21 Comment(s)

1. This is a topic that I’ve pondered quite a bit over the years, and my views over time go progressively farther away from accepting ‘miracles,’ defining that term as the active intervention of Deity in a person’s life.

   Clearly, there are many events that occur that we are currently unable to explain or understand. As one small example, Cancer can go into spontaneous remission, and we have no scientific basis (yet) to explain these things. There is often a suggestive ‘linkage’ between events which seems to go beyond mere coincidence, for which we can offer no logical or rational basis.

   But to me, this is in the same concept that comes up in the general ‘Science and Religion’ discussion, referred to as the ‘God of the gaps.’ In this situation, people are unable to conceive of a scientific, logical or rational explanation for a set of facts or events, and so they attribute it to God. The problem is that as scientific understanding inexorably progresses, these facts and events end up getting explained, and the need to conjure up a Deity to explain how the world works gets smaller and smaller.

   Then there are the difficulties that arise when you do take the position of a Deity being actively involved in the day to day affairs of humans. For every person who attributes the healing of a family member to a ‘miracle’ performed by God, there are likely even more whose prayers went unanswered, and received no miracle. There are those who report miraculous promptings which enabled them to avoid a car accident or other tragedy, but the problem is that those who didn’t receive these promptings are not around to tell their story. So we end up only hearing the ’success’ stories. Similarly, I am chagrinned by those who randomly survive some tragedy and who credit God with their survival, leaving the families of those not so fortunate to wonder why God couldn’t have saved their loved one as well.

   Further, there are the random acts of suffering that are increasingly difficult to comprehend if we posit a God who takes interest in our affairs. When I read newspaper articles reporting babies in apartments killed by stray bullets from a street fight, I find this incongruous with the kindly, involved God portrayed in Matthew where a sparrow “shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”

   That said, I am still open to the possibilities suggested in stories like this, and the attitude of the sweet elderly ladies of the world, but I find the words of Paul to be appropriate here, even though I use them in a very different sense than he did:

   “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

   A child may believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus, but as they mature these beliefs are correctly discarded. It seems that as I grow older (and wiser? - many would argue against that description!) that the reassuring faith and beliefs I had in earlier years also need to be set aside in order to truly grow and understand the world as it really is. I still hope that there is some type of ultimate meaning and purpose to existence, but suspect that whatever may turn out to be true in this regard will have very little in common with the prayer-answering, kindly man-in-the-sky God that most traditional religions (including the LDS Church) affirm.

   Comment # 1 by Questions... | Mar 24, 2007 | Reply

2. I have always thought of the miraculous as things of beauty. What could be more beautiful than God visiting a boy? Or a blessing and plea to heaven resulting in renewed health?

   Although I am now persuaded to think of those kinds of events in naturalistic terms, I still see miracles in my life. They come in the form of a baby’s birth, a generous gift, or the world’s many splendors. Beauty is a miracle, whatever form it comes in.

   It isn’t quite what I used to believe about miracles, but that’s how I now see miracles in my life. Years ago, when I was more devout, I would have thought this view to be empty but, in fact, it is much more fulfilling than I would have thought.

   Comment # 2 by Mike | Mar 24, 2007 | Reply

3. Funny. I listened to that Sunstone mp3 12-18 months ago and I remember your question and Duffy’s answer. I didn’t know you at the time so it’s kind of funny to put two and two together now that we’ve met.

   Your question stuck out to me because you were so young compared to the average-age Sunstone attendee (and questioner). (I think you mentioned your age or that you were in college or something like that when you asked the question.) (I also remember one of the panelists asking if you were married or available because he had a son about your age who thought like you.) Your question was also my question, though I was a little further along in my life than you were at that time. I still agree with John-Charles’s advice to you and I think it reconciles well with R. John Williams’s recent “isostacy” advice.

