Miracles?

Since the 18th Century when Western Society established “scientific method” as the only way to know facts about the world there has been a division in the life of the church. It is based around questions like these:

Does God intervene in the world?

Does God do miracles?

Is there a supernatural realm apart from the natural world?

Secular scientists and the academic intelligentsia were expected to say “no” to all three questions because they cannot be scientifically verified.

But many Christian academics and theologians were convinced by these arguments of the Enlightenment and so decided it was necessary to apply the scientific method to the Bible stories. The result of this ongoing project was to try and reinterpret all those stories that involved God doing miracles in a way that showed that either it didn’t really happen, it was just made up, or that something else happened.

Several such attempts are quite famous such as denying the resurrection occurred and stating that it was just mass hysteria that refused to let the dream of Jesus’ beautiful Kingdom of God die.

Or the ‘feeding of the 5000′ was really an outbreak of generosity when everyone present took out their concealed food and shared it.

What is obvious in all these attempts of the Liberal theological branch of God’s church is that the Bible passages were being forced in unnatural ways to fit into an Enlightenment scientific world view.
But more recently theologians (and I suspect many pew sitters) have got tired of these attempts and allow the stories to speak for themselves and hear what they say. Suspending judgement so that the scriptures (and perhaps God) can get a word in edgeways.

What is plain when you read the Scriptures is that they do not have a view of the universe that has God outside it as “supernatural”. Nor is there a view of the creation as separated from God as “natural”.

Instead, we see God’s spirit ‘breathed’ into Adam to make him alive. And Ps 104 sees “When you hide your face, they(all creatures) are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.”

Breath and spirit are the same word in Hebrew. In other words our current life force comes from God himself and returns to God himself. God is an intrinsic part of life and death. Colossians follows this up by referring to Jesus through whom everything was made
“15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. ”

In other words God is actually sustaining the universe now even while you read these words.

It seems that God will not be forced into our current view of the world. God refuses to answer the question “Are you natural or supernatural?”

It is quite simply an invalid question. This just like the question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” A true answer can never be given to a false question.

To the academic who declares that God is outside the created order, God’s reply is to graciously sustain his or her life. God’s ‘rain falls on the good and the bad alike’.

So when we see God’s presence depicted as a pillar of cloud and fire in our Exodus passage today we should not imagine that God is miraculously intervening as if God came from outside the world and hijacked it for a bit. Rather we should see the God who is always present moving some of the matter that he is always sustaining. He does this to the Israelites to make a point- God is always here as close as life itself.

Immanuel, God is with us!

Graeme