notre dame montreal

7. Why bother to think about miracles?

  1. What are miracles?

  2. Do they happen?

  3. How can we tell?

  4. And do they matter anyway?

For some people miracles are doorways to God, in that they provide them with reason for belief. Others however find them obstacles, in that they simply can’t get their minds around them, and come to the conclusion that if this is the sort of thing Christianity is about, then it’s clearly not for them. A miracle is by definition an extraordinary event, but not just that: a trick done by a magician doesn’t count. It also has to have ‘religious significance’, in that it results in believers seeing things differently, and may change unbelievers into believers. If a believer and an unbeliever witness the same extraordinary event, the believer may see it as a miracle, whilst the unbeliever may (and in fact is bound to, if he is to remain an unbeliever) simply see it as something very odd. Whose view is correct?

Miracles have good consequences - at least from the point of view of the miracle-ascriber. In Exodus we read of how the waters of the Red Sea parted to allow the fleeing Israelites to pass through in safety, but then closed over (and drowned) the pursuing Egyptians. We may think of this event/story as a miracle, and this was certainly how the Israelites regarded it. But the widows and children of those Egyptian soldiers would presumably have seen things differently. Whose view is correct?

Belief in miracles is still strong, especially amongst the ignorant and superstitious. It is always difficult to know what to make of reports of extraordinary events. As a general rule, the more improbable the claim, the more unreliable the supposed witnesses, the further back in time or the more remote in location is the event in question, the more evidence that is needed, and the more cautious we need to be. It is obviously not a coincidence that supernatural events appear to occur with greater frequency the further back in history we go. Each of us occupies our own particular position on the continuum that ranges from extreme scepticism to extreme gullibility. Some people, therefore, are more predisposed to believe in miracles (and all sorts of other religious claims) than others, but religion must never be allowed to become their sole preserve.

Miracles seem to require the existence of an interventionist God, but there is the very real question as to why God only works miracles for isolated individuals, and didn’t intervene to stop the monstrous evils wrought on millions of innocent people by Hitler and Stalin? In other words, why are miracles usually so small-scale? And why does God apparently heal some people and not others? It’s all terribly problematic!

Many people have difficulties with the miracle stories, not just of Jesus but elsewhere in the bible as well. It’s important that such difficulties aren’t allowed to get in the way of faith, and there are various strategies for dealing with them. The first is simply to ignore miracles altogether. It is perfectly possible to take Christianity completely seriously, and try to live by Christ’s teachings, whilst having nothing to do with any of the miracle stories. Doing this doesn’t make someone less of a Christian, simply one who can live on rather thinner gruel than others seem to need.

Another possibility is to try and ‘explain away’ miracles. Each of them can be accounted for in some non-miraculous way, and this can certainly help those who find them obstacles. The third strategy is to take them at face value. This doesn’t mean to read them as historical or scientific accounts, but as attempts to convey a sense of awe and wonder, which was undoubtedly what those who told the stories were trying to do.

Some of the miracle stories may be exaggerated, or even completely legendary, but this doesn’t matter. Christians across the centuries have revered them, not because of what happened, but because of what they mean. Understanding them in this way means that they may cease to be obstacles and instead become doorways to the sacred.

It is in this sense that a baby may be described as a miracle: something which takes our breath away. Of course it may not: someone may simply say that a baby is a baby, and there’s no big deal! But this brings out the important point that miracles are never unambiguous: they never provide knock-down arguments to prove anything. The Gospel accounts show that whatever Jesus did, there were many people who remained completely unmoved. In one sense they saw the same things as those who were extremely moved. But in another, much more important sense, they saw something different – or, rather, they saw very much less. The essence of the miraculous is not to be found in the event itself, but in one’s reaction to it. To say that something is/was a miracle is not to describe it, but to kneel before it.

Given such an understanding there can be no doubt that miracles do occur. People really have changed the direction of their lives in response to particular events (their first baby, the stillness of a mountain top, the selfless love of a relative) such that they have become more open and loving and generous. There may have been nothing particularly unusual in the events themselves, in that others may have barely noticed them at all, but despite this they acted as the trigger for a new way of seeing and (more importantly) being. We might go further and say that the truly miraculous is being able to find such meaning in amongst the ordinary, being able to move, as it were, to a different level of reality. Such ‘moments of disclosure’ are what ‘finding God’ amounts to.

Miracles always lead somewhere, they always take us forward in our spiritual journeying. It follows that we must be on the lookout for the miraculous, open to new sources of wonder and awe, ready to have our breath taken away from us. Our world is so glorious, so brimming with meaning, that it would be surprising if the miraculous were not all around us: our task is to be alive and alert to it, and to be prepared to live to the full whatever vision is granted us.
 

Tony Windross, Vicar of St Peter's, Sheringham.

Why bother

A fuller treatment of this topic, plus 36 others, can be found in ‘The Thoughtful Guide to Faith’

also written by Tony Windross, published by John Hunt (2004) and available from all good bookshops at £9-99.

amw@windross.fsnet.co.uk