Reasons for Having Faith
Part 5 of 7
The Question of Miracles
What about miracles? Are they for real? Can our belief in a cause and effect universe allow for miracles?
Laws of nature are generalizations about how things have been observed to uniformly happen. When one believes in God, it seems only natural to state that God’s regular patterns of acting in nature are what we call natural laws. A miracle is an exception to this uniformity of the way nature functions.
Insisting that God is bound by the laws of cause and effect would leave no room for Him to act in a personally responsive way. He would be relegated to being an observer as the wheels and gears of cause and effect that He created churn away. If God created natural laws then it stands to reason that He is not bound by them. A miracle is not an event without a cause; the cause is God.
If God is willing to override His laws of nature and do the miraculous, why doesn’t He do it more often and be even more obvious about it? To put it another way, if God really wanted everyone to believe in Him and have a relationship with Him, why doesn’t He show Himself more clearly?
Perhaps some people could be convinced if God made Himself more obvious, but He doesn’t want to compel belief in Him and a relationship with Him; He wants it to be voluntary. If God were to impose Himself on us, there would be little or no free choice. That God seems hidden is God’s way of giving us the space we need to make the choice to believe in Him and come to Him.
Are miracles possible? There may not be enough evidence to compel belief, but there’s enough evidence to make belief compelling!
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
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