The 37 Consecutive Miracles that Produced America

(Written September 21, 2012)

A few years ago, I recall that a rocket scientist was asked about a particularly complex technology that had recently been successfully tested.  The scientist (I cannot remember the exact context) replied that for the technology to work, it required “thirty-seven consecutive miracles.”

He was not referring to religion, but to the fact that so many things could go wrong (see Murphy’s Law) that in order to achieve success, every last detail had to go exactly right, at exactly the right time, and in exactly the right sequence.  Otherwise, the testing would be a catastrophic failure.

Another example in which absolutely everything had to go exactly right, at exactly the right time, is the formation of the planet earth, as it is described by modern science.  From the moment of the creation of the universe, many thousands of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle (so to speak) had to fall in exactly the right places, in order for the universe to form our earth.  And that was only the beginning of a long and complex series of events that are so unlikely, that many people believe they were orchestrated by God.

And even there, we are not finished.  If one believes that the universe is a giant pinball machine where events crash about for no specific purpose, then no matter how unlikely something is, the mere fact that it did occur is sufficient, and therefore, no meaning or purpose is necessary to explain it.

But human nature is centered around purpose.  That purpose may be rudimentary, such as the gathering of food.  However, for most of us, we believe in what is referred to as a “higher purpose,” even a divine one.

When one traces human history, one is amazed at how many consecutive miracles it took for America to form as a nation.  Had any one of them gone wrong, we might be a China or an Arabia, with little or no regard for the values we cherish.

Those miracles range from the Greek victory at Thermopylae, to the Magna Carta, to the rise of Christian teachings of human rights, and to seemingly every minute detail of science, technology and even the vagaries of weather which sank the Spanish Armada.  Change but one of these many events of history, and the rise of the American Republic may well never have happened.

Yet they did happen, and they are evidence of divine guidance in human affairs, a guidance which brought to the world a nation that has been a beacon of human rights to all nations.

But suddenly, something has gone wrong, terribly wrong.  The core ideals upon which America was founded are being abandoned, undermined, and replaced with their antitheses.

We once were a nation founded upon the idea that the government is answerable to the people, that it must protect our freedoms, and that its powers are limited and specific.

Today, we see instead a government that hides behind closed doors, passes laws without having read them, and continually expands its powers in violation of the Constitution.

We have been down this road once before, when during the Jimmy Carter administration matters went terribly wrong.  But then we recovered.  We elected the right man at the right time, and President Ronald Reagan led the nation from the brink of disaster to an era of prosperity.  It seemed to many at the time that divine intervention had once more bestowed upon us thirty-seven consecutive miracles.

But matters have again brought us to the brink of ruin.  A president who shows no respect for the ideals of limited government, a government restricted to its enumerated powers, is running amok.  He has increased the national debt to the level of bankruptcy.  He openly declares that he will pass his agenda with or without the cooperation of Congress, as if he alone decided the national agenda, as if he were not president, but dictator.

If the universe we live in has no plan or purpose, if there is no Creator from whom we derive our rights, then America may well go the way of the dinosaurs.  Some future eternal nightfall may be barren of any memory of the Declaration of Independence, devoid of the ideals embodied in the Constitution.

But if there is a God, then let us look forward to the next thirty-seven miracles, each of them occurring at the right time, in the right place, in exactly the right sequence, to effect a resurrection of a nation that is foundering upon the jagged rocks of ruin.

It took miracles to produce this great nation.  It will take miracles to restore it.  Thirty-seven of them would be a good start.

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