The Norm of Miracles

Before anyone starts to ask the questions, the answer is mysticism.

We can wrap our answers in reason, but the fundamental issue remains, “Thus saith the Lord” who made all things and determines how reality works. Further, He has not been silent; there is a massive record of His dealings with humanity. But that record is opaque to the human intellect. It makes sense only when you read it with your heart. Without that heart-mind awareness, reality isn’t supposed to make sense.

Thus, we start with revelation and build out an understanding. Yet we also assert that no two of us will build the same understanding. We deny that there is an objective reality. The expectation that we could produce a consistent answer that fits all of us is just another deception of the fallen human reason. We answer that it’s utterly impossible to agree on everything and therefore a sign of healthy fellowship when there are at least some minor differences. We don’t school each other on the particulars, but encourage each other in the commitment to our convictions and our faith to trust in God.

It’s not that we use no reason at all, but that we use our reason as the means to dragging all the noise around us back to our faith. We submit everything to that mystical union with God Almighty and with the whole of His Creation. Because of that divine clarity of the heart-mind, our reasoning capacity is actually far better, at least potentially, than the sharpest minds of those who rely on reason alone. That doesn’t mean we can break through their moral blindness, but that we need not fear the power of their ideas. Our spiritual truth is greater than their best and brightest logic.

Again: The demands of faith are imminently unreasonable. We make no bones about it. At the same time, we have the all justification in the world we need to take this path because our God reigns and pours out His blessings so abundantly we have to leave stuff lying on the ground. He’s not wasteful, just generous.

It also means that in order to catch as much as we can, we discard a lot of things that He says aren’t necessary. The discernment is not a matter of reason and human need, but His glory. His glory is our ultimate good. There is nothing that can compete with that.

How many miracles does the Bible tell about? How often has God shown that He offers exceptions because there really aren’t any hard-n-fast rules? We know that, under most contexts, you don’t grab a poisonous snake with your bare hands. We also know Jesus promised that, when it serves the Father’s glory, we can do that anyway (Mark 16:18; Acts 28:1-6). It’s not that we would fling a challenge in God’s face and dare Him to let us die in the middle of our calling and mission, but that we simply allow Him to decide such things. We take our own demise in stride.

But when the time comes, we cast out demons, heal broken bodies, call fire down from heaven, walk on water, instantly move great distances without traveling, turn the clock backward in time, fill thousands of bellies from a handful of food, and all kinds of things we can’t even imagine. But we don’t do it casually as if we are somehow so very special and virtuous. It’s not frivolous and we don’t test it out just to prove a point. We receive these things when His glory shines, and we also don’t receive them for His glory at other times.

Learn the Law of God; learn how Creation works. Make Creation your best friend. No two of us will ever know exactly the same things about Creation, but we can all testify that God is not constrained by our human grasp on what’s “normal.”