God in the Extraordinary and Ordinary
I want to talk about a couple
distinctions that are useful for Christians as they
consider the world. To get there, though, I'm going to start with
an observation that might seem pedantic and curmudgeonly. If my
wife were standing next to me, it would probably earn me a jab in the
side and an “Eric, play nice” glare. But she isn't here, and it's a
good introduction to the topic, so here we go:
Childbirth, and the babies it produces,
are categorically NOT miracles.
I remember, earlier in parenting, people
holding our children and saying, “Aren't you just little miracles?”
Every time, there was this little theologian in the back of my brain
who buried his head in his hands. Of course, I know what they meant.
New life is a wondrous thing. Infants are
beautiful. Which is true, but by skewing it over into the miraculous, it betrays two
underlying confusions we have.
Let's start with the idea of a miracle.
That word, properly speaking, isn't in the Bible. It uses words like
“wonder” and “mighty act” to describe God's work in the
world. The concept, however, is there – when Mary gets pregnant and
tells Joseph she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, he understands
that things aren't working the way they normally do.
When we talk about miracles, what we
are usually talking about is something like that. Things aren't
working the way they normally do. Something out of the ordinary has occurred. If we were being precise, we might define a miracle as “an
event which cannot be accounted for by preceding natural causes.”
It's something that is the direct result of direct
supernatural intervention.
This leads to a first distinction, one between two views of the world. Naturalism is
the view that insists that such supernatural interventions are
impossible. Everything that has ever occurred can be explained
by natural causes. Note that this view is different than naturalism as a
methodology, a way of doing some specific task. Science is naturalistic in
methodology. By it's very nature it can't really analyze the
supernatural, since observability and repeatability are necessary for
science to work. But science doesn't require naturalism as an
overarching worldview. To insist it does is like the man who drops
his keys in the dark but only looks for them under the streetlight because, you know, it's easier to see over here.
Against naturalism is supernaturalism.
This has been the historic
Christian view. It agrees that natural causes exist and that they
account for the great majority of what happens in the world.
Supernatural intervention, by its nature, is rare. However, it
doesn't assume that such intervention cannot happen. So it is
perfectly comfortable with something like science; it just assumes
the set of issues science addresses is slightly smaller than the
naturalist does.
(There
is a third category, called occasionalism.
It basically denies the distinction between natural and supernatural
in the other direction, seeing everything as an immediately
supernatural event that is directly, “miraculously”
caused by God. This isn't the place to dig into that, but it has at
least two theological problems: 1) Scripture seems pretty comfortable with viewing natural entities as having causal power –
the rain makes the plants grow and so on – and 2) it really
struggles not to make God the author and direct cause of evil.)
Anyway,
I know all of that is a bit technical, so let's talk about what it means.
First of all, this distinction should explain why childbirth is not a miracle.
Reproduction is, thankfully, a part of the natural
structure of the world. Given the fact that miracles are usually
rare, if it wasn't, our species would be in big trouble.
Second,
this distinction matters because it affects how we think about things
like science. There is sometimes a hostility between science and
Christianity fostered by the ignorant on both sides which stems from
a sense that science and the supernatural are incompatible. Such
a dichotomy is unnecessary. I don't think that science can explain
everything – which, frankly, most philosophers who believe in
things like morality or human rights agree with, nevermind miracles – but I think it
is a great tool for explaining many things. While Christianity is
opposed to naturalism as a worldview, it welcomes attempts to
understand and explain the natural world.
Third, and this is where I want to spend some time, this
distinction also helps us talk through a related issue, that of
providence.
Providence
is the way we talk about God's activity in the world. What set of
things can we understand God as doing? The real reason a fuzzy
discussion about miracles frustrates me is because it often indicates
a confusion about how God is at work.
In
Scripture, God's providence is seen as behind
everything. Not that He directly causes everything – objects have
the power to affect other objects, humans have the freedom to make choices, etc. - but
that He is the ultimate force behind everything. This is part of why
Scripture doesn't dwell on the idea of miracles. It speaks of God as
being active in raising the dead and parting the Red Sea and as being
equally active in making the sun rise and the clouds form.
There
is a distinction, as we said earlier. But that distinction is
ultimately between ordinary providence and
extraordinary providence.
God is at work both through the natural forces of the world (which He
stands behind as timeless author and upholder) and in the
supernatural interventions. Extraordinary providence matters because
it serves as a marker and reminder to those that experience it that
God is at work, but that shouldn't make us lose sight of the ordinary
providence. Instead, it should reinforce for us that God is at work
all the time.
Let
me give a concrete example. About a month ago, my wife had a CT scan.
She is a cancer survivor, and on that scan they found a spot right
where you would expect to find a spot if her cancer was recurring.
However, the spot was too blurry to tell if that's what it was. We had a
week of anxiety and tears, and then an MRI to get a higher resolution
image, and when we got those results back – there was nothing
there. Not just that it wasn't cancer, but that there was nothing that
would account for that spot.
I
have had conversations with a number of people since then who
proclaim it a miracle. While I don't say it in those conversations, my heart's response is always, "Maybe?" It certainly could have been miraculous – I'm a
supernaturalist, after all – but it also could have been an error
in the initial scan or something else entirely natural.
The
point of providence, though, is that doesn't matter when it comes to how I approach God.
Whether He intervened in an extraordinary way to heal my wife or
whether He has simply been at work healing her through ordinary means
like chemotherapy and surgery, it is all a product of His providence. I
don't have to insist that it was miraculous in order to praise Him –
I can do it either way.
The
reason our love for the miraculous can be a problem is that it robs us of
this ordinary, everyday wonder. I have watched all three of my
children being born. Nothing is more natural, but that doesn't remove
the power and the beauty. Indeed, there is something especially
remarkable in recognizing that God didn't just keep this as a rare,
supernatural occurrence. I know how those babies were made, and the
idea that could create them – it is a wonder indeed. Along with all
of creation, it should drive us to thankfulness and praise.
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