In chapter 9 of John’s gospel he records a story of Jesus healing a man who was born blind. In John’s story, Jesus made some mud out of saliva and dirt, then put the mud on the man’s eyes. Then Jesus tells the man to go wash off the mud in a pool. When the man does this, his blindness is gone!
Because this man was born blind and had begged in the temple area for years, the miracle was hard to deny as a claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but many of the people put their focus on the wrong question: the how of the miracle. Four times in the chapter someone asks how the man’s eyes were healed, as if the method of the healing was the important part. Some of “The neighbors and those who had seen him before” asked “how were your eyes opened?” [1] Then some Pharisees asked the man how he was healed. In both cases, the man formerly blind explained what Jesus had done.
Then, because Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath and because practicing medicine on the Sabbath was against traditional Jewish regulations, the Pharisees asked, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”[2] The Pharisees kept looking for an explanation. A scientific or natural explanation. Perhaps this wasn’t the same man who was born blind. So they found his parents, “and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’”[3]
The better question is who healed the man born blind, but the Pharisees didn’t want to deal with that question. They had already made up their minds that Jesus wasn’t from God. So, they focused on the how, on the method. People still do this today, as Warren Wiersbe wrote: “We want to understand the mechanics of a miracle instead of simply trusting the Savior, who alone can perform the miracle.”[4]
Modern people want scientific explanations because they think nothing exists outside of scientific understanding and when something doesn’t fit that worldview it is denied or explained away. We want to fit miracles within our pre-existing understanding of the world. And when we can’t, we resist any way we can. In the case of the Pharisees and Jesus, “they cast him out.”[5] Anything to avoid the real question: who is this person who can do things that don’t fit into our narrow view of the universe? Comparing John’s gospel to modern events, we see this is nothing new.
However, if Jesus is who He said He was – God the Son – no miracle should be unbelievable because God has absolute control over His own creation. If Jesus is God, He exists outside of our universe and so obviously can’t be explained by using scientific laws that describe this universe. But we continue to resist. When people want to avoid dealing with their God, they still stick to the “how” question to avoid the more important question of “who.”
If you’re struggling to understand the miraculous stories of the Bible, make sure you’re asking the right (“who”) questions. If you’re talking to an unbeliever having the same struggles, make sure they’re asking the right questions, because: If Jesus is who God is, every how is possible, including the greatest miracle: the salvation of anyone who would believe in Him. And, Jesus can heal anyone who is blind to this reality.
[1] John 9:8-10 [2] John 9:16 [3] John 9:19 [4] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986). P. 143 [5] John 9:34
In life there are many difficult questions, and two of the hardest are also common objections to Christianity: 1) Why doesn’t God do anything about the evil in this world? and 2) Why do bad things happen to good people?
However, the Bible does not leave Christians without hope in the face of these questions.
First, part of what God is doing about the evil in this world is the fact that everyone dies. The Bible teaches that every bad thing in this world is a result of sin – people deviating from God’s purposes – and that because of that sin the world is cursed[1]. Not only do people hurt each other, but the creation itself, including human nature, is not in its ideal state.
Death was not originally part of this world, but came in to the world as a result of sin and is a constant reminder of it. In Genesis chapter 5, there is a genealogy from Adam to Noah. The phrase “and he died” is repeated over and over again and is a reminder that this world is not perfect. God created a consequence for the sin of mankind: death. While the Bible doesn’t explain why there was a snake in the garden or why Adam and Eve sinned, it does describe what God is doing about it. When we ask why bad things happen, we acknowledge that bad things exist, that they shouldn’t exist, and that they can happen to anyone. God isn’t doing nothing about the evil in the world – we all die and that is part of the judgment.
So, the two objections to Christianity (Why doesn’t God do anything about the evil in this world? and why do bad things happen to good people?) end up being contradictory because part of what God does about the evil in this world is that bad things (death) happen to everyone.
However, the Bible teaches that there are two deaths: a physical death and a spiritual death. In the first, our soul is separated from our body and our body dies. In the second, our soul is separated from God eternally and our soul dies but exists forever away from God’s presence and blessings. A second thing that God is doing about the evil in this world is that the first death is universal, but the second death is not.
Fortunately, judgement and death aren’t the only things God is doing about sin. What does this mean? Note the second half of God’s curse on the serpent from Genesis 3:15 –
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Who is being bruised here? In the last phrase, Satan is injuring Christ through the crucifixion, but it’s described as a wound to the heel because it is not fatal. Jesus was raised to life eternal. On the other hand, Christ shall bruise the head of Satan – a fatal blow that he will never recover from. This was determined from the beginning.
While judgement comes to all in physical death as a result of sin, through Christ there is a way out from spiritual, eternal death. Jesus has paid the price for our sin and has conquered eternal, spiritual death as a result.
