My youngest daughter is doing her persuasive speech for her college class on ‘whether we did or did not go to the moon.’ Furthermore, she asked me to help her with the research required on the project, and so I did. Being of a technical nature and also as a father, I did not mind the work, despite it being a topic which I considered frivolous at best. But that’s just me.
Ah, these Generation-Y kids these days; they think they know it all. Do tell.
I was out in the yard on a tepid summer day back in 1969, playing army with my little brother. Mom and dad were working and my grandmother had been called from the bull-pen to take care of us while they were away. All things considered as such, it was a normal afternoon. Just about the time we were ‘dug in’ and deep in our preparation for assaulting the dirty Germans in one final, desperate battle, Granny called out to us from the back door. We came into the house and watched as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, the grainy television footage interspersed with his famous comment, “That’s one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” It should have been a major moment in our lives, yet it was something easily dismissed by two young boys as we returned to the back yard to complete our conquest of the Huns. Things have a tendency to be like that when you are six and three, respectively.
Over the next few years there were several landings on the moon as the NASA program consolidated their hold on the title of Winners of the Moon Race against the dreaded Soviets. I understood things better by the time the latter missions were performed, and became quite a fan of all things Apollo. I had the books and periodicals; I had the plastic models and glossy pictures of my space heroes hanging on the wall in my room. A not-so-well hidden dream of mine was to one day be an astronaut in my own right, and to repeat Armstrong’s feat by becoming the first American to set foot on say - Mars, maybe? Hope springs eternal when you are young and life is ahead of you, waiting for its chance to be written.
Years passed and I grew old, and find myself where I am today. I never made it to Mars, but it’s just as well for all of us. I studied a lot of science in pursuit of my career as an engineer, but strangely enough, very little about the space program or NASA in general. This may appear rather odd when taken in the context of my former electronics career in the military and the fact that I have lived most of my adult life in close proximity to the Stennis Space Center. I never gave it much thought, accepting space exploration and the moon for what it was: something that happened a long time ago and was spuriously being continued, events returning to the evening news forefront only on those rare occasions when a Shuttle flight sadly ended in disaster.
In pouring over data for my daughter’s speech, I will admit that there is compelling evidence for the contrary opinion she posits in her speech. It is no longer, “she is young, she wasn’t there" as I perceived when I began the research. And it causes me to doubt not a little the things I used to take for granted. My faith in those high-strung heroes of yesteryear, with names like Aldrin, Scott, (even Armstrong) and of a program that brought glory and fame to our nation has been called into question by my heart. A little, anyway. The strong intimations from a host of perceptive critics, using arguments on everything from blast zones to photographic anomalies have forced me to re-examine the things I used to hold on to as dear. How can a faith (or at least an honest belief) be so easily shaken? What do you do when the known things you once considered as truth begin to unravel? (In the back of my mind, the strains of REM’s Man on the Moon are still blaring from the radio back in the early 90’s)(Just saying)
By the same token, for centuries data from even more ‘perceptive’ critics has also piled up in an effort to downplay the role of G_d, not only in our world but in our individual lives as well. Those pundits come and go, albeit with a seemingly endless supply of logic to affirm their findings. Science begins a cycle that first disproves and then, a victim of its own theoretical evidence, by fact only re-proves the existence of G_d. It is the proverbial Holy Grail of evolutionists and atheists alike; to eliminate the Creator and in so doing, to nullify the laws and morals that are recorded in His Word. Though at face value some of their arguments may appear compelling, the truth of the matter is always going to be the truth that is recorded in the Word. The Psalmist writes: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” I choose to believe, for that is my faith. It is what I am and what I have been called to be.
And though I may never know the truth behind the lunar landings, by faith I know there are yet far more important truths for me to believe in.
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