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June 2, 2004
Hello everyone,
In the last issue, we spoke about the link between faith and action, concluding that we have all been given at least one mustard seed of faith that we must plant if we wish for it to grow. Today we will look at a specific context in which we find faith: because many of us have friends and family members who are in need of healing—or we ourselves need healing—we will see how the little mustard sprouts might look in the life of the believer who seeks that healing touch. We will strive to be as fair, balanced, and realistic as possible.
Within certain theological circles, there are those who deny all elements of the miraculous, claiming that miracles were something that happened only in the early church and are no longer in operation in our present day. Within this categorical dismissal of miracles, of course, is lumped any promise of healing—and particularly physical healing. With this objection in mind, there are at least two sides of the question to consider: First, those who make the claim that all elements of the miraculous ceased with the early church have little Biblical basis to support their proposition, instead taking their cues from what experience would seem to dictate. The other half of the equation, however, is that any honest, thinking person will have to acknowledge that there are indeed times when God does not seem to work in the same way He did in the early church—and times when He seems silent, distant, and uncaring. We’ll take both halves in turn.
It is, I believe, a mistake to dismiss all elements of the miraculous just because our personal experience does not often support their existence. With such a dismissal, we are sweeping away many eyewitness accounts that missionaries provide of the way God has been working on the mission field right up until the present. If we say that God works differently in industrialized nations than in third world countries, we should already begin to suspect that healing and other acts of the miraculous are not in themselves suspect: there must be some other element. Of course, that element is commonly cited as being a lack of faith and probably for good reason. Whatever the cause, to say that God no longer works in miraculous ways based on our own experiences is to rely only on our immediate, comfortable existences and to turn a deaf ear on the reports brought to us by our missionaries and even people within our own country. We do well to say that we have not personally witnessed such events and leave our statement at that: such does not automatically dismiss the workings of God at large in the present day.
On the other side, you may be a person who believes very strongly in the miraculous, and may be strongly tempted to question that apparent lack of faith in others. Particularly if you attend a church where the miraculous is emphasized, it can be easy to be insensitive to other believers and bludgeon them for what appears to be a lack of faith without even realizing that is what you are doing. You may (correctly, I believe) maintain that God takes no pleasure in our being sick, injured, or otherwise infirm. But are you prepared to say that because God does not delight in our being sick, injured, or infirm that this admission automatically guarantees healing, provided we “do our part”? Does this conclusion automatically flow from the premises?
So now to the operative question: “Does God always heal?” I have a friend who holds to a traditional view that God always heals us in one of three ways: (1) directly, by His touch, (2) through doctors and medicine, and (3) through taking His children home. We’ll take his list and see if there are any modifications that need to be made. Now for some of us, we initially recoil at the third proposition that God heals by taking His children home, for it can seem the ultimate cop-out. In looking at this claim, it is important that we stop and reconsider the fundamentals of our faith. What is the ultimate hope of Christianity? We speak about Christ as being our Lord and Savior, but Savior and Lord of what? From what do we need saving? And why do we say that a person’s choice between committing his life to Christ or going his own way is the most important decision he will ever make? The Apostle Paul frames the Christian hope well in 1 Corinthians 15:16–22:
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.
Undoubtedly, if Christ never rose from the dead, our religion is worthless and people should indeed pity us, for we have been hopelessly deluded in believing one of the most sinister lies this cruel universe could have ever spawned. In such case, our faith is indeed futile, for faith placed in faith alone with no objective reality with which to connect on the other side is psychologically comforting at best but ultimately worthless in the end. But—each in his own way and to varying degree—we have come, we have seen, we have tasted, we have a tangible seal placed within our hearts, the deposit of the Holy Spirit. Scripture teaches us that Jesus Christ gained victory over sin, death, and hell—He holds the keys—and that no man comes to the Father but through Him. We also know that the world in which we live is imperfect and we are told why—it, as with all created things, became corrupted because of sin. This world is imperfect; there is no perfect fulfillment to be found in this life. Because of sin, there are the ever-present problems of poverty, crime, hunger, sickness, disease—and eventual death that discriminates against no one.