   Comment # 3 by Matt Thurston | Mar 25, 2007 | Reply

4. As for miracles, my take is similar to your ideas and those expressed in #1 and #2 above. My feeling is that most miracles can be explained in one of two ways:

   1.) Some percentage of miracles are coincidence… the person would have become healthy again anyway, the car would have started anyway, the woman would have gotten pregnant anyway, the job would have come anyway, etc.

   2.) Some percentage of miracles are self-fulfilling… the individual tries harder to find a job, etc.) or there is a placebo effect (i.e. the person thinks God is healing him/her, so the body reacts as if it is being healed, the mind-is-more-powerful-than-the-body idea.

   I don’t consider the above viewpoint cynical at all, just realisitic. My view (or you could say “belief”) of God/Kosmos is the “Distant God” approach. As such, my view (similar to Mike’s #2) is that God sets up a framework with natural or commonly-occuring “miracles” (i.e. life itself, or everything we know about our beautiful Universe), and then by design steps back and lets our free agency take over from there. The mess we make of our world and our lives is how we learn. To step in and interfere with the process raises far more questions/problems than it solves, in my opinion.

   Having said that, I don’t rule out the existence of miracles—like God, we cannot prove they don’t exist—just that most of what we call “miracles” probably have a less supernatural explanation.

   Furthermore, and maybe paradoxically, I think there are benefits to living as if one believes in a “Benevolent God,” (or the idea that God is active in our lives). The act of calling on God for help (provided it is for the right thing) has a centering and humbling effect on both the individual and community, so that one often achieves or discovers the answer to what one is asking for. Maybe this provision is a a kind of indirect miracle after all. If that is the case (or if God intercedes directly), I think miracles have nothing to do with one’s priesthood or robes or ointments or specific incantations or religion or sex, but everything to do with the purity of one’s heart/faith.

   Comment # 4 by Matt Thurston | Mar 25, 2007 | Reply

5. I am logic-driven to a fault.

   I believe in something that I call “miracles” and believe that I’ve personally witnessed it a few times in my life.

   Comment # 5 by Rick Jepson | Mar 25, 2007 | Reply

6. When they found a fist-sized tumor in my chest in 1994, my dad gave me a priesthood blessing of healing. I don’t remember what he said, but in the middle of that night I was awakened by a strange, warm, swirling sensation in my chest, where the tumor was.

   After they did the autopsy surgery a few days later, they reported the puzzling news that the cells really had no discernable characteristics. However, SOMETHING malignant had to have caused a tumor of that size and nature to grow, so they called it Hodgkin’s disease almost by default.

   I have no doubt that the malignancy was miraculously taken from me that night when I felt the strange physical/spiritual sensation. However, I went ahead and followed the medical protocol of six months of awful chemotherapy following by a month of radiation treatment. The tumor melted away extra-fast and never came back. I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t undergo treatment…

   I like it that this miracle came in such a low-key, personal, private way.

   Comment # 6 by Chris Bigelow | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

7. I’ve seen and heard of a handful of similar instances to Chris’s experience in #6 above. But nothing in my personal life is quite so spectacular. However, I have a brother who survived a horrible auto accident when he was 18 that kept him from serving a mission, and was a couple of years recovering. We attribute his survival to the several priesthood blessings he received while in the hospital. My own mother survived three episodes of cancer, numerous other illnesses, and lived to be 80, succumbing to complications from a fall in a nursing home. She also received many blessings, and far outlived any of her doctor’s expectations (she actually out lived most of them).

   I see miraculous elements in both of these stories, but to an outsider, they might seem to either be coincidence, or the power of positive thinking. Faith seems to be where you find it, and if you look for these kinds of miracles, they do seem to be out there.

   I am reminded of our gospel doctrine discussion yesterday about parables, and the whole concept of them being only understood fully by the faithful. While on one hand it hardly seems fair to the outsiders, to those who practice faith, the rewards often seem logical.

