Media not interested in real miracle healings?

The Herald Sun's Bryan Patterson makes an interesting admission on his Faithworks blog:

“The Christian press sometimes follows up miracle claims with doctors reports. Years ago, I worked on a mainstream newspaper that did just that after a healing service and in most cases the doctors said they could find no rational explaination for pyhsical healings.

The mainstream media is sadly not so keen these days to investigate religiou miracle claims, especially when they involve Christians. I wish they were but it just ain’t so. And yet they probably occur at gatherings every day.”

I know of several people who have experienced genuine, document, miraculous healings - yet I've never seen the mainstream press do anything but try to deny them. Individuals in the media may disagree, Michael Willesee recently spent his own money to create the documentary Signs of God to try to prove the evidence of stigmata and healings. However, he did that after he largely 'retired' from the business, and financed it himself.

When Michael Willesee was interviewed on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope he was asked if proving miracles would really help people believe:

“ANDREW DENTON: So you believe that by a logically and scientifically-based proof of the miracles of God, this will regenerate faith?

MIKE WILLESEE: With some people. I don't think for one moment that the world's going to turn on its axis and say, "Okay, now there's a God because Mick told us." Some may be converted, some will at least open their hearts to the possibility that there is a God and that he's a loving God. He's a God of love. If I get that message through to a limited number of people, then I'll have done my job.”

That is a great quote, and very much my attitude as well. However, miracle healings are not ever a certainty. I and others that I know have gone to a healing service, only to find ourselves challenged in our faith and without a clear answer from God as to why we've not been healed. My current feeling about this is that God grants miracles like that as 'signs and wonders' to set the unsaved free and bring people to Him. Having become a Christian, there is less need for someone else to heal you - after all Peter points out that we have 'everything we need':

2 Peter 1:3
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

James also says something similar, but is even more specific about healing:

James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

So we can expect less public miracles and more private ones, answers to our own prayers - perhaps before others hear of it. Nevertheless, Christian's still get sick and die. Perhaps the ultimate answer to that is 'so what?' As a Christian dying should never be what we fear, as it ushers us into the next world - God's promised second creation, or heaven, or whatever you want to call it (the eternal city?). Eternal life is a given, it is thr address that we should all be uncertain about.

For more evidence that public healings and miracles were intended to help people have faith in God, there are several verses:

Romans 15:18-19
I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done — by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:4-5
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

1 Corinthians 4:18-19
Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.

1 Thessalonians 1:4-10
For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. nd so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, or they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

However you feel about miracles and healings you need to realise that the last thing we need in this world is a form of godliness, but not a real demonstration of it:

2 Timothy 3:1-5
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

On the other hand, not every 'miracle' is one, and some things that are altogether natural, such as childbirth, should rightly be regarded as miracles, despite not meeting the definition of one.

Daniel Tammet: Autistic Savant and Christian

Daniel Tammet is a very interesting young man, who is a high-functioning autistic savant. He is fairly well-known due to a number of TV and documentary appearances, and his ability to handle numbers and language is truly amazing.

I came across his blog today, whilst researching autism (my son has a friend with Asperger's Syndrome) and noticed he has blogged about being a Christian.

“I think many people are surprised to hear that I believe in God and that I am a Christian. I think this is because many assume that autism and belief in God are somehow incompatible. In fact other autistic writers, such as Temple Grandin, have written about their own spiritual beliefs and practices.”

Where I've been ...

create your own visited countries map

Europe - the home of the wrinkly teenager

Mark Steyn's CD Kemp Lecture has been re-printed in The Australian, and makes for some interesting reading. He takes a swing at Europe for its declining society:

The Continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those 17 Europeans countries which have fallen into “lowest-low fertility”, where are the children? In a way, you’re looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk café listening to his iPod. Free citizens of advanced western democracies are increasingly the world’s wrinkliest teenagers: the state makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912 – before teenagers or record collections had been invented. He understood that the long-term cost of a softened state is the infantilization of the population.

From: It's breeding obvious mate (emphasis mine)

More disturbing is this piece towards the end:

...As the most advanced society with the most advanced demographic crisis, Japan seems likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism.

