, why I want to leave a positive mark.”