Bandwagon

There's a big criticism going around with people jumping on bandwagons without knowing all the facts.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, though.  It's what people do.  Because people are social creatures, we hop on bandwagons as some weird survival mechanism.

But enough about the science-y part of why we do this.  Let's just focus on the fact that we do it.  We believe what society tells us and we do what society does.

xkcd.com has a blog in his 'what if' section about people jumping off a bridge.  If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?  Parents ask their kids expecting a 'no' but in all honesty, if you really were on that bridge and all your friends really did jump off, the obvious answer is yes.  It's more likely that there is a reason behind why everyone is jumping off that bridge and it is probably the best idea to jump with them.  It is less likely that everyone around you is suddenly going insane all at the same time and you're the only one not going crazy.

Have you noticed that almost every single part of your life is based purely on witness testimony?  You go to a doctor and he tells you that you need surgery.  You're risking your life based on his word and probably words of his friends or colleagues.  You don't know if he really is a doctor.  That again is based on his word and pieces of paper that he could have possibly forged.  If you go to his superior, his boss will tell you that he really is a doctor, but that belief that the boss has is yet again, based on just more testimonials.  You have never been to medical school with him.  You have not seen him perform surgery on others.  He will tell you that he is a good doctor, but you only believe what he says because not believing would result in your possible death or at least inability to function as a normal human being in your society.

You can go to your mechanic because your car needs repairs.  The mechanic tells you that he needs to replace some parts of your car and charges you for it.  He tells you that you can come back in a couple days when it's done.  What makes you believe him?  You're paying a lot of money based on just what one person is telling you.  You can ask his boss and his coworkers about him, but then we have the same doctor situation as I stated above.  You don't know anything about cars, so you can't guess if he's lying or telling the truth.  It's not like you can learn to fix the car yourself.  You're trusting that the mechanic is not cheating you, based purely on testimony.

Trusting the people around us, whether we know them or not, is a natural human instinct.  It helps us survive in the world around us and helps us get along with others.  If you never trust others based on their testimonies unless you have real 'scientific' proof, society will send you to an asylum and deem you paranoid.

Yet when it comes to anything having to do with God, why is this unnatural paranoia so common and so accepted?  If your friend that you've known and trusted for all your life came to know Jesus and told you about Him, all of a sudden that trust disappears without a cause or reason.  It's unnatural and abnormal.

In courts, witness testimony is what a lot of sentences are based on.  Although it has been proven that witness testimonies are not always accurate, scientific proof is not something that can always be obtained.  So despite the possible inaccuracies of witness testimonies, sentences that can change a person's life is often based on what witnesses have to say.  The more witnesses you have on your side, the better.

Yet when we Christians witness to others, why is it that God is the only thing we can say that they do not believe?  During the days after Christ's death and resurrection, there were thousands of eye witnesses, yet people still did not believe.  The Bible itself is a compilation of testimonials that people can read whenever they want, yet they still do not believe.  Although Christians of today have not actually seen Jesus with our eyes, we have heard Him with our ears and felt him in our hearts.  We trust these senses because we trust our senses when it comes to everything else.

So not believing in God and not believing in Jesus is not okay.  It's not smart, it's not scientific, it's not obvious.  The obvious, the natural choice is to believe.  There's no reason not to.