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” – 1 Corinthians 15:26
Among the various camps in the debate between creation and evolution is a set of ideas called intelligent design (ID). A key part of ID is “irreducible complexity,” a term that comes from the book Darwin’s Black Box, by Lehigh professor Michael Behe.[1]
In short, irreducible complexity argues that evolution by chance, without an intelligent designer driving it, is unreasonable because the multiple systems in a complex organism like a human body – circulatory, digestive, endocrine, muscular, respiratory, and so on – are all interdependent on each other. The circulatory system alone, with the heart pumping blood through an elaborate system of arteries and veins, is difficult to imagine developing by chance occurrence, but a chance evolution of that system alongside all the other parts it is dependent on is even more far-fetched. All systems evolving together in lockstep without failing is a much more difficult problem to explain scientifically without a Creator. The circulatory system takes what the respiratory and digestive systems take in and deliver it to the other systems that use it. Without the other parts, it has no function and cannot survive and further evolve.
However, my intent here is not to prove intelligent design, but to consider the apostle Paul’s words about the church as the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12:12, he wrote: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” He continues that no part of the body can say it is not a part of the body because it has a different function than another part (1 Cor. 12:15-16), and also that no part of the body can say it doesn’t need all of the other parts (1 Cor. 12:21). Those who are in Christ Jesus cannot be divided.
Paul follows his description of the body with 1 Corinthians 13, a powerful statement on the supremacy of love, and in context a gentle rebuke to the idea that a body can survive as individual, unrelated units. In a human body, any part can only survive by serving the other parts. Even an organ as incredibly complex and important as a heart cannot survive if it decided to pump blood only for itself. Where would it get its nutrients? How would it flee from danger? As Paul wrote: “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?” (1 Cor. 12:17). Even an organ as important as the heart is useless in isolation. It gets its very life and purpose by what it does for the body.
As Jesus said to His disciples in John 13:34-35 – “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
As the song says, they will know we are Christians by our love, and the church Jesus came to build is irreducibly complex. There is no appendix[2] in the church, which is the body of Christ.
[1] Behe, Michael. Darwin’s Black Box (1996). [2] While we commonly think of this organ as useless, God as our Maker didn’t put it there by accident.
Actual disaster footage. Viewer discretion advised.
A doctor friend of mine said there’s an inside joke that “if you put two bones alone in a room together, they’ll find each other.” I heard this after breaking my left collarbone in the summer of 2011. Even when I was young, I wasn’t a great athlete, but I did always hustle. So after a decade of not doing much athletically, I joined my work softball league and thought at least I would try hard and have fun. But when I hit a weak ground ball to the shortstop and decided to “hustle,” disaster saw its opportunity. The fields we played on were poorly maintained, with holes where the hitters stand. Instead of doing the smart thing and stopping after I tripped in this hole, I tried to keep running (because hustle!) and soon ended up falling hard on my shoulder with a loud snapping sound. The picture above is my actual X-ray from that night.
This isn’t a great memory, but it’s also a reminder of the miracle of healing. I had the option of surgery or just letting it grow back together, and I chose letting it heal. However, it didn’t “just” get fixed. It was by design and no accident.
My collarbone was broken clean through, with the two sides of the bone not even touching any more. I could feel them moving around independently. When I think about the millions of “decisions” the cells in these bones, interacting with the tissue around them, had to make to do something they’ve never done before, I have to be convinced something beyond my own anatomy and genetic history was at work. An impersonal evolution may have never seen these bones break in just this way before, so how did the bones know what to do? I certainly wasn’t aware of telling these bones what to do. They didn’t “just” fix themselves.
I can only credit the creative power of my Maker, along with David, who wrote: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” – Psalm 139:13-14
Everyday Miracles Miracles happen every single day in every human body, yet we often miss them or refuse to call them miracles. Maybe we do that because calling them miracles would mean we have to give credit to the power behind the miracle, and we’d rather not. Ever since Adam and Eve looked at God’s good creation and decided they’d rather make their own decisions, mankind has persisted in acting like bones that would rather grow apart than follow their Creator’s design. As a result, the world is broken into billions of personalities that don’t know how to connect, that don’t know how to knit agape love into the trillions of decisions they make, and interactions they have, each day.
We all have a choice in every moment: do we “just” do whatever we think is best and expect the right outcome to “just” happen, or do we look at nature and think that maybe the Person who knows how to make bones fix themselves knows how to guide our lives to the best outcome.
Our heavenly Father wants to knit us together once again, in a world that isn’t broken and where we aren’t broken. None of us are beyond repair, and our Maker will restore us if we let Him. Every human being in history has been bad at love, except One, and He is calling to every one of us to trust Him. “Just Do It” is not a good motto.
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” – Psalm 34:19-20
Have you ever heard a voice from heaven? If you did, how would you know to believe it?
In John 12:28 Jesus said in front of a crowd of people: “Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came from heaven, saying “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
When this voice spoke, the hearers still had to decide whether or not to believe it. Not everyone on the scene had faith that this voice was actually God. Not everyone who heard it and thought it was God decided that this God deserved their obedience, even though these people were eyewitnesses to a supernatural event that many today would be thrilled to see, to “prove” God’s existence.