Look around you. What do you see? You see miracles of babies being born, flowers springing from the soil, new relationships beginning, spring blossoming in the air. But in the course of a century, what has become of the baby, in the course of a season what has become of the flowers, in the course of a lifetime, what is the eventual end of all relationships? Granted, new babies continue to be born, new flowers continue to sprout, new relationships continue to develop—but they will all end in the same way. And if we speak of justice, where is the justice in all of this? What of the wicked man who prospers or the Godly man who is trampled in the dirt? If there is justice in the universe, where is it to be found? But the Christian, you see, begins slowly to cultivate a different perspective: that of eternity. And the world looks different in light of eternity.
Once upon a time, two lovers sat down to watch a movie. She had seen the movie twice but he had never seen it at all. Settling down into their seats in the theater, they waited, the aisles packed, popcorn spilling out around their feet, the floor sticky from where a child had spilled her drink. Suddenly the lights dimmed and the silver screen flickered to life, the camera panning slowly around a dirty, dismal city as the opening credits scrolled across the canvas. Soon, the lovers were viewing a vile, wicked man with absolutely nothing lovely or redeemable in his character. Because he plans to rob them, he comes into the company of a very respectable group of citizens. Not surprisingly, there is a beautiful woman named Dealina whom the villain finds very attractive, though he has no qualms about double crossing her. Yet, quite unbeknownst to him, he is slowly and painfully learning a new way of life, the events in the movie forcing him to confront himself and the new feelings he has never felt before. By the time the closing scene unfolds, there is scarcely a dry eye in the theater, for the man has undergone such a beautiful spiritual transformation that no one can help being affected. (And yes, he and Dealina marry and live a happy life for the years appointed unto them.)
When the movie begins, the two young lovers experience different reactions. He does not like the man on the screen at all and even feels a little peeved with her for bringing him here, particularly now that his shoe is sticking to the floor from the spilled liquid. She, on the other hand, is seeing through totally different eyes. Why? Because she has already seen the end, and having seen the end, she understands the beginning. She does not see an odious villain but instead the documentary of a saint whose beauty shines even brighter with this false start, as he sets off his journey on the wrong foot. Indeed, seeing each scene in light of the total picture so transforms her perspective that the lovers are, in effect, seeing two totally different movies. Perhaps if we could see the total picture of our life? the lives of our loved ones? human history as a whole? Each scene might then fall into place, make sense, contain poignancy, purpose, beauty.
Or, what of the classic caterpillar? We have all heard that once he has spun his cocoon, we do him no favor by helping him out. He struggles and strains in what must seem to him a senseless futility, but, when those golden wings first emerge in the dewy sunlight, they now have strength enough to gracefully carry his body high above the fields. He was never destined to live in a caterpillar body or be entombed in a dark, dismal cell. Yet he has to go through these stages—and the final struggle with his imprisonment—before he can be all that he was created to be. Perhaps we are something like the caterpillar, caught up in what seems a senseless struggle leading to no apparent purpose? If we could only learn to see each scene as God sees it, what a difference that would make! Indeed, we must learn to cultivate an eternal perspective, for that is the only way anything will make sense. The imperfection we see around us—the incompleteness of all things—can only be answered in the light of eternity, for indeed, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has set eternity in the hearts of men, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Perhaps we will never fully know from beginning to end. Nevertheless, the hope of the Christian is that this life is not the end but the beginning—that spark of eternity designed for eternal glory: like the Apostle writes, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” We have been made co-heirs with Christ and just as He lives in the heavenly places, we too know that we will reign with Him—this world is not our home. Life was never meant to be like this; there is indeed something more for the regenerated believer who has been born unto the second life. But that something more will never be fully realized in this life. We should always remember that this world is not our home, and, while we might not always view it in this light, being taken home to be with God—that is, dying—is the ultimate healing, for never again will we have to die: we will have, for the first time in our lives, reached the place, and entered into the embrace of the Person, in which, and through Whom, all things will have reached fulfillment. (See The Whisper of Eternity Wafts on the Gentle Breeze for a poetic look at the beauty of this thought.)
With these thoughts in mind, let’s take a look at the revealing picture of faith and healing John offers when we encounter Mary and Martha grieving because their brother Lazarus has died. There are some very noteworthy intimations in this account, if we care to look into them more closely. The first six verses of the eleventh chapter begin with this description:
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, He said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was.