   And yet, I remember well other relatives and friends who have not been saved, despite their faithfulness or the faith of their families. Every time I think about the issues of evil and suffering, every time I think I have the answer, I realize that I don’t. About all I come up with is that the atonement helps us to deal with these things, and that sometimes these prayers are answered, and other times they are not. Our free agency seems to be a fragile thing, and messing with it very non-trivial.

   Quite often the miracles we see come from those who have not seen the miraculous events in their lives, to save their loved ones, or heal an injury, yet still find the faith to move forward, and in fact seem to find greater strength. That seems to be the case with my mother, who never succumbed to her many debilitating illnesses, and struggled with her health through out her life, yet remained faithful to the end.

   I hope to find half her strength.

   Comment # 7 by Kevinf | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

8. Saturday, my wife’s grandfather went into the hospital for a heart attack, and my three year old daughter said “Let’s have a prayer.” We were in sort of shock, so she said the prayer. She prayed that my wife’s grandfather’s heart would be ok, that we would be comforted, and that we would have quesadilla’s and celery for lunch. Her prayer worked out just as she prayed it.

   When I asked the Lord if the Church was true, I received an answer. So I joined the church.

   When I was diagnosed with HIV and prayed, I received an answer that I did not really have HIV, and I didn’t. It was diagnosed in error.

   I could go on, but I think any communication with God is a miracle.

   But then again, I am not a “sunstoner”

   Comment # 8 by Matt W. | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

9. Matt W,

   I can think of so many references to the faith of a child, it seems silly to recount them. I, too, have seen many instances like you describe, and I would agree that any communication with God is a miracle.

   But I’ve also seen many heartbreaks where prayers were not answered the way we had hoped. I can remember specifically my brother in law, taken by cancer at age 46, leaving his wife and 4 kids. The miracle is in seeing how well his wife and kids have done in the intervening two years. They’ve found strength and hope and courage, and have accomplished miraculous things. And their faith has never wavered. It’s not been without a lot (and I mean a lot) of very difficult challenges, but I hope I will do as well if ever faced with similar obstacles.

   I believe in miracles, but they aren’t always the ones we most hope for.

   As to your “sunstoner” comment, try not to be too quick to judge. There is a huge spectrum of belief out here in the bloggernacle, and you never know who you might run into. Most would resist labeling, while some others would welcome it.

   Comment # 9 by Kevinf | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

10. KevF, it wasn’t a slight, it was more of a response to “So I wonder, to my intellectual and generally logic-based Sunstone friends, what miracles have you experienced in life and how do you explain them, if you believe in them at all?”

    I an not a sunstone friend, as I do not read sunstone magazine, and have never been to a sunstone conference.

    Comment # 10 by Matt W. | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

11. Oh, and I certainly agree that miracles are not soda pops falling out of the vending machine of the Santa God. But I do believe in them, and am grateful for the ones in my life.

    Comment # 11 by Matt W. | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

12. Matt W,

    As I said, I do believe in miracles. I also believe in faith, but don’t totally discount reason, either. And when it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, in my life, faith usually trumps reason.

    I use the term faith to mean fidelity to and in a loving Father in Heaven, whose ways I don’t always understand, but as we are constantly reminded, we can know the mysteries of the Kingdom. I believe in knowledge of all kinds, just as described in D&C 88. I also know that questing is something we are all asked to do. For some, it takes other paths than faith. I hope we all end up in the same place. no matter our path.

    So, yes, I am given to both faith and logic. Alma 32 becomes more and more the touchstone of my faith, as I experiment on the word, knowing that I “may” get the answers I seek. but always enough faith to build a logical framework of how to deal with the world of the spirit.

    Comment # 12 by kevinf | Mar 26, 2007 | Reply

13. Matt T, I feel that most miracles are self-fulfililng (i.e., placebo effect, like you say). But, even if we are working harder and more open to opportunity and that is what allows for big things to happen (miracles), my similar belief in regards to God setting up the framework for big things to happen still allows them to be grand and miraculous and awe-inspiring. For example, the very ability of our bodies to heal is miraculous to me, and the very ability for our minds to work in such a way as to solve difficult problems is miraculous to me. That is more miraculous to me than a tornado that appears to miss a building unexplainably or a child that is lost and then found apparently by chance. Those just seem like random, happenstance events.

