Cars and Faith

The thought hit me coming home today from the gas station.  I’m sure someone’s already thought of this analogy, but I’d like to flesh it out.  I’m not sure I understand why people have a hard time understanding faith, and maybe it’s not faith they have a hard time understanding—maybe it’s just the God people claim to have faith in.   But I think this might make a good argument for how faith, in general, is a very reasonable thing. 

Most Americans of adult age drive cars.  Many of our households have more than one.  When we get in our cars, we are exhibiting an incredible amount of faith.  First, we have faith that the car will start.  What is that faith based on? 

Assume I came from some aboriginal tribe in Australia and I’d never seen a car.  I walk into a parking lot and see this big hunk of metal with glass and rubber wheels, and I’ve got no clue what it is.  It looks to me like some sort of house on wheels.  Someone approaches me and through the difficulties of the language barrier, I start to understand that this house on wheels can transport me from one place to another.  I have no experience of this, so I don’t believe it. 

The person, needing to prove to me the validity of his claims, gets in, and starts the motor—which sounds not too different from a snarling crocodile and just about frightens me back into the wilderness.  He then proceeds to drive in circles around me.  My new experience of this house on wheels now confirms his claims for transportation.  It works—even though I can’t see how.  It works—even though I don’t know where it came from. 

The driver then stops the car, opens the door, and gestures to me that he can teach me how to move it.  Ok, it’s one thing for the car to move itself, but how am I supposed to believe that I can make it move where I want it to go? 

I step inside and see in front of me a big wheel, a stick coming out of the console, and some pedals by my feet. The person teaching me explains to me that one pedal makes it go, and one pedal makes it stop.  He explains that the stick coming out of the console determines whether I make it go forward or backward and that the big wheel in front determines which direction it must go by turning. 

Time-out—Faith alert!  Because of my previous experience of my new teacher having proved to me that the house on wheels will move, I now have started taking him at his word—on faith.  I now believe that what he tells me is true—that if I turn the wheel, it makes me go to the left or right; that if I move the stick one way I go forward and in another backward; and that if I hit one pedal I go and the other I stop.  I take it on faith that these things are true. 

Time-in.  So, I move the stick to go forward and slowly depress on the pedal to make it go—it does.  My previous belief is affirmed by experience, and my faith in my teacher grows.  I soon recognize that pressing harder on the pedal makes it go faster, letting off the pedal makes it slow down, and depressing the other pedal makes it stop more quickly. 

Now my teacher asks me to stop to explain something very important to me.  He explains that there is a belt that I should strap across myself to protect me in case I accidentally run into something or turn over the house on wheels.  This seems impossible.  How could I damage such an incredible thing?—It seems so big, and so strong, and so solid.  But my newfound faith in the teacher, continually affirmed through experience, convinces me he is telling the truth, and I follow with obedience—on faith. 

After a short joyride, I park the vehicle and exit.  I thank the man, and he drives off into the sunset.  After he leaves, some of my thoughts continue to dwell on the moving house. 

Where did it come from?  Was it made?  I’ve never seen anything like it before, so I assume it had to be made, but who could make such a thing?  It must be incredibly complex, and the designer must be incredibly smart and powerful to be able to shape such materials and assemble them?  How does it run? 

I return to my tribe and try to describe it—they all laugh and scorn me as crazy, but I know what I experienced. 

Have you thought about cars like this before?  Do you know how they work?  Most of us know they have engines.  Most of us know that little explosions in that engine somehow turn something that makes our wheels turn, but many of us know little more than this.   And who of us knows who made our car?  Sure, we know what manufacturer made it, but we don’t know the name of the person who designed it.  We don’t know the name of the person who built the first concept version, or the name of the individuals who built our specific car (or even whether it was a person or robot who did the work). 

With what little we know about cars and what little we know about who was involved in the process of designing it and building it we sure have a lot of faith in them.  We have faith that the designer had some degree or training qualifying him in understanding the physics necessary to design a car that does what a car does safely.  We have faith that the designer has had some experience successfully designing safe cars for the road.   We have faith that the designer knows how to design a car that can not only start moving but also stop moving. 

We have faith that the car manufacturer has faith in the designer.  We have faith that the car manufacturer performed adequate testing on our model of car (and sometimes this faith is misplaced).  We have faith that the car manufacturer inspects our cars before letting them get out on the road, and we have faith that the government or someone keeps them accountable to do so.  We have faith that the people who assembled our vehicles had proper training and take their work seriously (not ending up as I do in assembly products wondering why I have three screws left over). 

We have faith in all the exact same things about the tire manufacturer—that they know tires and know friction and know chemistry and know about rain and ice and snow.  We have faith in those who formulate the oils and gasoline that we put in our cars—that they know what they are doing and aren’t selling us a product that is either going to destroy the insides of our car or cause it to blow up with us in it.  We have faith in the battery makers that they make batteries that don’t melt down and cause our car to fill up with fumes causing us to die of inhaling some toxic gas. 

We have faith that when we turn the key, the car won’t blow up.  We have faith that when we push on the gas, the car won’t speed up uncontrollably until we crash into some inanimate object.  We have faith that when we press on the brake it’s going to cause us to slow down or stop.  We have faith that there are airbags in our steering wheels even though we can’t see them.  We have faith that our seatbelts really do provide more safety than they cause harm.  We have faith that our child’s rear-facing car seats really are safer than the old ones.  We have faith that lightning striking our metal car in a rainstorm won’t affect us.  We have faith that when we turn the dial on our radio that it won’t electrocute us.   I could go on and on and on.  The point is, we have a lot of faith. 

Where does it come from—all the faith?   Some of it comes from someone we trust telling us what will happen in a given situation.  Some of it comes from personal experience.  Some of it comes from blindly trusting a commercial. 

What’s ironic is that in spite of the accidents we see on the road and the recalls we hear about on the news, we still maintain our faith in cars.  In spite of the fact that you are more likely to die in a car accident than in an airplane, we still drive more than we fly.  In spite of the occasional poor design of a new model that causes hundreds of accidents and deaths we still have faith. 

Not only do we still have faith, but we seldom question the safety or the character of all automobile manufacturers—even though at one point or another they’ve all delivered a death trap.  We seldom assume that it was intentional.  We usually assume it was just some unavoidable malfunction.  We assume that they’ll fix the problem and take responsibility—we have faith in them to do so.  And when there’s a 50 car pileup on the interstate due to someone’s carelessness or drunk driving, we don’t blame the car manufacturer—we blame the driver or call it, ironically enough, an “act-of-God.” 

With all this faith in such a typical, simple piece of technology, why is it so difficult to have faith in a creator?  Why does He have to play by different rules?  All of our doubts, all of our questions, all of the arguments—they are no bigger or different than with a car.   Everyone has faith, some just refuse to acknowledge it.  

Seeing is NOT believing—I don’t see what goes on under my hood when I turn the ignition key, but I believe it all works as they tell me.