In God We Don't Trust. A look at the founding of America in the light of Jesus' teachings. Written by David Bercot. Narrated by Benjamin Goode. Chapter 1: What It Means to Trust. It happened at exactly 3:55 p.m. I know because I was looking right at the clock when it happened. At first, I thought it was a large truck driving by the building we were in, because the whole building began to shake. Then I realized it was an earthquake, a mighty one. My family and I hurried out of the building into the parking lot.
Utility poles came crashing to the ground, people screamed, and fissures opened in the streets. Then in a few minutes it was all over. The year was 1991, and my family and I were in San Jose, Costa Rica. We didn't know it, but in the next 48 hours we were going to be given a sobering lesson on what it means to trust. We spent that night without electricity, and the next morning we decided to escape the chaos of the city and drive to the nearby coast. To reach the coast, we had to cross a mountain range.
As we drove through the verdant, forest-laden mountains, we noticed several rock slides from the earthquake, which in some places had destroyed part of the road. In other places, large boulders blocked one lane of the road. This highway clung to the edge of the mountains, bounded by a sharp precipice, yet it had few guardrails. I warned the family that we needed to return long before night because I didn't want to drive on that precarious road in the dark.
We spent several hours at a beautiful, unspoiled Costa Rican beach, yet the whole time I found it impossible to relax, for I kept worrying about the drive back over the mountains. I dreaded any possibility of crossing the mountains in the dark. So shortly after noon, I told the family we needed to head back to San Jose. This would enable us to cross the mountains long before nightfall, or so I thought. When we reached the foot of the mountains, I discovered to my dismay that the police had blocked the road.
We sat in the tropical heat for over an hour while I nervously kept looking at my watch. Cars began piling up behind us. I finally exclaimed to the family, "What on earth is going on?" I then got out of the car and in my limited Spanish asked one of the policemen what the delay was about. He told me that a few hours before there had been some aftershocks that caused several rock slides in the mountains. He explained that a whole section of the highway in the mountains had been blocked by boulders and debris.
In fact, he said, a crew of workers is up there right now clearing the road. So we continued to wait anxiously. Another long hour passed. Then another. I was getting edgy because it was now getting close to sunset. Finally, the police gave us permission to proceed. But we had driven only a short distance in the mountains when the sun set. In the tropics, twilight is very brief, so before I knew it, I was driving in inky blackness. I slowed down, and we prayed as a family.
I knew that if we missed just one of the many twists and turns of the torturous road, our car would go hurtling over the precipice to certain death for all of us, including our one-year-old baby. So we crept along in the darkness. Then the clouds descended on the mountain. We were now enveloped in such a thick gloom that staying on the road seemed impossible. My hands were glued to the steering wheel as I hunched over it, straining to see the road through the dark gloom.
There were no places to pull over, or I would have done so. Stopping in the middle of the road or trying to turn around weren't options because one of the vehicles behind us would likely plow into us. So we inched along at barely five miles an hour. I realized that it would likely take us the entire night to get through the mountains at the pace we were going, but I had no other choice. Yet what if I dozed, even for just two or three seconds? We could easily miss a turn and end up going off the mountain.
I was startled out of my thoughts when a truck suddenly passed us and disappeared into the gloom. I thought to myself that it must be nice to have his powerful lights and his high-driving perch. Sometime later, a Jeep with fog lights passed us, and it also quickly vanished in the clouds. I told the family that I was going to get on the tail of the next vehicle that passed us and follow it out of the mountains. Before long, we got our chance.
A tanker truck zoomed by us, and I immediately bore down on the accelerator in order not to lose him. "This is it," I blurted out to the family. "I'm staying with him no matter what. If he goes off the mountain, we'll go off as well." The truck was traveling much faster than I wanted to go. It probably was only going about 40 miles per hour, but in that gloom it seemed like 200 miles per hour.
Sometimes on the curves I could see the road ahead of him, lit up by his powerful lights, but most of the time I was just following his tail lights, trusting that he could see where he was driving. "He's a professional truck driver," I kept reassuring myself. "He's not driving any faster than he can safely travel. Besides, he's probably driven this road at night in the clouds many times before. I will put my total trust in him. Hopefully, God has sent him as the answer to our prayers." My trust was not misplaced.
