Miraculous faith

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"Faith does not ...spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith" - Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

There are those that prefer to separate Jesus as Teacher from Jesus as Miracle Worker, like Thomas Jefferson, who had a book in which he collected all passages of the Gospels except those containing miracles.  (This leather-bound book can be found in the Smithsonian museum in Washington.)  

 

As a growing child, Philip Yancey, however, experienced miracles as part of his daily Christian life.  They were the norm rather than the exception.  He saw miracles as the "natural complement" to Jesus' teachings (Yancey, 1995: 166).

 

As an aside, Yancey describes himself as a journalist rather than a theologian.  He says, "In my search for clues I look at the miracles not in systematic categories but rather as individual scenes, impressionistic snapshots from the life of Jesus." I appreciated this comment on his perspective as though I understood for the first time that being a journalist by nature, ie someone who journals, makes me see life in snapshots too, rather than in systematic categories.

 

In the time of Jesus' ministry, when someone was born blind or became paralytic or disabled, there reigned an attitude of "You deserved it".  People believed that sickness and disability came from sin, or so the Pharisees taught.  When the man born blind at birth was under scrutiny, Jesus explained that it was neither his sins nor the sins of his parents that had blinded him.  The reason Jesus gave for his disability was "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." (170)

 

The Pharisees' response is proof of Dostoevsky's statement that faith does not spring from the miracle, but miracle from faith. They said, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" (John 9.34, NIV)

 

In his book, The Jesus I never knew, Yancey gives as an example of the difference between pain and suffering a leprosy patient.  They experience no physical pain; quite literally their nerve cells don't alert their brain of pain anymore, thus causing themselves harm without realising it.  The pain they do experience is the pain of rejection from society. (171)

 

During my recuperation from a fractured pelvis at Milpark Hospital this year, my mother and I got into an argument over the state in which she found my apartment at the time of the accident.  Her comments hurt me so profoundly that I exclaimed dramatically that the emotional pain of her criticism at this time caused me more suffering than the physical pain of my broken pelvis.  

 

Furthermore, on arrival at the Milpark Rehabilitation Hospital, I realised after a bout of questions about the night of the accident that I had possibly not worn my glasses, and I was plunged into guilt.  After phoning the witness of the accident that the young man in the car was indeed the guilty one, I was relieved but nevertheless humbled by my own imperfections.  Again I exclaimed, this time to my pastor, that the weight of guilt is far greater than the weight of physical pain.  

 

"Mother Teresa, whose sisters in Calcutta run both a hospice and a clinic for leprosy patients, once said, 'We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy.  But these drugs do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted.  That's what my sisters hope to provide.'" (Yancey 1995: 173)  Physical pain seems to be the least of our worries.  It is the emotional and spiritual suffering that causes our greatest grief.  

 

"The sick and the poor," Teresa had said, "suffer even more from rejection than material want." She added, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." (173)  

 

Yancey encourages with these words, "One need not be a doctor or a miracle worker to meet that need." He is right.  I sensed a calling, when I read those words.  For I am neither, and yet I understand so deeply the human need for acceptance.

 

Friends play a vital role in a human's life.  Without them, the paralysed man would not have been healed.  Without them, I would not be walking today.  They brought me to Jesus in the same way the paralysed man's friends lowered him down a roof to Jesus.  To be carried in prayer is the greatest feeling on earth.

 

Jesus came to heal souls, not bodies.  Yancey wrote, "Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise.  But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert." (174) As much as this statement gives me hope, it saddens me.  What can be done in that case?  What can I do?

 

To conclude, not with an answer but with a question, a question that Jesus asked the disciples when they asked "Why?" about the sick, blind and disabled, in all matters it is far wiser to focus on the future instead of the past and ask, "To what end?"

 

 

 

 

 

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