    Kevinf, I’ve never heard faith described in such a way - fidelity to Father (I’d add and Mother) in Heaven. I like that this definition allows us to be angry or disappointed in or upset with God, without betraying God. I’ve felt disappointed in/by God much of my life, but always been a follower and believer, if you will. I suppose that is possible because one can maintain fidelity in a relationship on both the good days and the bad.

    BTW, I apologize if my choice of words (”intellectual and generally logic-based Sunstone friends”) seemed to stereotype or exclude. Wasn’t my intent at all. I just meant that, many miracles (including the one I mentioned in the post that a family member experienced) are described in such emotional, logic-ignoring ways. And I was hoping to hear the other side of the story - less emotional, more logical, but still faithful descriptions from all of you. So thank you for sharing.

    Comment # 13 by Elise | Mar 27, 2007 | Reply

14. Elise,

    I can’t take credit for the fidelity definition. I picked it up from an essay by James Faulconer, in the dept of Philosphy at BYU. His essay on faith and reason was published, along with a number of others, in a book of essays in honor of Truman Madsen a year or two back. I believe it was published by FARMS.

    The idea, however, felt good. I think of it, as I do my relationship to my Father (and Mother) in Heaven, in familial terms. I have fidelity in my relationship to my wife, as she does to me, which allows us to continue loving even when we misunderstand each other. I’m not sure I would go so far as to saying it allows me to be angry with God, but certainly frustrated on occasions, because as a child, I don’t always understand. But with continued fidelity and faith, the relationship becomes stronger.

    I have a friend who for years worked at Primary Children’s Hospital in SLC, who described a couple of the kinds of experiences where on Tuesday there was a life threatening tumor, and and Wednesday, it was gone after a priesthood blessing. I’ve heard of those, but that was not my first hand experience.

    Part of faith is being able to “see the Lord’s hand in all things”, which can seem to others like coincidence, but in the realm of faith, becomes verification. It just doesn’t always happen that way, and I don’t always understand why. Part of it certainly is agency, part of it is the blessings that come from dealing with adversity, but the biggest part is that this life just is, and bad things happen. I can only take solace in knowing that this was explained to me in the pre-existence, and I must have weighed the pros and cons, and decided to come here anyway, knowing that it wouldn’t always work the way I wanted it to. Nonetheless, I know in Whom I have trusted, and that gets me over the tough parts.

    As to the “logic-based” title, I believe we are all wired up differently, both on an intellectual and emotional level, and some things come easier for us. Logic is a powerful tool, and useful for understanding about our Heavenly Parents, but it’s not always complete. That’s when faith has to take over, for me, and I find it not too difficult. I know it is more difficult for others, just as I know many who don’t seat the logic stuff at all.

    Comment # 14 by Kevinf | Mar 27, 2007 | Reply

15. Elise –
    IIt’s interesting people experience things in such different ways. For me, John Charles Duffy’s answer to your question in the Grant Palmer talk was the highlight of the session. It was one of those “aha!” moments for me. It opened things up, helping me to appreciate the way my studies in the Mormon tradition had enhanced my spiritual life, and yes, helped me feel closer to God (although fascinated with The Book of Mormon and Mormonism since age 10, I have never been LDS, nor has anyone in my family).

    I grew up in a conservative Lutheran church, which I left as a teenager, becoming a quite naturalistic agnostic. My spiritual journey led me to examine Eastern traditions, which I found useful, and then to the book “The Christian Agnostic” by Leslie Weatherhead, which opened me to a different approach to Christianity than I had known. An approach based in experience rather than belief. Upon retirement, Weatherhead, the minister at the Methodist Temple in London for decades, found himself frustrated that so many people were turned off to looking at what Jesus offered because they were told they had to believe all these things about him. . Weatherhead writes that Jesus’ basic message was “follow me” and learn to love — the rest he considers “extra baggage” with good reasons for thinking people to at least question.

