That could never happen

This week's yummy bible morsel is Luke 1:8-18:

Once when Zechariah's division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years."

Zechariah is like the guy who is watching a zombie movie and is like "That could never happen! That shotgun only holds six rounds, and he just fired eight! This movie is so unrealistic!" Dude. Zombies could never happen either, but that never slowed you down. Zechariah is talking to a kind of freaky sci-fi creature, larger than life and probably glowing in some terrible fashion, and this creature knows his name, knows his wife's situation, and has a message from God about what's going to happen. Zechariah has no problem with any of this, until the conversation strays into obstetrics, at which point he's like "Wait a minute. I believe all that other stuff, but there's no way my wife could get pregnant."

Why do we have such absolute faith in useless wrong crap, but very little in things which are actually true? We believe unwaveringly that our political party has all of the answers and that the other one is only full of uneducated rubes or evil communists bent on world domination, and that we and the TV/radio personalities that tell us this are the only ones to see clearly on the subject. We believe that we can actually be chased down by attractive members of the opposite sex merely by spraying a certain scent on ourselves or buying/drinking a certain brand of beer. We believe whatever the computer tells us, no matter how absurd, and if it turns out not to be true, it's some nerd's fault. But if God tells us something, or even suggests that he might exist for real, we start asking all kinds of questions. Why?

I don't have an answer for you. (Even if I did, why would you believe me? I'm just the nerd in the computer, trying to spread God's word, not some official TV guy in an expensive pair of pants nobody can see, or some flashy thirty second blurb with its own theme song.) Still, I think the first step is acknowledging that we don't always trust in the right things, and don't always put our confidence where confidence is due. Zechariah trusted God enough to serve in the temple, but not enough to put aside his bad science. (Any science that doesn't acknowledge God's override button is bad science.) We're bound to find ourselves in similar situations, where our foolish thinking is exposed. Lets hope we don't get stricken dumb to shut us up about it, like poor Zechariah was.

The best place to start is by trusting God. Do you know you're supposed to do something or go someplace? Then do it or go there! Do you know you're not supposed to do something? Then don't do it! Don't try to reason your way out of it like Zechariah did. Why even believe in God if you're not going to trust what he says? That's silly! If we're going to be comfortable knowing the supreme being and creator of the universe, and we have no problem with the idea that God can talk to us, is it really that much of a stretch to believe the rest?