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People’s Stubborn Belief in Miracles

I was at a talk recently where an older gentleman was describing how, in his youth, he had built a log cabin all on his own, on the salary—and the schedule—of a school teacher. It was a fine and informative talk. But early on he mentioned something about a miracle. “I have another talk on miracles,” he explained, as if there was much more where this came from, “but I’ll just mention this one here.” The miracle was that when a concrete truck was delivering concrete for the cabin’s foundation, one of the wheels slipped off the little bridge that the truck had to cross in order to access the building site. There was a photo of this situation, showing a truck perilously perched on a bridge with one wheel in the air. But the driver was able to maneuver the truck back on to the bridge. This, explained the speaker, was miracle number one.

The same day, another miracle occurred. When he was pouring the same said concrete for the foundation, the forms blew out and concrete spilled out everywhere. (That’s not the miracle.) Fortunately, his neighbor and his two boys came to help, tied it all back together and in the end, no concrete was lost. That was the second miracle! People in the audience were already tuned into the counting of miracles so there was a positive response to this narrative: ohhs, and ahhs, and other expressions of amazement too.

To be clear, the speaker was not just listing off miracles. He was telling the story of how he built the cabin, and miracles popped up along the way. The next miracle was inspired by a photo that showed him, as a young man, high up on the ridge pole of the house, which was 34 feet in the air. He had climbed it using the spiked accessories that loggers use, and he had no safety harness on. He had done this sort of thing regularly during the construction. After the log cabin was completed, the man’s father had quipped that he was glad that was all over. The father had feared for his sons life. “Miracle number three,” announced the speaker. That he didn’t fall off the ridge and die. Someone in the audience said, “That’s four.” The speaker waved his hand as if to say, “Three, four, twenty. There were so many miracles in the making of this cabin that I can’t even keep track.” Some other people in the audience who seemed overawed at everything about this presentation laughed giddily.

But are these really miracles? What exactly about them signals that supernatural power was at work? The first one was a case of skillful driving (perhaps after unskillful driving). The second one involved neighborly help. The third instance was pure dumb luck. In fact, not everyone who is so incautious about their log climbing lives to tell the story. When I was a teenager, there was a man in my church who had decided to cut down a tree, similarly making use of logging equipment that he did not know how to use. It all went horribly wrong. He fell and broke his back, and lived for the rest of his life in a wheelchair. No miracle for him! But let’s be realistic: there is no miracle of I didn’t fall. I might buy the miracle of I fell and broke my back but then God healed me and I was able to toss my wheelchair and walk again. The thing is, that miracle doesn’t ever happen.

“Rob,” you might think, “you are taking this all too seriously. When people talk about miracles like this, they aren’t doing apologetics. This is not “The Case for Miracles.” It’s just things people say. It’s just sweet pablum and nothing much really depends on these sorts of claims.” But I disagree. Circumstantial miracles are the backbone of many believer’s faith. I have spoken with many people like this. I will explain that what people claim as miracles are just coincidences, good luck, or lack of information; that there isn’t in any of these stories something which could only have happened because of divine intervention; that it’s only a habit of interpretation. Every time something goes right—“It’s a miracle!” But people just don’t get it. They will typically respond by explaining how they now for a fact that God exists because he has done some amazing thing in their life: recovery from an illness, or some trauma that they survived, the strength to deal with the challenges of life, etc. Again: not miracles. But people insist on calling anything fortunate a miracle, and no amount of explaining the facts of the natural world is convincing to them.

If there really were real, jaw-dropping, only God could have done it miracles then I wouldn’t mind the persistence of miracles of happenstance. I mean, who is to say? Once you believe in God, he might have orchestrated anything. But the problem is that there aren’t any true miracles either. Look far and wide and you will not find one.