P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

RANDOM ROCKS AT RUSHMORE

Today, in sympathetic tribute to all of you who are sometimes tempted to drop your laptop computers out of an airplane at 37,000 feet, we share a few hard-luck stories. Amazingly, we were able to download these off the Internet, after only a few reboots.

An irate customer called the hotline complaining about software not working. The man at the 800 number told her to mail in a copy of her defective diskettes. Sure enough, a few days later, the corporate office received a letter from the lady – and it did contain Xeroxed copies of all those faulty floppies.

A man with a Dell he didn’t like very much called in to vent some steam about how his computer wouldn’t fax anything. It turns out he had been holding a sheet of paper against the screen and vainly hitting the “send” button over and over. (Actually, I’ve tried that myself, and for some reason, don’t ever seem to get an answer.)

Another dissatisfied customer howled into the phone that her new computer wouldn’t power up, even though she had hit the neat little foot pedal a great number of times. Turns out the “foot pedal” was actually the computer mouse.

The crowning story was where the guy from Dell suggested to the flummoxed customer: “Mister, what you really need is to go to your local Egghead.” “I’ve got several of those,” the angry man replied. When told that “Egghead” was the name of a popular local computer store, the client blushed and admitted: “Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of computer geeks.”

Well, friend, you’ve got to be thinking that this is a very strange way to lead into our Tuesday topic, when on Monday we were on a Disney World park bench with Dave Mulholland and his daughter, Katy, talking about creation vs. evolution. How’d we get over to Circuit City and Dell Computer’s customer service center over in Bangalore, India instead?

Here’s how. Even if your new laptop computer is an absolute mystery to you – and you have no idea how the built-in CD burner and 64-gig hard drive operate – you know that this little black machine is a designed item. Somebody thought it up. Somebody researched it. Somebody went to the drawing board and figured out how to get RAM and ROM and a screen and a keyboard and all the pre-loaded software into that amazing little toy.

And you know, that’s what this dad sitting there on a bench at Disney World tried to explain to his daughter, Katy, between bites of ice cream. “It’s an immutable law of the universe, honey: everything that is designed has a designer.”

You know, if you get tired of all the rides and exhibits at Disney World and Epcot Center, and decide to take a spin out on the I-90 Interstate running through South Dakota, there’s going to come a moment when you look up and see the heads of four U.S. Presidents carved out in the granite. Have you ever done that? It’s a thrilling sight. And you know, nobody with a brain says to their family: “Oh, look, kids, at what the wind and the rain and the snow and the eons of time and the ‘glacial erosion’ of drip-drip-drip caused to show up. Cool! There’s Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson and Roosevelt all by blind luck!” No way do you say that. You know that an architect named John G. Borglum came by with a pretty big rock hammer and a designer’s vision and the willingness to painstakingly birth the dream in his mind’s eye.

Maybe you’ve heard this illustration, which dates back a good 200 years to an English theologian named William Paley. He poses the issue this way: If you’re walking along a beach and suddenly you bend over and pick up a beautiful watch, ticking away and keeping good time, you don’t say to yourself: “Amazing what the waves and the pounding surf and the tug of the tides will fling together if you just let enough centuries go by! A really nice watch that says Rolex on it! Thank you very much, currents and crawfish. I think I’ll keep this.” No, if you’re smart, you’ll take out your Bible, right there on the beach, and read from Isaiah 40:26:

“Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing.”

In his book, How Now Shall We Live?, Chuck Colson, along with Nancy Pearcey, suggest that a thinking person who looks at the vast expanse of ocean or the four stately images there on Rushmore should be able to figure out this truth about all designs having a designer. They quote from Romans 1:20:

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

And here’s their conclusion:

“Paul teaches that those who look honestly at the world around them should be able to conclude that it was created by an intelligent Being.”

You know, what an increasing number of scientists are now conceding is a valid field of study, “ID,” or “Intelligent Design,” is even more true as this dad at Disney World talks to Katy about the fact that he IS her dad. I mean, having a child – you talk about design! When one egg and one sperm get together – just two tiny cells – and I assume this father was there when that happened. And then for nine months, those cells multiply and divide, turning into all the right clusters of more cells, organs, blood, lungs, heart, brain, skin, entire systems. And then after those nine months, and I’m sure Dave Mulholland is there for that too, right there in the delivery room, he and his wife are Lamaze-breathing like crazy, hyperventilating, pushing, counting down to the big moment. And then, all at once, you see this new little life emerge. A tiny little HUMAN BEING comes into this world. And it has a face! How did two cells turn into a little scrunched-up face? And there are two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a very noisy little mouth and vocal cords. And within 15 minutes Daddy’s giving her a bath and even having to already change a diaper, so those functions are working too. And he says to himself: “This is a designed miracle. This child is fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are the works of God!” (That’s Psalm 139:14.) In fact, this concerned-but-still-proud papa, Dave Mulholland, said to his daughter as they sat there eating their overpriced Disney ice cream bars: “Honey, everything I know about the universe, including my incredibly beautiful daughter, indicates to me that somebody designed it. Created it.”

This “ID” concept, “Intelligent Design,” by the way, is something many branches of science are conceding now and even using. How about in forensic science? This same writing team, Colson and Pearcey, observe:

“When police find a body, their first question is, Was this death the result of natural causes or foul play (an intentional act by an intelligent being)? Pathologists perform a battery of fairly straightforward tests to get an answer.”

It seems like there are about 900 various versions and permutations and, of course, reruns on TNT, of the Law & Order genre, but if you watch the “CI” edition – which I guess is for “criminal intent” – you see this Detective Goren, who looks in the carpeting for clues and who sees a little thread of this over here, a bit of fluff over there, a computer hard drive that’s been tampered with, phone logs that don’t look quite right . . . and he’s looking for exactly what the title says: intent. Some person behind the evidence. Did the victim just slip and fall, or were they pushed?

We’re going to think tomorrow about what we call “worldview” – that over-arching, “big picture” conviction inside a man or woman’s heart about how this universe came to be here, and what our small part in it might be. But in this very helpful book by Chuck Colson, he finally gives this testimony:

“The Christian worldview [tells] us we were created by a transcendent God who loves us and has a purpose for us.” And notice this: “Nature itself is covered with His ‘fingerprints,’ marks of PURPOSE in every area of scientific investigation.”

I think it’s a wonderful spiritual breakthrough when a man or woman finally looks beyond the limited horizon of their own little world and begins to see – begins to DETERMINE to see – the fingerprints of God. I know there are many, many couples who wait the nine months and go into the delivery room, see that scrunched-up little face make its miraculous debut . . . and they don’t see beyond a romantic evening of fantasy and flowers nine months before. Babies get here because of what it says in the biology textbook and the sex ed curriculum. And they simply don’t SEE that their own baby having ten unique little fingerprints shouts at us: “God’s fingerprints were here first! You didn’t make this new life; God did! Wake up and smell the coffee.”

Again I say: what a wonderful spiritual breakthrough when people begin to finally say: “Now I see it. Everything created must have a Creator . . . and I would like to get to know MY Creator.”

Friend, your being here is no accident. And when you meet up with your God, that’s no accident either. This very moment might be your personal miracle.