One thing we notice immediately in this passage is how much Jesus loved this family. Not only did the sisters tell Him, “Lord, he whom you love is ill,” we also learn that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” In fact, the order in which these women’s names occur is of especial interest, particularly when we examine the account in Luke 10 (starting with verse 38):
Now as they went on their way, He entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what He was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to Him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Because the Lord said Mary had chosen the better part, Martha sometimes gets criticized for her apparent lack of insight. Yet in the story of Lazarus, we see no such condemnation at all. Instead, it says that our Lord “loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus”—Mary, the woman who anointed the Lord with perfume and washed His feet with her hair is not even called by name in this description. Of course, this in no way implies that our Lord loved Mary any less; He surely loved her dearly. The point I wish to make is simply that while we can be extremely critical of other people (Martha, in this instance), our Lord is always gracious to everyday men and women who seek Him with all of their hearts despite their many imperfections.
As we pick up John’s account again we hear Jesus tell the disciples they will be going to Judea because “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” The disciples, misunderstanding, reply, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover” (vs. 11–12). But Jesus was speaking metaphorically of Lazarus’s death, prompting Thomas, also called Didymus (the Twin), to say, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him” (v. 16). By the time Jesus and the disciples arrive, we learn that Lazarus has been dead for four days. While Mary stays at the house, Martha goes out to greet Jesus, prompting a dialog in which Martha shows her understanding of the ultimate hope of Christianity.
“Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” (21–27)
Martha demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the eternal perspective, even in the face of sorrow, quite a different picture from the one we had when she was preparing dinner while Mary sat at the Master’s feet. When Martha summoned Mary, her reaction began the same way: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (32). The account does not record any dialog that may have passed between them, but it does show us another glimpse of Jesus’s deep love for his friends: “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see’” (33–34). And it is here that we find the shortest verse in the bible (and one of the most moving): “Jesus wept” (35). The account continues:
So the Jews were saying, “See how He loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?”
So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”
Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”
The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. (36–46)
In this instance, Jesus went beyond ordinary healing to raising a man to life, a man that He dearly loved. And in this case, many Jews placed their faith in Him, ensuring that they would pass on to eternal life after death. Still, as many theologians have pointed out throughout the centuries, Lazarus did eventually die again. All acts of healing in this life are only temporary, just as this life is itself temporary. When my friend says that God always answers prayers for healing, if not by direct touch or by doctors, then by taking His children home, my friend understands a great truth. There is no greater healing than the one we will all undergo some day when we pass from death unto life. It is precisely these ideas the Apostle Paul has in mind when he writes to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 15:35–55):
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as He has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam [Jesus Christ] became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
Death has been swallowed up in victory. (See Isaiah 25:8)
Where, O death, is your victory?Where, O grave, is your sting? (See Hosea 13:14)
For the believer, death is swallowed in victory. The imperfect puts on perfection; the perishable inherits the imperishable. This constitutes the ultimate hope of the believer. Yet what of my friend’s earlier claim that God always heals in one of three ways: (1) directly, (2) through doctors and medicine, or (3) by taking His children home? I think we need to be cautious here in the way we interpret these claims. If we mean that God always heals within the moment, I believe we are mistaken. There are times when God lets men and women drag on for years and years without touching their bodies either through His touch or medicine, only taking them home after a lifetime of suffering. Is this what my friend means when he states that God always heals? If not, I believe we must add a provision to his statement and note that in this life, God does not always choose to heal.
However, we need to keep a balance, exercising great caution in saying that God never heals, for there are many times that He does: He is probably willing to heal a great many times more often than He does. But when all has been said, we do not see the beginning from the end and we simply do not understand why God does what He does. We do know, as the account of Lazarus brings out so beautifully, that God loves us dearly. But it was four days after Lazarus was dead that He raised him, and, despite the joy it brought Mary and Martha, it does make one wonder what Lazarus thought about the situation. Whatever the case, we, like Mary and Martha, are to place our faith in God, not in healing. We trust that God, who does see the beginning from the ending and who loves us dearly, knows what He is doing, even when things don’t make sense. He alone is unchanging, and if we or a loved one do not get healed despite many prayers, it must somehow fit into His eternal will not to heal in this instance. To say that such a person lacks faith almost seems to suggest that faith should be placed in healing itself and not in God—to place faith in faith. We must never do this, for we have never been promised ease and comfort in this life; for that matter, we have never been promised an easy life at all—we have only been promised that it will be worth it all in the end. By all means, we should pray without ceasing, but we must also understand that sometimes the answer is no (more on this answer in a moment). I am reminded of a passage in When God Doesn’t Make Sense by Dr. James Dobson:
Every long-term believer has had the experience of praying for something that God appeared not to grant. As a case in point, let’s return to the story of my father’s skin cancer. Although he was healed of this disease, both he and my mother are in heaven today. Our prayers regarding subsequent illnesses did not keep them earthbound when the Lord called them across the Great Divide. If that is troubling to the reader, remember that Lazarus, whom Jesus miraculously raised from the dead, later died again. Every person Jesus healed eventually passed away. It is said that time heals all wounds. That may be true, but it also wounds all heals.
