If You Don’t Believe in Miracles

You won’t see one when it comes.

Photo by Christopher Ruel on Unsplash

A miracle is more than just an unexplained event. It is an event that impacts a life or lives that comes from something beyond known processes. It disrupts the expected or inevitable based on tracking the course of events and then predicting what will come next.

Miracles can’t be studied scientifically because they cannot be reproduced. They are one-offs.

Having said this, if we have a certain understanding about how the universe operates, then the idea that miracles exist actually can make complete sense.

That “certain understanding” is also called our worldview or ideology. These are our underlying suppositions. We may not be able to articulate them, but they drive our thoughts and actions. If I really want to dig into my worldview then I can look at my actions and consider what my thoughts were that led me there.

A radical change in worldviews, I think, is what the word “conversion” describes, and anytime a true conversion takes place it is like starting over. This rationally explains the idea of being “born again.”

Now we Christians think of conversion being in only one direction, from not believing in God to believing in him, but it goes the other way as well. Many seem to lose their faith when they encounter a new and different group of people they want to join. After all we are social creatures. Our lives are lived in relation to others - even if we are seeking to live a hermit’s life.

I guess my point is we live in relationships with others both good and bad and both influence us. Some come to believe in God when they are attracted to or influenced positively by someone’s words or actions and others reject God for similar reasons. But then it is also true that negative relationships drive people toward and away from God as well. We are influenced down to the core of our worldviews by others. Once internalized to become our worldview this is when we own it. Others influence, but we own our worldviews.

In Summary

There are many ways to look at basic worldviews. One is to think about miracles, which actually leads to the deepest, most fundamental question of all. Do we believe in God or not? This is, as far as I can tell, the deepest influencer of human behavior. We define ourselves and our relationships with others first and foremost on this specific and often buried question.

To believe in God, opens us to the possibility of miracles.

Personally, I’m glad our new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), has a biblical worldview and is able to acknowledge miracles because that’s what it took recently to place him in the office he now holds.

And, if God is moving in our politics, it might also mean he is moving in my life and yours as well. This should help us move toward gratitude and humility, two very difficult but important character traits.