    Today, while my theology has more in common with more liberal elements of the Untited Methodist Church of which I am a member, and while I love the Quaker/Friends Meeting’s emphasis on silence and social action– I find my journey most regularly expanded creatively with Mormon tools. What I call Joseph Smith’s “looking for truth whereever it may come”; sifting and sorting and examining. Again the focus is on experience, rather thanbelief. I found the essays in the book, “A Thoughtful Faith: Essays on Belief by Mormon Scholars,” edited by Philip Barlow, to be quite helpful.

    In fact I experienced a shift in how I approached questions of historicity after reading Leonard Arrington’s essay in that book. Arrington wrote, “Because of my introduction to the concept of symbolism as a means of expressing religious truth, I was never preoccupied with the question of the historicity of the First Vision — though evidence is overwhelming that it did occur — or many of the other reported epiphanies in Mormon, Christian, and Hebrew history. I am prepared to accept them as historical or as metaphysical, as symbolical or as precisely what happened. That they convey religious truth is the essential issue, and of this I have never had any doubt.” I also found John Kesler’s essay in the same book helpful, showing me an approach to Mormonism based on experience, rather than signing on to a belief system.

    Now, regarding miracles: I live with a miracle; my wife, Shanon. At age six she was given six weeks to live. A large cancerous tumor in her brain was deemed inoperable (or at least the chances so slim her parents wouldn’t allow surgury or radiation treatment). Shanon only knew that people around the world she did not know were praying for her. Instead of her dying, the tumor began shrinking and within a couple of years was completely gone. She is now 39 years old. I do believe miracles are possible!

    Comment # 15 by Les Gripkey | Apr 7, 2007 | Reply

16. Statistics show that women (maybe men too, but I haven’t read those stats) who have been physically or emotionally abused by their partner often gravitate towards the same kind of partner the next time around. And the next. And the next. Regardless of how much they fear being in a harmful relationship, somehow the patterns of behaviour formed manage to repeat themselves time and again. Some say that abusers can even spot them easily and know exactly what to say to fool them into thinking this time will be different.

    Yet I have a different tale to tell. I have four very close friends who have come out of relationships so bad that they literally had to run and hide to survive. One woman had to change her name and move states. Another is only now safe because her ex-husband is in jail for trying to murder a man (a year after their divorce). The third dealt with death threats for a while, but they subsided. The fourth was lucky - when she moved back to her home country her ex-husband, who had hidden his abuses from his fellow church members, did not follow her because he knew that the members there were all aware of what he had done to her. All four women came out of their marriages emotional wrecks, three of them with children to care for.

    ALL FOUR of these women ’somehow’ managed to immediately stumble upon good, strong, valiant men who, rather than take advantage of their vulnerability or give them up as having too much baggage, took on them and their children and became their foundation while they rebuilt their lives and their emotional stability. Only one of these men was a Latter-day Saint. One other became a member. All four were willing to turn their lives upside down in order to build a relationship with women who had to relearn how to even have a stable, loving relationship. And in every case, the guy in question was somehow exactly right for that women, suited to her as if they had been computer matched. As a friend I have been astounded time after time watching this happen, so happy that after such a horrible experience they have somehow found exactly the person they really needed. And every time I felt, I really knew, that it was a miracle. Statistics went out of the window and God stepped in and directed their path. So yes, I believe miracles happen.

    Comment # 16 by chosha | Apr 9, 2007 | Reply

17. Les,

    Interesting that you should have a copy of “A Thoughtful Faith”. It’s been a favorite of mine for years, and is well read and well worn. I especially liked the Arrington essay you mentioned, along with many otheres there. I feel that the book takes the approach that there are many paths to religious faith, including reason and experience. I don’t have my copy here, but there is one essay I recall that I will look up tonight, and comment on.

    I’m glad for the miracles both you and Chosa mention. They take many forms, and are experienced in many different ways.

