One of the hardest elements that I've had to wrestle with in my faith is the nature of miracles. I'm sure that is a common thing, especially in a modern society where miracles in the sense of supernatural acts like those recounted in the Bible are practically unheard of. Even when I am told by people who earnestly tell me they have witnessed some form of a supernatural miracle, I can't help at the back of my mind thinking, "There is more to this story and it can be reasonably explained." The bulk of the people I know who are Bible-believing Christians and I believe are sincere in their faith have not witnessed a miracle.
Now, this could normally be easily overlooked because miracles were just a thing for Jesus' time and thus we can overlook the lack of them now or that they were unique to Jesus and his closest disciples and that was that.
Then you read something like Matthew 17:20 that if you had the faith of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to move and it would do it or that in John 14:12 that you could do greater things than Jesus if you believe in Him. You are left with this feeling that some how we're not cutting it. That either you as an individual or that Christians in general do not have enough faith. If fact, you don't even have the amount of a mustard seed, you dirty, lowly worm! Of course, then we have to take comfort that God has grace on us and that we have faith bestowed upon us by God and that ultimately God does everything and really you doing anything is just a waste of time like a little kid who really is getting in the way more than he is actually 'helping'. Even if you believe that we actually need to be active in bringing about ideals of God like justice, love, mercy and forgiveness, it is easily construed as trying to earn your salvation or that it has nothing to do with you at all and you are the lowly worm that God chose to use.
It then brings me to my biggest frustration about supernatural miracles and why I am always on guard against anyone who apparently does miracles. Even the ones done in the name of God. By someone with the ability to do supernatural miracles, it is then seen by some people as that God has given this individual the stamp of approval and that we need to pay attention to this person. Now, it's great if that person is on the up and up. However, I know that there are so many tricks that can be employed by an individual to emulate supernatural events.
Indulge me for a moment (although I am aware you're already indulging by reading my blog and thank you for that) and let me give an example outside of the church. Speaking with the dead is an ability that some claim to have and others whole-heartedly believe that these people can do. However, time and time again, these people are exposed as frauds and use a technique called cold-reading where they gather a crowd together and they ask a bunch of a special kind of vague, probing questions that will hopefully get someone in the audience to actually tip the medium off to what the audience member wants to hear. There are certain topics and ideas that people feel unresolved with the family members that have passed on and mediums can take chances and guess at the topic and then low and behold, it is simply unexplainable that the medium knows such things and they must be able to do it, when in reality, they know how to read people and are adept at drawing out people's willing manipulation. I say willing manipulation because people so deeply want to have that last conversation with that person they miss. (Even now, tears are coming to my eyes that I want to have that last conversation with my dad) That willing manipulation is what allows them to want to validate this as a supernatural ability. It is also what makes this form of trickery one of the most horrid and vile cons that a person can pull on another.
I should point out that these mediums are well-intentioned. They see what they're doing as a service to humanity. They see it as bringing closure to those who need it. In the end, they are short-circuiting the real work of grieving which involves the hard work found inside ourselves.
After learning about the nature of cold-reading, I was once approach by someone a long time ago when I first moved to the city who came up to me with a word from God. He said that the word 'acceptance' came to mind. I thought it was very convenient that that was the word because I was new to the area and had only been there for a couple of months. I responded, I've felt accepted already. The people in the area were good to me and I felt like I fit in. Then he tried to dig in a little deeper. He said he got the sense that this was a fatherly kind of acceptance. I guess it turned out I was mistaken. He wasn't talking about the kind of acceptance of new guy in a new town, but rather the acceptance of a father. Funny, because that is often a topic that many people go to a medium for. Also, many artists (as I was kind of viewed as) have had issues with their fathers. Usually they're distant because they left their families or are workaholics or divorced or dead. Unfortunately, I fit the mould perfectly. I responded with that's nice to hear. I'm not one to bring about conflict with someone I just met or barely know or someone that I'm uncomfortable around. He pushed and we talked about my dad and how he died and how that sucked. The man with the word from God then reasserted his claim of God's fatherly acceptance of me.
I'd like to point out that this guy could use the exact same defences as mediums. He could say that he doesn't quite understand the nature of the message or why it works, he's merely the humble messenger.
He also gets the benefit of having spiritual authority because clearly he brought a message that meant something to me and the only way he could have known that I needed to hear the word "acceptance" is if God gave him the word directly. Then he leaves it for everyone else to fill in the blank that he must be in right standing with God in order for God to speak to him so intimately and thus he has spiritual authority and thus if he says anything, it must be from or at least ordained by God.
I should point that this guy is well-intentioned. He is trying to bring about positive change and encouragement to people, but it's under a very dangerous pretence.
For the sake of the argument, let's pretend that he really did receive this word from God. Then the question becomes why are you highlighting that it came from God aside from any other reason than to give yourself more spiritual authority. He could have easily had the same conversation and encouraged me that I should feel accepted (because who doesn't want to feel accepted?) without the reference to God. He could have had the satisfaction of knowing that God is using him in positive ways and that is obedient to God's call. In fact, I think it would have made him look like someone who actually cared about me. It would look like that he noticed me and wanted me to know that I was noticed and so I would feel appreciated and loved. In other words, accepted. He didn't do that though. He instead established his spiritual authority and made me feel like he was politicking and that he was trying to win me over to see him as such. Ironically, him saying that I was 'accepted' made me feel far more alienated than had he said nothing at all.
Unfortunately, people want to see divine signs from their spiritual leaders. People want to see proof through miraculous healings and speak words from God and see that stamp of God's approval. This then leads people to be willingly manipulated.
