Last Sunday was the monthly singing and for the invitation I mentioned the "cargo cult" phenomenon that started on several south Pacific islands at the end of World War II. If you weren't there, I will wait while you google this and learn all about it....

Ok, so one thing I didn't mention about these folks was their faith in things they did not understand. This is a source of ridicule from a particular person I work with, who is an evolutionist, in that I don't fully understand all there is to know about God yet I have faith in him in what he feels is a parallel way. This is where the cargo cult came up, we had been discussing their blind faith in the unknown and misunderstood.

Yet, it is easy to demonstrate he also has faith in things he doesn't understand. We flip a switch and have faith the light is going to come on, because we have observed this to be true in the past. If it does not, we might check the breakers, call the electric company, even look at the lines outside our house. We exhaust the limit of our ability. But can you explain where electric comes from? Do you know the exact point of origin, be it Niagara falls or a nuclear reactor somewhere? Can you explain a step-down transfer voltage regulator, or even with some wire and iron create a rough working generator? Most of us say no, but even if you were an electrical engineer - explain magnetism to me. What? You can't? No one can? You mean the very heart of this modern, smug attitude you have about flipping a switch is based on something science does not comprehend but only observes to be true?

My friend says that doesn't matter because while we don't understand it, it still works for us. Hmmmmm

Most of us don't know how the cars work that we drive in. Or the computers we use. Or why food has salt, or how a person can speak in a box about half the size of their fist and the sound come out relatively instantaneously half a planet away. We rely on things we don't understand all the time, we have faith they work ONLY because they do work.

The cargo cult people have faith because they have seen it work for them too. I suppose it could work again - someone could fly out there and give them chocolate.

Faith in God is easy to me because I have not only the rules of the game but knowledge of the author. Some of those who say "I don't believe in God, I believe in science" confuse the rules for the creator. If that is too hard for you to understand (funny!) think of it like this - can you tell me who invented Monopoly? Probably not without looking it up in a book or online somewhere. But you know the rules. Does that mean there was no author? Do the rules refute the presence of an author? Or due to their beauty and precision demand that there WAS a creator? Who's afraid of science? Not me!

Science is a study of the rules. It is not understood fully how life is possible, what light is, how magnetism works, and many other things. What those who observe the rules fall down at is they look at the beauty and precision and say "it was chance" and there was no author. This is the disconnect my friend and I have.. God is the author of those rules. Worse, he refuses to even accept some of the rules!

God says divorce is bad, that lying is wrong, and alcohol will ruin a person. My friend argues these and says "it depends" because he doesn't like those rules. I notice he doesn't say you can jump out of a tree and you may not fall to the ground. It doesn't matter if you understand falling or not, the consequence is the same! My challenge is to help him to see ALL the rules, not just the ones he can't argue with.

Randy