    Comment # 17 by Kevinf | Apr 9, 2007 | Reply

18. I think complex systems, i.e. human body or economies for instance, are always likely to surprise us due to the interplay of the many variables that influence outcomes. I certainly don’t know how faith fits into the general equation. I find it helpful to not be too concerned with whether such surprises are the result of God blessing or cursing me, but rather to simply express gratiitude for life and seek for help when needed. I hope I haven’t side stepped the original question completely.

    Comment # 18 by Brad | Apr 10, 2007 | Reply

19. Brad said:

    “I hope I haven’t side stepped the original question completely.”

    To me (see my intitial somewhat lengthy response above, #1), your response in fact directly addresses the question. My concern is that many of the other comments, which affirm the occurrence of various miracles in their lives, can unintentionally create pain and conflict for others whose prayers were not answered with similar miracles. I wince at many Testimony meetings because of this.

    My position is somewhat ironic, since I survived an extremely serious illness a number of years ago, which many around me attribute to a ‘miracle.’ Like Brad, though, while I am extremely grateful for the outcome, I can’t attribute it to the direct, personal intervention, of a divine being. Please re-read my initial response where I elaborate on my reasons for thinking and feeling this way.

    Comment # 19 by Questions... | Apr 11, 2007 | Reply

20. I have seen miracles. I have participated in them. My life seems to be a miracle. Sometimes I have been cynical, but not now.

    I am hoping for just one more…. please.

    Comment # 20 by Bob | Apr 11, 2007 | Reply

21. Miracles certainly pose a paradox. On the one hand, I think it is very difficult to deny the possibility of miracle, and there is certainly much evidence in scripture to affirm miracle (at least if one believes that the miracles of Jesus, for example, were literal events). On the other hand, God’s interference in our lives seems to, at least on some level, interfere with agency.

    To me, the great mystery is not whether miracles exist…I think they undoubtedly do. As has been mentioned there are too numerous examples of large sets of people testifying to miracles. If we assert miracles do not exist we must, as C.S. Lewis puts it, ascribe this behavior to:

    “…collective hallucinations, hypnotism of unconsenting spectators, widespread instantaneous conspiracy…. Such procedure is from the purely historical point of view, sheer midsummer’s night madness…”

    In any case, I don’t think we should limit “miracle” to acts of physical interference. God’s willingness to spiritual interfere with our lives seems the paramount example of a loving God. Spiritual intervention is miraculous (in the sense that it requires interference with an agent external to our system).

    To me, if one is to say that physical miracles can simply be explained by people fooling themselves, or a placebo effect, and justifying this on the fact that God does not interfere in our lives, we open the door to explaining away spiritual impression in the same manner. I have less experience with physical miracles, but of spiritual healing and comfort I can attest. If God does not comfort or send spiritual miracles to his children, then what good is it believing in God?

    The great difficulty, then, is explaining God’s involvement in our lives. If we do have a God of miracles, why does he perform miracles at some times and abstain at others? This is the mystery.

    However, even given this difficulty, I think in terms of practical religion, how I live my life, it is important for me to not expect miracles. As Joseph Smith describes in the lectures on faith, we are to have faith based upon a knowledge of the correct attributes and characteristics of God. If we have faith in God, based on this knowledge, we must trust in the fact that performance of miracle, or abstaining from performing miracle, is a manifestation simultaneously of both his love and justice.

    Mortals with limited knowledge of the divine perhaps do not see the selection to perform miracles at certain times, while not performing them at others, as “fair”. I’m not sure that “fair” even matters, but if it does, God’s judgment of fairness exceeds any judgment I can hope to make. In the end, I think we should accept miracles as a fact of our life here on earth, praise God for them, but not be discouraged when a miracle does not happen when we think it should. Also, we can expect God’s quiet comfort (a miracle in itself), when the miracle we want does not materialize.

    Comment # 21 by Eric | Jul 6, 2007 | Reply

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