The Road Trip

Summer is approaching soon, and I am currently in the beginning stages of planning an epic adventure, one filled with peril, wonder, and excitement at every turn - the road trip!

Ok...so it won't be quite like that. However, I would have to rank road trips pretty high on my list of things I love to death. There's just something about getting behind the wheel and driving with only a vague idea as to where you're going that's exhilarating. Because it's not really about where you go, but how you get there. It's being with the right people and being willing to be open to what you find in your wanderings. With me, it's always been the experience of something new. Traveling is great, but when you travel "formally" (meaning plane tickets, hotels, tourist attractions, and so on), you don't really get the experience of the place. I could go to Italy, look at all the sites, and then come home and have not really experienced Italy, if you know what I mean. When you drive, you're forced to pass through the place your visiting, to stop and to enjoy the places you don't find in your AAA guide. It's interesting to think of how much there really is just in the areas around us. It could be a nice cup of coffee at a local diner, meeting someone interesting, or having your breath taken away by the natural beauty of the world that you didn't even now existed.

I haven't been on too many (only because I'm limited by time, money, and all the other factors of life that weigh you down). My first real road trip was when my roommate Daniel and I went to Los Angeles via the Pacific Coast Highway, an absolutely beautiful stretch of highway that goes right along the Pacific Coast, and I had a blast. The following year we got ambitious. We added another voyager (Rodney, who is a perfect example of how a friendship can really develop on a road trip), planned a much longer route (Modesto to Vancouver), an took off for a week that involved 17 hours of straight driving, border mishaps, bad navigation, and stops in Portland and Seattle. A few months later I did the Modesto-Canada route again with Sarah, Beth, and Rodney, and once again, had an absolutely wonderful time. These three road trips were separated by smaller trips (journeys through the Gold Country, trips down south, etc).

So, the big question now is "Where?" I think I definitely want to visit the Grand Canyon (something that Rodney and I have talked about ever since we read Through Painted Deserts), but beyond that, I'm not sure. I've always wanted to visit Salt Lake City (though I have no real reason for wanting to do so), so I made up a possible itinerary for combining the two here. I'm also starting to warm up to the idea of doing a baseball stadium tour and go from the Bay to LA area, and then to Arizona and Texas. Or, if I got real ambitious, we could do something more grandiose (Route 66, or something like that).

One thing is for sure - wherever we go, it will be awesome, and I can't wait!

Blind Faith?

One of the reasons non-Christians criticize Christianity is because of the whole issue of faith. We live in a day and age where everything has to be scientifically examined, qualified, quantified, categorized, labeled, and proven beyond any doubt in order for it to be acknowledged as a fact. This growing belief in science and knowledge has detrimental implications for the idea of faith, which can be defined as blind acceptance of that which we can not prove. On Sunday at church, we talked about Abraham's faith as he went to sacrifice Isaac, the only son that was to bear his great nation, as God had commanded him, and as we discussed this I couldn't but think about Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard was a Christian philosopher who wrote about the idea of faith in relation to the aforementioned story in his book Fear and Trembling. In this work (and you'll have to excuse my paraphrasing, because the book is somewhere in my ready-to-move boxes), Kierkegaard argues that faith is absurd, because it involves denying the present realities and facts in life and instead focuses on the unseen and the infinite. Abraham had faith that if he killed his son, God would bring him back to life, which is, according to the laws that govern the natural world, absurd. His faith transcended all logic and for that he was rewarded.

Thus, one can get the impression that faith involves blind allegiance in that which is absurd. The idea that God had a son, that he lived a perfect life, died on a cross, and then rose from the dead is absurd, yet I believe it, although no proof exists.

Now, with all this in mind, I found myself reading the account of Gideon in the book of Judges. In short, God calls out Gideon to save Israel from the Midianites. Gideon is dumbfounded at his choosing: "How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family" (6:15). After God assures Gideon that He will be with him in battle, Gideon does something interesting. He asks God for a sign to prove that is really was the LORD talking to him. God responds by taking Gideon's offering and engulfing it with fire from a rock. Later, Gideon (apparently not convinced by the dialogue with the angel and the flaming rock) puts out a wool fleece and asks God to make the fleece covered in dew and the ground dry. God does as Gideon requests and the next day, Gideon asks God to make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew, and again God complies. God never shows anger with Gideon's requests for proof. He willingly demonstrates his power and might upon request.

There are numerous stories in the Old Testament where someone requests a sign that God is on their side, and God willingly delivers. I don't think anything changes as we made the transition from Old to New Testament. Jesus himself used miracles as signs to demonstrate to the people that he was sent by God, as Peter tells the Israelites: "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know" (Acts 2:22). Furthermore, God has given us the Holy Spirit, his spirit working through us, as proof of our promise with God. Consider Jesus' words in Mark: "And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison,it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well" (Mark 16:17-18).

Here's my thought - I think that "blind" faith in Jesus as a means of salvation is stupid. Having a "blind" faith indicates what we believe in can never be proven to be true, and that we are taking the gamble of our lives by placing our trust in Jesus. I don't think this is the kind of faith that God wants us to have. God provides all the proof we need if we ask Him and are open to the results.

Once, when I was a little boy, I remember my Dad and Mom having a fight about something. This was before my Dad got remarried, and the divorce was still fresh in my head. As we drove home, I was scared to death that they were going to break up, that my Dad would be alone again, and that any chance of stability in my life was gone forever. As I went to bed that night, I took off my crucifix necklace and laid it on my end stand just like I did every night. I prayed, and in my pleading with God, I asked Him for a sign to help me believe that He was going to allow things to be ok, and that there would be no break-up. I randomly thought of my necklace, and I asked God to move it off of the nightstand, where I found it every morning when I woke up, as a sign that He was there. When I woke up the next morning, it was under a dresser in another room. Sure it could have been my cat's doing, but that was the only time I had every woken up and not found it on my nightstand, and it was the one time I made that request to God. That's too much of a coincidence for me. That had God written all over it.

I think that God loves showing us his power. Every time one of our prayers is answered, God is affirming his promise to us. He may not light rocks on fire, but he has this way of arranging things to fit our requests, to fulfill this need for proof in all of us. It may not be scientific proof, but it will be convenient coincidences and strange events that have God written all over them.