Does this seem contradictory to the affirmation of prayer I have expressed? It shouldn’t! Consider for a moment the kind of world it would be if God did exactly what we demanded in every instance. First, believers would outlive nonbelievers by centuries. The rest of the human family would be trapped in decaying bodies, but Christians and their children would live in an idyllic world set apart. They would never have toothaches or kidney stones or myopic vision. All of their businesses would succeed and their homes would be beautiful, etc. The entire basis for the God-man relationship would be undermined. People would seek a friendship with Him in order to gain the fringe benefits, rather than responding with a heart of repentance and love. Indeed, the most greedy among us would be the first to be drawn to the benefits of the Christian life. Most importantly, these evidences of God’s awesome power would eliminate the need for faith. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:24: “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he has already seen?”
Our faith, then, is anchored not in signs and wonders but in the sovereign God of the universe. . . . (101–102)
Before we take a closer look at God’s answers to prayer, sometimes we have objections with my friend’s second premise that when God does heal, He sometimes uses doctors and medicine. When we ask for healing, we often expect that lightning will come down from heaven, not that the ordinary channels of healing and recovery will be employed. Recently, I shared an account on the discussion forum along these lines:
I am reminded of a parable I once heard of a family caught in a flood. While praying desperately for God’s intervention, a boat sailed by in the waist high water and offered the family a lift. No, they answered. We are waiting on the Lord. A series of interventions continued as the waters rose higher and higher: a rescue raft, a helicopter, the list goes on. Each time the family turned the offer down saying that they would rely on the Lord. Finally the waters closed over their heads and they breathed their last. Standing at the pearly gates they demanded an explanation. God replied, “I sent you a boat, I sent you a raft, I sent you a helicopter,” and going down the list He concluded, “what more could I have done for you?”
God can and does use the ordinary things in the world around us; we know that in reaching others for Christ and showing love and compassion He often employs for these tasks His children—often rather ordinary creatures to say the least. He was Himself born in a stable to a peasant girl and led an inglorious life that found Him on a cross before His final triumph. We should never forget that in the hands of the Master, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the natural the supernatural, the weak things of the earth confound the wise.
When I was teaching the teenage Sunday school class, I often culled examples from my life. One lazy afternoon, I was sprawled across my bed, listening to music and praying earnestly, though I fail to remember now what was the cause. The music had stopped and I wanted to turn the tape over, in this case, easily enough accomplished by simply pressing a button to electronically reverse its direction. In any event, it occurred to me as I was laying there that I was very comfortable and I didn’t really want to move, unself-consciously asking God if He would adjust the stereo for me. His answer was clear, audible, and filled with love. He told me that He would reverse the cassette if I really wished, but that it was something I was fully capable of doing myself. There was much in what He didn’t say and I understood Him fully. In effect, the message was that though He loved me dearly, His desire was that I would do the things I could and leave the rest to Him. Of course, I assured Him that I understood and that no, I didn’t want Him to do it for me, I would do it myself because I felt a love for Him as well. He was not at all put out by my request, nor was I upset by His answer: we understood each other perfectly.
There are several things we can glean from this example. As I shared this experience with the teenagers, I told them that we should never hold back from expressing our concerns to the Lord, no matter how small. In my instance, God was not insulted by my trivial request nor did He tell me that He would not help: He left the choice up to me in order to instruct me. But, I told the teens, there are times His answer is a definite no, though He will sometimes explain Himself, as He did with me, or else reassure us, in effect saying, “trust Me.” So God sometimes says no with an explanation, sometimes with a sense of assurance to trust Him, and always with love. Other times, God’s answer is “maybe” or “be patient,” the message again being “trust Me.” And, of course, there are times His answer is an immediate yes. Indeed, God always hears and responds to our prayers, though the answer is sometimes no, a lesson the class did well to take home with them.
