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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Missing miracles God's party tricks By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 799 words Publication date: September 25, 2005 Whatever happened to miracles? The big ones? Miracles that would be blazoned across the front pages of newspapers, like “Entire planet under water – next year will see bumper rice harvest” (Ararat Times) or “Sodom: that’s your Lot” (Gomorrah Post). The Jewish-Christian God used to be miracle-mad. He started with the Creation of Heaven and Earth and then he couldn’t stop. The Flood followed, as did the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Bela and Zeboim and a whole bunch of stuff while the Jews were in Egypt. Waters running with blood, plagues of boils and locusts, death of the first born and so on. The Big G didn’t stop when the Jews were back in Palestine. He reprised his Red Sea trick by parting the river Jordan, then pulled down the walls of Jericho and stopped the sun and the moon in their tracks. You can’t help feeling that in those days God was like a child with a new toy. Not content with setting the universe in motion, he wants to play around with it. And like a child, he doesn’t think his miracles through very carefully. Like the time the Jews prayed for all snakes to be removed from Palestine. God ignores that request and doesn’t bother with alternatives such as making snakes venomless or people immune to snake bites. Instead, he tells Moses to make a brass serpent that will cure any man who looks on it after a snake has bitten him. That’s okay for those in the vicinity, but anyone bitten on the wrong side of a sand dune is just darn unlucky. Eventually God settles for more mundane tasks, often through a go-between. Instead of world-wide floods we have Elisha multiplying a widow’s oil or curing deadly pottage. Not to mention that some miracles, like the destruction of a harvest by thunder and rain and the feeding of a hundred men with twenty loaves, are not the hallmark of a Top-Notch Deity. Come to think of it, some of the miracles, like locusts and plagues of boils can be attributed to natural causes. Maybe God had nothing to do with them and is just taking credit for work he hasn't done. Or he was saving his energy for the next big event, the Cosmic ****. After all, if you only have sex once in Eternity, you want to make sure that it goes well. We don’t know how it was for God, but by all accounts Mary was shaken rather than stirred. With Jesus on the scene, God takes a back seat. Unlike Dad, who loves death and destruction, JC prefers to raise the dead, preach non-violence and turn up at parties to turns water into wine or feed five thousand. After Jesus, it’s down to the saints. Most specialise in medical miracles, curing various ailments. A few prefer party tricks, like appearing in two places at the same time (the twentieth century Padre Pio) and the stigmata (Pio again) – bleeding from places on the body where Christ was supposedly nailed and speared. We have only had minor miracles recently, but the fireworks come out again at the end of the world. It should be a time to celebrate, with a big party where God welcomes us all into Heaven, all the wine we can drink and a tour of the universe that we’ve only ever been able to glimpse through telescopes. But no, it’s back to plagues, bloody rivers and darkness again. Boring…! God may be omnipotent but he doesn’t have much imagination. Why not turn the sea vomit yellow, have everyone’s left toes and nipples fall off, or make the sun flash on and off like a neon sign? What I really want to know is where are the miracles that bring joy and happiness? For a few years while Jesus was around, some hungry people got to eat, a few crippled and blind men could walk and see, and a very small number returned from the dead. But what about the hundreds of millions who have suffered and died from earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and various unpleasant diseases? Why not save some of them, God? And make sure you tell us about it, so we know it’s really a miracle. And while you’re at it, why not, just occasionally, intervene when some of us go overboard? What were you thinking when the atom bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why did you let the planes fly into the World Trade Center? Did you bless the London tube bombers as they pulled their ripcords? The fact is, of course, that miracles, like God himself, do not exist. Or rather, there has only ever been one miracle in this world – and that is the absurdity that so many people continue to believe in them.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |