What if…

 A thought against all thought.  What if a group of people who all believed the same thing about how to grow the best crops were all of a sudden stricken with disease.  This disease did not kill, but it made some people unable to work for long periods of time. The best solution is to have the group of sick leave the society with a few strong people and they go on their merry way.  This same process reoccurs over and over again until the whole planet is settled and everyone is still surviving.  How would things look?  Would each group still be growing crops the same way?  Would some groups even still be growing crops?  Maybe there would be:

1. Traditional crop growers

2. Crop growers who grow half as well as the traditional

3. Those that hunt now and no longer grow crops

4.  Nontraditional crop growers

5.  Cannibals

Why do I bring up this silly hypothetical scenario?  Let’s look at religion.  What would happen if there really was a world wide flood?   

If the remaining group of people repopulated the area they survived in?  If there really was a Tower of Babel event

  

where everyone was scattered over the earth because their language was confused?  Would these “new” people groups recall their heritage?  Would some groups lose their history?  Would some groups forget some of their history due to the harsh living conditions they may be in now?

Did you know that the Aborigines of Australia have a very similar account of the creation of the world?  When a missionary first presented them the book of Genesis, they were astounded that this “outsider” had “their” story, yet it was more complete.  There are flood accounts in many, many ancient cultures throughout the world.  There are accounts of languages being confused in several cultures.  Can this be dismissed?  Could it actually make sense?  Was it all just a matter of chance?  Do language similarities mean we came from one original group of people or not?  Did God really set the record straight with the inspired writing of Genesis?  I don’t think these thoughts can be dismissed so easily.

Flood accounts: Click here

Confused language accounts: Scroll halfway down article to italics. Click here

Interesting tidbits:

Of the flood traditions which have survived up to the present time, about 95% describe a global cataclysmic deluge, 88% tell of a favored family of humans saved from drowning to reestablish the human race after the deluge, 66% say the family was forewarned of the coming cataclysm, 66% blame the wickedness of man for the deluge, and 70% record a boat as being the means by which the chosen family (and animals) survived the flood. More than one third of these traditions mention birds being sent out from the boat.

 I find this stuff pretty cool.  Why wasn’t this stuff mentioned in Sunday School?

~Jeff