But what of this aspect of God wanting me to do what I could? Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) is famous for popularizing the expression “God helps those who help themselves” (Poor Richard’s Almanack page 54; the expression was first used by English politician Algernon Sidney (1622–1683) in Discourse Concerning Government in the second chapter, part thirteen). Certainly this statement contains truth, for we are ever growing toward perfection, though, as we have already noted, it will never be fully realized in this life. In any case, we are not to remain infants or blissfully idiotic robots. Nonetheless, I think that what Franklin means by this might be different than what I mean when I say that it contains truth: Franklin, being a Deist, saw God as being distant and the universe a machine He wound up and left to chart its own course. Because God was not personal, only those who helped themselves were “helped by God” in a view not far removed from Theistic evolution.
Yet what of this belief that God has wound up the universe and left it to chart its own course? Certainly the universe seems to operate according to a predictable pattern—we are surrounded by “natural laws”—and many of the things that happen in this world are not in accord with God’s immediate will. But Christianity has always maintained that nature existed separate from, and dependent upon, God. Yet what of suffering, sin, sickness, death? It is not God’s will that people hurt other people, but people still hurt other people. It is not God’s will that some people reject Him, but some people reject Him anyway. Doesn’t this point to a wound-up universe in which God is not actively involved? Not necessarily.
We can conceptually divide God’s will into two parts: (1) God’s immediate will, which can be thwarted, and (2) His ultimate will, which will never be broken. Think, for example, of a stream flowing down a mountainside, still going strong after thousands of years. We will say that this stream represents God’s will. Now then, if you or I dam up this stream, what will happen? Perhaps for a time the water will be stopped, but sooner or later, one way or another, the water will still find a way down the mountain, even if it must seep into the ground to do so or flow around the blockage in a hundred small trickles. The immediate will of God has been blocked at the dam of our free-will, but His ultimate will shall not be checked, for the water will reach the bottom of the mountain regardless.
God does not force His will on anyone, which is why we sometimes can become upset when God does not seem to answer our prayers for unsaved loved ones. He may reveal His glory to them; He may show them their sinfulness; He may plead and cajole them for years; but in the end, it is always their choice. God’s ultimate will is always accomplished and no man can stop it, but His immediate will seems frequently thwarted. Now whether this conception of God’s immediate will being thwarted is literally true in the mind of God or not, our illustration of the stream does demonstrate that God has foreseen and anticipated all the obstacles and is still fully in control of the world and our circumstances, even if it seems at times that the heavenly water is being held back by earthly dams. And beyond this, as Lewis writes so beautifully in Miracles, God has so designed nature that even when He does perform a miracle, it quickly blends imperceptibly into the surroundings to all but the one whose eyes are illuminated by faith:
It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn’t. If I knock out my pipe I alter the position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the law to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract of events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events. If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracles is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law’s proviso, “If A, then B”: it says, “But this time, instead of A, A2,” and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, “Then B2” and naturalises the immigrant, as she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess. (94–95)
Because God exists outside of nature, all this is possible. We are unique in the cosmos, for we have, if you like, one foot in nature and the other in eternity: we are creatures (and therefore a part of creation), yet we have been created imago Dei. Sometimes God will step into nature and set about an event to which nature accommodates. Yet sometimes He does not. And when He does not, we should not say that we lack faith, for we have all been given at least one mustard seed. Instead, this should remind us that our faith is to be rooted in Him and in Him alone. If we try to plant this seed anywhere else but in Him—including in the wonderful gifts that come from His hand—we will have been planting in the temporal which will all pass away. But if we plant our faith in Him, we will not only gain heaven, but have earth thrown in as well for all things will be made new, nature groaning alongside us as we await the ultimate healing in which death is swallowed up in victory. It is true that we have not seen the entire movie, but we do know how it ends. And if we can but keep that ending in mind, the individual scenes will make a great deal more sense—even when the immediate answer is no.
God bless,
Eric
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”
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