This series of posts will be to preserve an interesting discussion had on my main blog regarding miracles. This was my original post. What follows after are comments made on this post.
Back in October I said that I would post something on miracles. This was, as best my memory can recall, "inspired" by a conversation I'd had with Sid over lunch. Recently I read a challenging post on Steve Sensenig's blog titled You Might Be Misrepresenting God If…. Steve and challenging posts go together like peanut butter and chocolate but this one was particularly good. Drawing from Jeff Foxworthy for format, if not inspiration, he posited this, "If you believe that sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, freedom to the captives, and walking to the lame were only for first-century “verification of the message”, you might be misrepresenting God."
So here we are. Miracles.
Miracle has got to be the most over used word in the entirety of the English language. How's that for hyperbole? People talk about how miraculous a baby's birth was or the rising of the sun. These things are wonderful and inspiring, sure, but miraculous? Hardly. I'd call a miracle an event that happens in which the natural laws of the universe are set aside or overridden by God; raising people from the dead, the above mentioned sight to the blind, etc.
Steve's point is that miracles still happen today. I'm not so sure that's the case. He challenged me to show him a "biblical defense of cessationism and how it’s not taken out of context". I'm not so sure I can do that since I'm not a hard core cessationist when it comes to the miraculous. I do think that it's possible for God to continue to perform miracles. I'm not, as commenter Phil Hawkins said, "telling God how He’s allowed to operate". All I said to Steve was that I don't see them happening today. Sure I hear second hand stories about churches in third world countries doing great things, but nothing here outside of the usual suspects on the fringes of Charismatic space.
Steve posited that because of a lack of faith on the part of us here in the west, we shouldn't expect to see miracles. It is true certainly that when Jesus and the boys performed miracles, faith on the part of the recipient and in some cases even the region they were in was required. He calls cessationism "a self-fulfilling belief system". He says that we should be teaching miracles as part of the message and that not to do so is "brushing them aside and saying they don’t have relevance for today" and that someone who doesn't teach them is altering the gospel. He does agree that the miracles are not the most important part of the message, but they're there for a reason and we ignore that at our peril and/or detriment.
I agree with him that they're there for a reason and that they shouldn't be ignored. I said this regarding cessationsim, “I think that a fair amount of accusations of scripture twisting goes on on both sides to no one’s advantage. I’ve witnessed things in my life that I would term miraculous. Not on the “level” of blind seeing and lame walking, but certainly events where people were cured of afflictions wherein God played a large part. So, on this matter I sort of straddle the fence. I’m not aware of dead folks walking or lepers being made whole in the present day, but I think that the greatest miracle is men like you and I coming to Christ.” And I stand by it.
I think that on this, as is the case with a number of Biblical issues, folks engage in cherry picking scriptures to support what they believe. Steve hasn’t done that to my knowledge. I will say that the cessationist folks are guiltier of that, but to be fair most of the charismatics that I’ve run across in arguing this point simply say, as Steve has, that what cessationists have amounts to an argument from silence. So there’s no need to bring scripture in to defend their pov.
Here’s what I believe regarding the miracles in the Bible and the present day. I think that the Biblical miracles really happened. I think that God can continue to perform miracles as he sees fit. After all, as the writer of Hebrews said, “God also testified to it [great salvation] by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” So who am I to say any different? I think that miracles still happen and will continue to do so. I don’t think that most Christians who say that they’ve spoken in tongues really know what the Bible means when it talks about that. I don’t think that we’re seeing fewer miracles today because of the state of faith in our world. Miracles are by definition rare things. So to have this thing occupy a major portion of your theology and to go around in circles looking for support one way or another is indeed wasting cycles, if that’s all you’re doing.
Christ said “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” Does that mean that next week I can raise someone from the dead? No, I don’t think so. What I think it means is that this week I can talk to people about my faith. It means that I can love the people in my community sacrificially. What does he mean by “greater works”? Frankly, I don’t know. I think that greater might mean greater in scope. We have the opportunity to take the message of God’s love into places unheard of in Jesus’ time. I’m more than willing to admit that I could be wrong though. If you are hardcore one way or the other I’d be curious as to know why.