The advantage Australians and Americans have is that most of the rest of the west is ahead of us: their canoes are already on the brink of the falls. But Australians who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we’ve led since 1945 in the western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world in which ever more parts of the map fall prey to the reprimitivization that’s afflicted Liberia, Somalia and Bosnia.

If it’s difficult to focus on long-term trends because human life is itself short-term, think short-term: Huge changes are happening now. For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs and ever less civilizational confidence, the question is a simple one: Can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then western civilization will go the way of all others that failed to meet a simple test: as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1870, “Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.”

Big Church = Big School

There is a classic argument about whether big churches are missing some intrinsic quality of a 'real' church. Proponents of smaller churches point out that they are more intimate, less focused on finances and more community oriented. Big church supporters point out that their better quality worship music can increase intimacy with God, that smaller churches are often unable to help others because they are cash-poor and that a bigger church has more people involved in every section of the community, from young to old, rich to poor.

It's an old argument, and one that has little scriptural basis for a decision either way. Jesus did not specify a church size, but he did deal with different size groups in different ways, from the crowds that followed him, to his close followers, his group of disciples and then individuals like Peter or Mary. The book of Acts talks about the different size churches, and historians tell us that some of them were quite large (in the thousands).

My take on this (currently) is that the big vs small church debate is much like the big vs small school debate. By this I don't mean that big schools are just like big churches, but rather the comparison of the relative merits of size for schools and churches is similarly loaded.

Some people want their kids at a small school, other like the resources available in a larger school. Some think a small school will encourage more mingling of kids, others think a larger school will help their kids find a niche for them. The debate then passes onto class sizes, styles of classroom, and so on ad infinitum ...

But let's be sensible for a moment, most of these issues fall into the "it depends" bucket. When is a school big? Well it depends upon the seize of the local community, the range of years the school covers, and what other local schools are like. When is big bad? Well it depends upon what you consider the best thing for your children at their current stage of life. Etcetera.

I think most people are most affected in this area by their own good/bad experiences, certainly I am. I went to a very large boarding school and hated it, I went to a smaller day school and loved it, when younger I went to a very small day school and found it boring ... so guess where I fall when it comes to debates about big vs small, and boarding vs day? However, my two youngest brothers loved boarding school - so I figure they will have a different point of view than me.

People seem to back big, or small, churches because of the same cognitive bias. Their experiences inform them of which they would prefer, and that becomes their default 'ideal' size. Some people take this to an extreme and formulate complicated theological explanations for why their preference is the 'right' one. Piffle.

Personally I think you've got to find a church you're willing to commit to, one where there is some accountability (both ways). That means taking into account the needs of all your family. It also means being willing to forgive when someone offends you, or being able to bend when someone imposes on you, and it certainly means allowing yourself to feel underwhelmed with church from time to time. Big or small, all churches are likely to confront you with similar issues - unless the church is so small that it's basically just your family (in which case it will have its own set of flaws). My advice? Choose your church like you would your kids' schools, by weighing the pros and cons, and then being willing to stick with that decision for the good of you all.

Why a blog about my Christian walk?

Well, firstly I like blogging, it can be cathartic, is always challenging and acts as a historical record of your public thinking. That last point is very interesting, I once had a wise pastor tell me that he felt he could never state his position on contentious issues without emphasising that this was his opinion at this time, given his own experiences and knowledge.

Covering such issues in a blog gives a record of how one's thinking changes, and is why I chose to emphasise that this blog is about my walk with God, that is, a chronicle of a journey. It also holds me accountable, which is an idea I find appealing, as I am as prone to changing my mind as anyone else.

Why call the blog Cracked Jug? It wasn't my first choice, those names are already taken, and I have too many blogs to want to name one after myself. Several years ago, just after becoming a Christian, I thought about getting a tattoo, and the image that most appealed was a cracked jug (something like an ancient amphora). To me that represented the way God had taken my life and put it back together when I became a Christian in my mid-20's. I never did get that tatt, but the appeal of the image remains with me.

Anyway, I hope you find this interesting, and perhaps challenging. I know I will.

A metaphor for rebirth

Oinochoe image sourced from: Poggio Civitate Archaelogical Excavation