Miracles

Matthew 4:23

 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

The Bible is full of stories of the miraculous from Creation to the Second Coming, From Noah's flood to Daniel in the Lion's Den to the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. Jesus turned water to wine and of course we remember the story of Jonah and the big fish. To believers they are wonderful confirmation of the power of God, but to unbelievers they are labeled superstitious and silly.


What is a miracle?

During the 1980 Winter Olympics the USA Hockey team defeated the ridiculously favored Soviet team. This event became legendary with the voice of Al Michaels reverberating: "Do you believe in miracles?" From that point forward it has always been known as the Miracle on Ice. But miracles are not well defined as anything unexplainable that happens. That definition is largely the product of lazy thinking. 

Atheistic scientists chafe whenever they hear Christians and others talk about miracles because of two ideas. Firstly, they believe that there exists nothing outside of nature. (Notice how I said the word believe.) For these people things like  the mind and the soul are explained as merely the result of electrical impulses firing in the brain.

Secondly, they claim it is lazy to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge with the miscellaneous category of miracles. Another way to say it would be that there are people who lazily shove everything that they cannot personally understand or explain into the category of miracles. I happen to believe that no one is all-knowing enough to make the first assertion, but I do sympathize with the second. 

The thinking Christian will be careful to avoid this God of the Gaps trap by not jumping to conclusions about unexplained phenomena. The Christian definition of a miracle is any God-ordained interruption or intervention in the laws of nature. Thus when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11 or traveled the Judean countryside healing the lame, the blind and the leprous people that crowded around him we can say with conviction "It's a miracle"! But, please, let us not have anyone throwing around the label "miracle" for winning the lottery or surviving an appendicitis.