Suppose someone on the scene looked up at the sky and said: “Who do you think you are? I don’t know who this ‘Jesus’ guy is, and I sure don’t know who you are – why should I follow you?” Perhaps the voice from heaven responds with a bolt of lightning, and this poor man is now a dead smoldering heap.
Now, the man next to this one could be thinking: “I really should follow this Jesus person, because if I don’t, the next bolt could be for me.” This is rational, solid reasoning. But reason is not the same as faith. This man’s other response could be: “Jesus really is the Son of God and deserves my loyalty. I’m grateful that He is willing to accept me as I am.” Did the lightning really provide convincing evidence of this? Are there still other alternatives? Could the voice be interpreted as some other deity trying to gain followers? Perhaps, so therefore this second response is more like faith than reason.
So, even faced with overwhelming evidence, “reason” does not power a decision to truly make a decision, “faith” does. Reason can lead a horse to water, but it can’t make him drink. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8)
In addition, claims contrary to Christianity require a supernatural faith (albeit one without a source), and here are two examples
1) “There is no God” – Some say that if he exists, he should show himself. Of course, as we have seen, even those who claimed to know Jesus Himself and witness his miracles say this would not convince a skeptic who decided not to believe. Also, how does one prove God does not exist? Europeans used to believe there was no such thing as a black swan because they had never seen one – until they traveled more of the world. They could never prove that black swans did not exist, but they could (and did) believe it. To prove it, they would have to be personally present in all parts of the universe at all times simultaneously – in essence, they would need to be God to prove that all swans were white. “There is no God” cannot be proven by reason, but a skeptic can claim that they have not witnessed God in their experience, and that they have faith that God does not exist outside their experience.
2) “Man is the result of purely natural processes” – If “natural” is that which science has explained, and “supernatural” is everything else, it turns out that this is a claim about the supernatural, not a claim that there is no supernatural. If you change “observed” to “observable” in Merriam-Webster’s definition of “supernatural” (“of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe”), you see this distinction. Merriam-Webster takes for granted that all things “supernatural” will become “natural” through scientific advancement in the way the current majority thinks they will. The consensus in Galileo’s day was that everything revolved around the earth – but the consensus was proved wrong. Proving that man is purely natural requires that the current thinking on evolution is correct, and faith that nothing outside of current knowledge could ever possibly over-turn it.
However, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, “Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic.” The “evidence” for one species changing into another is based on deductions from historical fossils, not on eyewitness accounts. While man has observed species mutate and acquire new traits, we have not yet seen a monkey (or anything else) mutating into a man. Regardless, theories of human evolution make a lot of claims about the history of mutations across species. It takes the observed changes within a species, and assumes that over millennia these mutations lead to one species changing into another, then another… It also claims that future evidence will inevitably support current evidence, in spite of the fact that evidence for evolution has been overturned repeatedly in history. Even in my own experience, what I was taught in middle school was different than what I was taught in college about evolution. If the historical track record is not that good, why have faith that the future track record will be perfect? Evolutionists refer to the process of discovery by trial and error consistently as “progress”, but is it always? Unless you already know beyond any shadow of doubt what you are progressing toward, how do you know you are progressing?
I’m not claiming to have dis-proved evolution here, but only to show that to prove it beyond a shadow of any possible doubt is beyond the power of reason. It’s another black swan.
Claims that there is no supernatural, are claims about the supernatural. These claims would require supernatural means to prove. They require seeing the future and the past, therefore, to believe a supernatural claim without supernatural evidence requires faith. It is beyond reason and proof. To me, the evidence and the logic do not live up to the claims they want to support.
Claims that there is no supernatural, are claims about the supernatural.
All people have faith – just in different things. Materialists fail to explain how man, as a mere complex set of materials and chemical reactions, consciously and intentionally goes about his life pondering deep thoughts about the origin of himself, while an earthworm does not bother. Christians – even the authors of the Bible – fail to explain how some consciously and intentionally choose faith when presented with miracles, while others do not.
There will always be such a thing as the “supernatural”. All people speculate about what’s out there in that realm of knowledge we can’t reproduce in a lab. Many people have dogmas about what’s in that realm – evolutionists believe that everything they do not understand yet will confirm that there is no God; religious people believe that there is enough evidence in the world we’ve already observed to warrant the possibility of a God.
On the one hand, you have the supernatural claims of natural men, claiming two things: 1) that they (and you) are the accidental result of millennia of chemical mutations, and that these chemicals follow rules that they do not know the origins of (yet); and 2) that the chemicals in their brain “believe” without a doubt that they can predict that what they do not know will confirm what they currently know and believe. This future evidence will prove their current belief, which was itself the result of a chain of accidental chemical reactions (but apparently under the purposeful control of some unknown thing that seeks to convince you of your mere natural chemicalness).
On the other hand, there is a written record of a man who claimed to be from that supernatural realm, who sees the future and the past, who knew there were black swans. How many there were. Where they were. And that the Europeans would eventually find them. This man asked for your belief – which set of claims is more reasonable?
“Come near to God and he will come near to you” – James 4:8
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 