Concluding Unscientific Postscript 766
Concluding Unscientific Postscript I n Brazzaville and Kinshasa, in July 2008, I saw a number of men using their arms to pedal themselves in the roads on something like tricycles, an improvement over the means of locomotion available to them in the past. In one particular case, as I noticed the man's legs hanging down like shriveled sticks, I longed to be able to follow the example of Jesus in the Gospels, or some of the miracle claims collected for this book.
When I started writing the book, I felt some competition between my theistic theological sympathies (favoring and even articulating the possibility of miracles in principle) and the intellectual skepticism and reservations characteristic of my academic training (reluctant to credit most particular examples, especially those not susceptible to naturalistic explanations). My earlier background as an atheist who valued only naturalistic empiricism probably reinforced some of the latter predilections. Despite having witnessed some healings in conjunction with prayer, especially in earlier years, more recent disappointments and (in my academic work, especially recently) imbibing an Enlightenment hermeneutic of suspicion had me primed for a significant degree of skepticism. (Sometimes we academicians use the hermeneutic of suspicion as a surrogate for faith: doubt all that you can, and if anything is left at the end, you may tentatively accept it.)
As a Christian I believed in miracles in principle but wondered about the veracity of many claims today. In a number of cases, further research reinforced my suspicion about particular claims (though not, of course, about the fact that people make them). Enough other cases, however, have rendered untenable for me personally my initial, knee-jerk predisposition to doubt any given claim to supernatural activity at the outset. My training makes it easier to evaluate critically than to trust, but at some point the intellectual honesty valued in my training also compelled me to go back and critically evaluate the reasons why I found it so much easier to exercise skepticism than to exercise faith, even in the face of enormous evidence in favor of faith. While I may question or reject particular claims, I ought to be
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free to acknowledge other occasions that I find quite persuasive, even if they are not my own regular experience and even if they do not appeal to the conclusions that the academy expects one to find.
My personal questions today are not whether God heals people, sometimes in demonstrable ways. My struggles now are for the vast numbers of people in the world—probably the majority—who need healing of some sort or another and do not have it, most of whom have little access to medical help. In the week before I saw this man in Brazzaville, I prayed for my sick father-in-law and arthritic mother-in-law in Dolisie, Congo, and for the deaf ears of a happy little girl there. I did not see any immediate changes, and my heart broke for their need. (Happily, by God's mercy, my father-in-law did not die as we expected, and gradually he regained much of his health, though he died a year later from an unrelated infection.)
Nevertheless, as a Christian, I believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is alive and still has compassion for the suffering. I yearn to watch God touch the broken today.
Witnessing suffering in parts of the Majority World has increased my gratitude for doctors and medical science, which are helping to meet these heartbreaking needs on an impressive scale. In many parts of the Majority World, however, scarcity or expense of resources means that many or most people do not have access to doctors. Even when doctors sacrificially seek to help (I have heard grateful accounts about Doctors without Borders, the International Red Cross, and medical missionaries), they may face unusual obstacles. While I was in Congo, corrupt local officials in one region shut down a mission hospital under the threat of violence, leading to a large number of needless deaths (but the corrupt officials' profit—unless they happen to fall sick). We learned that in another town, a corrupt American had absconded with Congolese government funds designated for rebuilding a hospital. That sizable town to this day has only inadequate medical resources.
The universality of human mortality demonstrates that even the most optimistic construal of miracles will not eradicate human suffering; miracles do not always occur. The physical benefits that they confer when they do occur are necessarily temporary; but in the context of the Gospels' theology, they are also signs of a better, eschatological kingdom for all who hope in Jesus. In the full context of Jesus's ministry, such signs reveal a kingdom that also involves suffering and is currently overshadowed by the cross, the necessary gateway to the resurrection.
They function as promises of a better future, of ideal wholeness, because they reveal the God of the cross, who understands and embraces suffering and can be trusted to be found even there. As signs of kingdom power, however, the miracles foreshadow the hope that lies beyond the cross. While Jesus's unjust execution unveils the world's injustice, his ministry to the broken summons his followers to address the same concerns on which Jesus acted.
People are hurting and are in tremendous need. Like Elisha, I want to cry out, "Where is the God of Elijah?" The point of this book has been to demonstrate the plausibility of miracle claims in the Gospels and Acts, with a secondary purpose of
Concluding Unscientific Postscrip suggesting that these claims need not all be explained solely by recourse to natural causation. My starting concerns involved a matter of biblical interpretation rather than practical theology. But for me personally as a convert to the Christian faith, work on this book has also brought afresh to my attention the dramatic, moving character of human need, as well as the desire of a compassionate and living God to meet those needs. It has reminded me how the Gospel accounts' emphasis on healings is consistent with a God of compassion who cares about real issues of human life and death, issues that theology, philosophy, and exegesis in their most academic forms sometimes forget. I know that miracles often do not happen and that not every prayer is answered affirmatively. But whether through using medicine, prayer, or both, I now long more than ever to see those desperate human needs met.