After what seemed an eternity, we finally emerged out of the clouds into the valley where San Jose lies. The road now broadened into a four-lane highway. When we eventually came up to a stoplight, I pulled our car alongside the truck, and my family and I all began waving and gesturing jubilantly at the driver. I'm not sure if he saw us. If he did, it's doubtful that he knew what we were waving about. "Crazy norteamericanos," he probably thought to himself.
But we were so thankful to him for leading us safely out of the mountains. That night I learned a lot about total trust. I learned what it feels like to place one's life and family into the hands of another. Yet I realized that I don't always have that same level of trust in God. It's odd, isn't it, that we will often place our complete trust in another fallible human who may well fail us? But we often hesitate to place our complete trust in our infallible God, who will never fail us.
What does complete trust in God look like? Total trust in God is a young man armed with only a sling standing in front of a formidable giant. It's a band of 300 men following Gideon as they attacked a vastly larger army of Midianites. It's a Syrian officer washing himself in the Jordan River because a prophet told him it would cure his leprosy. Trust in God is a Roman centurion saying, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word, and my servant will be healed." Matthew 8:8.
It's a band of first-century men and women declaring to the world that a man who died a criminal's death on a cross is actually the divine Son of God. Trust is the defenseless church of the early Christians confronting the mightiest empire the world had ever known and defeating it with faith alone. But trust is also something else. Trust means obedience. For the past 500 years, Christians have argued about the role of faith and works in the experience of salvation.
But most of the discussions have been pointless because so many Christians have a wrong understanding of what faith is in the first place. The 11th chapter of Hebrews is sometimes referred to as the Faith chapter because the entire chapter focuses on the meaning of faith. Instead of giving a lengthy theological explanation of faith, the writer defines faith by illustrating what faith causes people to do. In verse 8, he writes, "By faith Abraham obeyed." Hebrews 11:8. Genuine faith leads people to obey God.
When we deliberately refuse to obey God, it shows we don't have faith in the first place. That's why the Scriptures tell us that faith without works is dead. James 2:26. When situations look tough, we need to ask ourselves these questions: Do we really believe that Jesus knows what's best for us? Do we truly believe that Jesus had our best interests at heart when he gave us his commandments? Do we truly believe that if we do things God's way, everything will ultimately work out for the best?
Did the founders of America trust in God? One writer has described the American Revolution as the most sacred event in United States history. Millions of American Christians look upon many of the original American settlers, such as the Pilgrims and Puritans, as the epitome of godliness. They hold up the key figures in the American Revolution as the embodiment of all that is noble and holy. Looking at the colonists and revolutionists from a purely human standpoint, we find many brave and unselfish men and women.
We find many wise and noble figures. However, in this book, we're going to do something different. We're not going to look at the colonists from a human standpoint. We're going to be looking at them in the light of the kingdom teachings of Jesus. Did the colonists obey Jesus? Did they truly trust in God, or did they pay God mere lip service? Were they strangers and pilgrims on the earth, seeking an eternal homeland? Hebrews 11:13-14. Or was their real homeland their earthly country?
Why This Matters This is not a mere matter of past events. What happened in colonial and revolutionary America has become part of American Christian saga, the collective memory of American Christians that gets passed from generation to generation. What happened in the past is also pivotal for examining future issues. What does it teach us about resolving problems? When issues arise, do we immediately reach for our guns, or do we work through such issues in a manner worthy of the prince of peace?
If we hold up men and women who didn't trust in God as examples to our children, how then are we going to teach our children to trust in God? In the pages that follow, I will be pointing out many situations in which our forefathers failed to trust in God. But please don't imagine that I'm some anti-American, left-wing secularist. I'm very conservative spiritually, economically, and socially. I believe in the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, and I count it a privilege to be an American citizen.
However, the point is this: if we cover over and glorify the sins of our forefathers, then we and our children are never going to learn to truly trust in God. Rather, we'll imagine that as long as we put "in God we trust" on our coins, we're on the right track. Several decades ago, a pastor teamed up with a Christian author to write a book entitled The Light and the Glory. That book glorifies virtually everything the colonists and revolutionists did.
Interestingly, though, the authors write, "If God did intend this land to be a new Israel, then each major step in the implementation of this plan would have to conform with his righteousness. No holy end, no matter how sublime, could ever justify unholy means." I totally agree with the authors as to that last statement. But were the colonists' means holy? As I'm about to show you, they definitely were not.