Skip to main content

On miracles and the supernatural. For those who can't believe.

I’ve been speaking with several people over the past few months about the supernatural. They say something like this: “I am drawn to Jesus’ teaching – about loving your neighbour as yourself and doing to the other what you would want them to do to you, the so-called golden rule – but I struggle with the talk about God, and things like the  virgin birth and the resurrection, and that Jesus is the Son of God in a unique way. Of course, I would like to think that there is something after death, but I can’t because this world is all that there is.”

I have huge respect for people who think like that. They have an intellectual integrity which overrides any wishful thinking.

It is difficult to know how we can answer the person who cannot believe in anything that cannot be ‘proved’ scientifically through observation. I might shrink from the deterministic universe that their thinking presupposes, where everything that happens must have a physical cause. I might proclaim that I am more than a victim of cause and effect, and that I, and those who I meet, have genuine freedom and a significance that goes beyond this world. But is that just wishful thinking, shaped through evolution?

I am not convinced. The writer to Ecclesiastes said that ‘God has set eternity in the human heart’. And for those who are curious about breaking out of a strictly logical view of the universe, there are two points to consider. In the quantum world, it seems that two things that appear to contradict each other can both be true at the same time. And even the most logical person might find it hard to ignore that the first followers of Jesus, and the writers of the gospels, truly believed he rose from the dead. This belief led many of them to face great suffering and even death for their faith. If Jesus' resurrection did happen, then the Gordian knot is cut, and the universe is opened up.

A former senior gynaecologist, who was subsequently ordained, suggested to me that we might set aside some of those things that we find hard to believe now; that we might put them in ‘brackets’ to deal with later. I find that very helpful. We don’t have to be convinced but we also don’t need to dismiss them outright. We may even make the decision to live ‘as if’ they were true. That is at the heart of faith. And then, over time, as we reflect and revisit those things, we may discover that what we thought was a problem then, now seems to be no problem at all.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Most popular posts

The separation of good from evil: Matthew 13.24-30,36-43

Matthew 13.24-30,36-43 We look this morning at a parable Jesus told about the Kingdom on God (Matthew talks of Kingdom of heaven but others speak of it as the Kingdom of God) 1. In this world, good and evil grow together. ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil’ (v37) The Son of Man (Jesus) sows the good seed. In the first story that Jesus tells in Matthew, the seed is the Word of God, and different kinds of people are like the different soils which receive the seed. Here the illustration changes a bit, and we become the seed. There is good seed and there is weed, evil, seed. This story is not explaining why there is evil. It is simply telling us that there is evil and that it was sown by the enemy of God. And it tells us that there is good and there is bad. There are people who have their face turned towards ...
1 comment
Read more

Isaiah 49:1-7 What does it mean to be a servant of God?

Isaiah 49:1-7 This passage speaks of two servants. The first servant is Israel, the people of God. The second servant will bring Israel back to God. But then it seems that the second servant is also Israel.  It is complicated! But Christians have understood that this passage is speaking of Jesus. He is both the servant, who called Israel back to God, but he is also Israel itself: he is the embodiment, the fulfilment of Israel In the British constitution the Queen is the head of the State. But she is also, to a degree, the personal embodiment of the state. What the Queen does, at an official level, the UK does. If the Queen greets another head of State, then the UK is greeting that other nation. And if you are a UK citizen then you are, by definition, a subject of Her Majesty. She is the constitutional glue, if this helps, who holds us all together. So she is both the servant of the State, but she is also the embodiment of the State. And Jesus, to a far grea...
Post a Comment
Read more

The dead mouse theory of purity

Mark 7:1-13 We're looking today at two visions of what it is to be holy; what it is to be pure, acceptable  There is the human vision of purity: I call this the dead mouse theory of purity. And there is God's vision of purity: the fire theory of purity THE HUMAN VISION OF PURITY - however that is understood - is that I am pure, but that my purity is destroyed by things and people out there.  Our cat is very generous. Most mornings she brings us a gift of a dead mouse. Unfortunately we do not particularly like finding dead mice on our kitchen floor. So I get a tissue, pick up the unfortunate dead creature by the tail and throw it outside. The dead mouse contaminates our house and needs must go.  The dead mouse theory of purity says that in order to maintain your purity, the dead mice, the things that contaminate you, must go. So, in order to keep or maintain my purity, I need to keep away from them. And there are a whole load of rules which are hand...
Post a Comment
Read more