I was asked by a Christian friend, “Why do you think that there aren’t that many miracles in Australia yet we hear stories of healing in other countries all the time? Does Jesus even heal today in Australia?
Healing and Scepticism
I responded that I think there are those healed in this country. But our society is so sceptical that they are immediately discounted. I remember very clearly having been sceptical about many of the stories I was hearing about healing in the 70s. I could not understand, why the only healing that I heard of locally were stories of people going for prayer and having their legs grow longer. It seemed like a good party trick but not much else.
Then I came across some new friends. The wife had had a hole in the heart and then after prayer, one day it wasn’t there. The doctors were mystified. But there was no big deal made because “there had to be a scientific explanation”.
The problem lies in the fact that we are so in love with science, sometimes I think to the point of idolatry, that “it must have a scientific explanation”.
Do Good Science
Don’t get me wrong. Despite being a Creationist at heart I believe that Darwin was God’s gift to the church. Because of Darwin, we are all, Christians and non-Christians alike, are now forced to do good science. We are not able to live in the dangerous world of belief systems that have no basis in fact. The more people we have doing good science the more God will be glorified.
However, the unfortunate spin-off of this love of science, is that very influential parts of our society are sceptical of the supernatural. So, as I said to my friend, “perhaps it’s a good thing that we don’t see a lot of healing in the public domain. It would just be rejected as flimflammery. Reducing the status of Christians to gullible fools even more than we already are.
It’s one thing to be a fool for Christ its quite another to be disregarded because of our foolishness.
Jesus, Heal or To Not Heal
Some have seen Jesus not performing many miracles in Nazareth (Mk 6:5, Mt 13:58) because of the lack of faith as being a restriction on Jesus’s power. That is, he was made less powerful because they had less faith. Or that his own power was somehow dependent on faith. But it was not that at all.
I mean he was clearly able to perform the miracles (Mk 6:5) but chose not to (Mt 13:58). Rather it may have been an act of Grace on his part in that just like our society what he had to say was left as being more important than the miracles He performed. Maybe to of performed the miracles may have resulted in them being condemned like Capernaum (Lk 10:13) and the other towns.
Paul said something like this when he said “I speak in tongues of men and Angels but if I have no love…”(1 Cor 13:1ff). After all, it’s not those who perform miracles that will be saved but those who show love…etc. (Mt 7:22).
Perhaps then it’s a good thing that we don’t see many high-profile miracles in the country. Perhaps it’s our job to provide the foundation for loving the lost in God’s Kingdom.
Richard
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