May 2, 2003

[General] Do you believe in miracles?

That's the question being talked about on a message board that I frequent. One of the board regulars believes that his nephew has been cured of cancer by God's divine intervention. So, he wonders, do the rest of us believe in miracles?

That got me thinking. Most of this post was a response on that message board, which I have since deleted, because I don't much like people on the Internet anymore. Rather than just let all that thinking I did be for nothing, though, I thought I would post the answer here.


Well, the short answer is yes, I do. I believe that I have seen God's direct
intervention in a life that is important to me. And I believe that it is
totally possible that this is what happened with the original poster's nephew. However,
having said that, I think that the *idea* of miracles raises some interesting
questions.

Here’s the thing that I think is interesting about miracles. In order for us
to accept that a miracle is God’s direct intervention, I think that we have to accept one
of a couple things:

Either:

God is fallible. In this theory, God is powerful, yes, but things sometimes
escape His attention. Prayer alerts God to the problem and he fixes it. I
call this my God is a Really Good Manager theory. Good managers are proactive,
yes, but they are also properly reactive when things that aren’t right are
brought to their attention. Good managers fix things that go wrong. However,
if God were infallible, things wouldn’t go wrong to begin with.

--or--

God is manipulative and cruel. Under this theory, God is all knowing and all
powerful. With this as the given, when bad things happen, they are sanctioned
by God--if God knows everything that is happening, and can control or stop any
of it at any time, then he allows bad things to happen. He chooses where to
intervene, making the occasional new friend in the process. This is my God as
Machiavelli theory.

Now, I can’t support that Machiavellian God. Doesn’t ring true for me. So I
choose to believe #1. God isn’t perfect. He’s way better than us, though, and
he is generally well-intentioned and tries to intervene as is possible.

But, there are so many folks that can’t accept a fallible god, and so I have
to question them: if God is infallible, why did the nephew get cancer in the first
place? If it wasn’t an accident--because God can’t have accidents--then why? I
know, we can’t know the ways of God, God confounds, etc. But, really--do you
really think that we have a God that *gives* people cancer just to turn around
and cure them?

There is a poet named Carl Dean who won the Pulitzer Prize last year for
poetry for a book called Practical Gods. One of the poems, "The God Who
Loves You" addresses this very topic. I have reprinted this poem in this journal before, but I think it's worth another look.


The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.


Copyright © Carl Dennis, 2001.

from Practical Gods Penguin Books

Posted by Lori at May 2, 2003 1:48 PM