So, am I saying that I don't believe in supernatural miracles? No, I am not saying that. I'm saying that they do not matter. Miracles should not be the reason that we believe someone. Even Jesus was rather dismissive of miracles. In Matthew 12:38, teachers of the law asked Jesus to perform a miraculous sign and Jesus responded that "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign".
Every time that Jesus performed a miracle in the Bible, it was always paired with some teaching. When he walked on water, it was to teach the disciples about being faithful in the face of danger. When he fed the five thousand, it was to teach that God can take the little we have and do more than we could possibly imagine with it. The best example comes from the story in Luke 5:17-26 where he says that the paralyzed man was forgiven of his sins before he healed him.
I believe that we are often allow our situations determine our lives and performing miracles doesn't actually impact any significant. Some people use their disadvantages as their crutch and if you took the crutch away, they'd try to find a new crutch. It is vitally more important for a person to not allow themselves be defined by their disadvantages otherwise taking away the disadvantage leaves them the same person. The guy who wishes that his leg wasn't taken away from him because he would have been a big time athlete will only complain that he is too old to be an athlete if you gave him a perfect leg right then. Unless his heart is right. If his heart is in a place where he is not allowing himself to be defined by the limitation of his disability or his identity, then healing would be fantastic for him, but the funny thing is, he wouldn't even need it healed.
Let me clear, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't have compassion on those with disadvantages, we should be helping all people to not be defined by their circumstances. People are defined by how they use what's given to them.
I believe that there is an inherent worth to people because they already have the ability to impact the world. I go back to Bruce Almighty, in the closing scene with God (played by Morgan Freeman) talks about how people are always asking for a miracle, but that just maybe He's already given it to us. God has been faithful to us, but we don't realize that we need to be faithful and we will see miracles that matter the most to God.
You see, although I am distrustful of supernatural miracles, especially in the modern contexts, I absolutely believe in miracles. I believe that many of us see miracles often. I believe I have seen true miracle workers. I have seen mountains move. I have seen greater things done by those who have been faithful to the spirit of Christ than Christ did while He was on earth. Yes, Jesus impacted several lives with his time on earth, but because people were faithful to his call, that impact has been multiplied.
The mightiest miracles are not that food was conjured up or that someone walked on water, but that people have changed their lives. I believe that is the miracle that matters most to God. God along with people faithful to His call are performing miracles everyday by bringing signs that the Kingdom of Heaven is here with acts of love, justice, mercy and forgiveness.
"Baby burst in the world
Never given a chance
Then they ask what went wrong
When you never had it right
Oh, the letters have dropped off
Though they say you got them all
I finally figured out some things you'll never know
Take back your life and let me inside
We'll find the door if you care to anymore"
- "Desperately Wanting" from the Better Than Ezra album "Friction, Baby"
1 comment:
Very insightful blog Dave. I believe in my heart that one day you will witness a natural (edit: delete super-) miracle that will truly define the tricks like cold-reading from the completely unexplainable. I believe this because you have all the tools and attitudes to be able to see it when it happens. One of the most powerful tricks of the mind is inclusion, the mind will automatically filter from the senses the phenomenon that do not make sense to the understandings we have been taught. If the mountain moved in front of your eyes would your brain let you see it? If your father appeared before you to tell you all of his life's stories would you convince yourself that you had imagined it?
To go beyond a common understanding of religion, but staying within my own understanding of God, the vibrations and wavelengths that our reality shakes and tremors under the weight thereof, are truly immortal, and no matter how slow or dense the vibration becomes, or how far from our conscious senses, they are just as real within the synapses of your imagination as they are when interpretted by the nerve endings. Both are electrical impulse and both exisst within God's universe, neither being excluded based on any science Or belief.
So though I would not claim to be medium for spirits, I can assure you that your memories are as real and solid as anything you can touch. Cultivating a strong spirit within yourself you can find that maybe they are more real in fact, for they are recorded, and therefore not subject to whim as the fleeting things of experience in the now most certainly are.
Memory, and imagination are in fact far more powerful because they are stored away somehow and when you remember or when you imagine a tiny little star is going nova in your brain, triggering a series of tiny explosions that we call synapses. They require no external stimuli but are often brought to our conscious mind when excited by things that are based on stimuli. IN this way the spirits of all ages continue to speak through us all. The real question becomes what exactly turns a big pile of micro-organisms and electrical impulses into a larger creature of this earth? Is it our skin that holds us in? Or maybe our brains that allow it all to work together? Or the soul that we can not describe?
If indeed it is the soul, and souls we have been taught are immortal, then truly i say that your father walks with you each day and tells you his story through the things that you experience, always drawing up a memory, or creating deep focus on what you are doing, when he sees that it will help you to understand. His soul carrying on in the lasting imprint he left on all those he loved. being re-created with the flash of a synapse mirroring a star that he once looked on and wondered at how far it must be.
These are the things that can't be told for certain, because the stars, and their parallel synapses are indeed far from the dense matter that we call reality.
Harmonically speaking God created the world with a word and it's echoes resonate through all time and all things, and we feel it every day but try to rationalize it away by saying they are 'just' feelings, or emotions, or that we were 'just' thinking....
To experience a natural miracle all you have to do is have faith that nothing you do is 'just' happening, but convincing your mind that supernatural is in fact pure nature is much more difficult to do than to talk about. We go out in dreams, and find, that the world is yours and mine, but when we awake the weight confines, and asour eyes open we are once again blind.
In my opinion and understanding should be the first thing i say before i ever try to relate a thing i am feeling to anybody ;) Great Blog, really got me thinking, sorry if my rambling becomes like graffiti under an otherwise thoughtful piece of writing.
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