Thinking about Miracles and the Like

One of the things I do regularly in my church life is interact with the children.  This year, in fact, I have taken up the task of teaching the young ones on Wednesday evenings.  These are some of the most fun times of the week, and I love seeing the joy that they have as they hear the Bible stories, and as we do related activities to what we hear from the pages of God's story.

Tonight, we talked a little bit about Jesus' miracle of healing the man born blind, from John 9.  One of the things that I enjoy seeing in the kids is how they can easily be engaged with thinking about things from the perspective of the people in the Bible.  Tonight, we thought for a bit about what it means to be able to see.  We tried different things, like walking without being able to see, being directed by others, and talked about the challenges of doing such things.  We also talked about how it would be to receive such a miracle from the hand of Jesus, just like this man did.

While the kids may not fully appreciate the miracle actions of Jesus (or any of the rest of us, as I think about it), the reality that Jesus did miracles still strikes me sometimes.  The best way I have heard it described is by one of my former professors.  He said that the miracles of Jesus are kind of like a sampler pack of chocolates that you might buy if you wanted to see what the store had to offer.  It's not the full selection, but gives you an idea of what is there.  In a way, the miracles that we read about in the Bible are kind of like: samples of the great things that lie ahead.

I know that there are many different thoughts on the miracles of the Bible, and even the ongoing miracles that still happen.  The thing I always come back to is a simple one.  What is the point of God doing a miracle?  Is it to show people that He is powerful?  I hardly think God needs to flex His muscles for others to admire.  Is it to simply show that He can?  Well, Jesus Himself said that people wouldn't believe, even if someone came back from the dead, and we see that this is really the case. 

So what would the purpose of a miracle be, then?  That's where I go back to thinking about the specific time and place where a majority of the miracles take place.  Jesus did many, but typically, they were misunderstood.  Even in the case of the man born blind, the miracle proved the hardness of men's hearts more than convinced them about God's grace.  The miracles freeing God's people from Egypt served to harden Pharoah's heart, rather than open it to the God of grace. 

What if God actually does miracles, not to draw people to Himself, but rather, to show people where their heart really is?  If people have to see the miraculous, maybe they aren't ready for the ordinariness of God, which is so prevalent in the Bible.  If they see a miracle, perhaps it will harden their heart even more, and thus reveal more about their heart rather than the heart of God. 

The one thing I can say for sure is that miracles point us, like the sample pack, to the fullness of new life that God will unveil at the new creation.  If a miracle is an outstanding event, how much better will be the new life that is revealed when Jesus reappears?  That, my friends, will truly be miraculous!

Miracles and Believing

'He [Abraham] said to him [the dead rich man], "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."'  Luke 16:31

"His [Jesus'] resurrection also was no demonstration for the world.  The empty grave as such convinced no one who did not believe in Him."  Herman Sasse

"If only I could see a miracle, then I would believe."  A few years back, I read a quotation along these lines in a book written by an atheist.  After basically trashing the Christian faith throughout his book, he finally comes to answer the "question" of what would cause him to believe.  His response is that, if he saw something that would be defined as a miracle, then he would believe.

In some ways, that's an understandable human response.  We want to see something great to prove something that we cannot see.  And yet, there is a very distinct line here that must be drawn.  That line is this: would you believe in something you saw that was unbelievable if you didn't believe that it was possible?

We humans have a way of trying to explain away things that don't make sense.  Try to convince someone that you saw a UFO, and you'll probably fight an uphill battle.  Who are the only ones who will believe you?  The ones who believe in UFOs.  For the person who doesn't believe in UFOs, you're probably not going to convince them, no matter how much evidence you may have.

That's why I find this quote of Jesus from the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31) so interesting.  Basically, Jesus says that if you don't believe in what God has told us through the words of His book, then you won't believe a miracle, even one as pronounced as a dead man rising back to life.  Seeing is not necessarily believing.  In fact, it seems that believing that it can happen is necessary to seeing it for what it really is.

I see this in many of Jesus' miracles, as I think about it.  How often was Jesus' response to the person, "Your faith has made you well."  He didn't make them well, and then they believed, but rather, they believed that He could do it, and He responded to that faith.  Maybe that's something along the lines of what Jesus meant when He said that if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.

Why no Miracles?

A couple of years ago, I read a book written by an atheist.  In this book, he claimed that the one thing that would convince him that there is a God would be if he were to see a miracle.  That got me to thinking a bit about this whole miracle thing.  I've heard a few other people say things like how their faith would be strengthened if they were to see a miracle, or something along those lines.

It seems that many people take the lack of miracles as a sign of God's absence.  Why didn't God heal my mother?  Why did God allow that car accident?  Why doesn't God do something about abortion, or cancer, or a whole host of other bad things in life?  Now, while I won't pretend that there is an easy answer to these questions, the one thing I want to look at a bit is the seeming absence of God in all of this.

To guide our thinking, let me ask this: if miracles were commonplace, would they still be miracles?  Miracles are, by definition, something outside of the ordinary.  So if they became ordinary, they would no longer be miracles.  Sure, we might not be able to explain them, but there are quite a few things in life that we can't explain. 

When we look at the record of miracles in the Bible, it reminds us that miracles do not always lead to faith.  Let's take the Israelites when they were freed from Egypt.  God had brought them out with 10 plagues, guided them to the sea, where He parted the water so they passed through on dry ground, and then crushed the Egyptian army behind them.  These people saw a great miracle.  Just a few weeks later, we find them complaining that God led them out into the wilderness to starve.  Hadn't they just seen great miracles?  Did they not believe that God would provide for them?  And then, when Moses went up on the mountain, what was the first thing they did?  Build an idol of gold!  And then, when Moses sent 12 men to spy out the land that had been promised to Abraham, what was their report?  "The people are too big and strong and powerful for us!"  Hadn't they just seen God bring them out of Egypt, and they had done nothing to contribute to their leaving?  It really seems that the miracles helped their faith, right?

Call me skeptical, but I honestly believe that God knows that our tendency to disbelieve miracles is one of the reasons why He doesn't do them more often.  And that, to me, is why we see Him as absent.  For some reason, we have this idea in us that God should actively show Himself all the time.  We don't want to rely on faith, we want to rely on what our eyes show us.  So when they don't show us that God is very obvious in His work around us, we think that He is absent.

Just to toss it out there, give some thought to it for a few minutes sometime.  What would you really do or think if a miracle happened in front of you?  Would you look for natural explanations?  Would you believe in God even more?  Would you say it's just one of those unexplainable kind of things?  What would you really think if you saw one?