How This Tale of a Trip Down Israel's Route 60 Can Help You Think about America's Founding

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In a few days, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In its famous and noble words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We are indebted to the Jewish and Christian writers of the Bible for these truths. They were certainly not self-evident to other cultures of that time. 

With that in mind, I want to recommend to you the 2023 movie Route 60: The Biblical Highway, with David Friedman, U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the first Trump administration, and Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State during that term. You can watch it now for free on Amazon Prime.

For the movie, Friedman and Pompeo followed modern Israel’s Route 60 from Nazareth (pictured at the top) to Beersheba, stopping at many important Biblical sites and commenting on Jewish and Christian history along the way. Occasionally, Pompeo, a Christian, and Friedman, who is Jewish, venture into U.S. politics, sometimes expressing concern that we are drifting away from the Judeo-Christian roots of our nation. 

For example, at one point, Friedman says:

What would America be like without its history, without its founders, without the great monuments…without all the great leaders and all the great thoughts that animated our nation? If we lost all that, if we became untethered from that, and I sometimes fear we are, what do we stand for as a nation? Well, it’s the same thing here, the only difference is it’s another 4,000 years! …If we become untethered from these sites, from these values, from these leaders, from the wisdom of God that accompanies this, we do lose our place as a great nation, I fear.

In Jerusalem, standing beside a plaque designating the place of the ancient City of David, Friedman comments:

We have our Declaration of Independence; it was a revolutionary document. Our founding fathers determined for the first time that human rights come from God. Every human being is endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator, right? And that changed the world. I’m convinced that’s the bedrock of what made America a great country. How did our forefathers know what human rights were unalienable? …Well, those rights all find their source in the Old Testament, and where was the word of God given for mankind? Right here. …So, I’ve said, the City of David is an American heritage site. ...America has many places that recall the start of our nation: Valley Forge, Plymouth Rock, Gettysburg. ...But the spiritual bedrock of America comes from Jerusalem.

As they travel down Route 60, Pompeo and Friedman trace the Jewish people's journey in their search for God. But as we look at the history of Israel’s gift of monotheism to the world, and the history of religion in general, many of us may wonder: why do we have to search for God? Religion is often a frustrating and confusing road because there are so many differing views, and we can never be certain of our conclusions. So, it is easy to understand why so many have wandered off this road and given up the search for God, looking to science instead for answers to the ultimate questions.

But this is where it is so important to know that, contrary to the narrative promoted by so many in the popular media, science is not close to explaining how we got here without design and is in fact pointing back to God — starting to recognize what has long been obvious to the layman. 

Another recent movie, The Story of Everything, is based on Stephen Meyer’s 2021 bestseller Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. It’s a good place to start if you want to see the scientific evidence for design. Among the long list of formal endorsements of this book by distinguished scientists is one by physics Nobel Prize-winner Brian Josephson, who writes, “This book makes it clear that far from being an unscientific claim, intelligent design is valid science.” 

Meanwhile, a new book by John West, Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America's Soul, places the science of design squarely in an American context, that of the founding of the United States as an independent nation from Britain. That science, he explains, undergirds the “unalienable Rights” guaranteed by the Declaration, as the founders sensed in their own day. 

And, as dramatized in this short video, perhaps the strongest argument for intelligent design is to simply think about what you have to believe to not believe in design.

Intelligent design cannot tell us if the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim view of God is correct. And Pompeo and Friedman do not debate their differences; they only emphasize the common ground shared by these Abrahamic faiths. But it does tell us that, however tempting it may be to give up the search for God, there are no answers to the ultimate questions without Him. So keep searching, and Route 60 might even convince you that the ancient Jews were on the right road and that we are fortunate that our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values.

Photo Credit: ©TBN, used with permission. 

Granville Sewell is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso and the author most recently of Christianity for Doubters.