Comments from Pastor Billy about chapter eight of his summer book recommendation - a great read for high school graduates and their parents!
I’m Finding It Harder to Believe in Events Like the Resurrection--How Can I Believe in Miracles If I’ve Never Seen One? (Chapter 9)
As we get older the biblical accounts can start to look like fairy tales or “stories” that we were told as young children by our parents. One of the most challenging things is believing in things that we have never experienced before. Miracles in the Bible present just that type of challenge to our rational, humanistic, reasoned, 21st Century understanding of the world.
When speaking with other people about our faith, that includes many miracles, we must first determine whether they believe that miracles are even possible. If the person whom you are speaking to has a worldview that denies that miracles can happen, all things are explained in some way, then it will be difficult to just rush into a conversation about Jesus doing miracles or rising from the dead. Michael Kruger cites C.S. Lewis and his thoughts on miracles, “Unfortunately, we know the experience against them [miracles] to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.”
Arguing that miracles are not possible can only happen if you have taken the time to debunk them, each one.
But, there is often a more difficult position to come up against, that miracles are just highly improbable. Bart Ehrman for instance wrote that, “Any other scenario [besides a miracle]--no matter how unlikely--is more likely than the one in which a great miracle occurred, since the miracle defies all probability (or else we wouldn’t call it a miracle).” So, if there is an easier, more probable answer for an occurrence, then that is the way that we should view the event. As we have talked about in prior posts it is key to see how a person’s worldview shapes the way they interpret events. For instance, someone who has a naturalistic or atheistic worldview would see the events around them as nothing more than scientifically explainable phenomena. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ could then be explained away in any number of ways that are more probable than him rising from the grave, witnessing to many people, and now being in Heaven. However, for someone to discount that God would raise Jesus from the dead they would have to first prove that God does not exist. But, if they cannot do that, then the basis for claiming that the Resurrection or any miracle cannot happen is debunked.
Given a Christian, theistic worldview, it is easier to assume that miracles are probable. If there is a God who is in control of all things (Eph 1:11), created all things (Gen 1:1), cares about all things (Luke 12:6-7), and is active in his creation (Col 1:16-17); it would be assumed that miracles are possible. We have an astounding amount of eyewitness accounts, testimonies, and evidence that the Resurrection is a true account. Two of the best books, besides the Bible, written on the subject are Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ & Sean and Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. I would recommend all of those for someone wanting to look at the evidence we do have.
In Christ,
Billy