Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

In China today, just before national exams, parents and children will sometimes go to Buddhist temples to pray for good luck.  Typically these parents and their children have prepared for these exams very hard, and they are not asking the spirit whom they address in prayer -- Kuan Yin -- to provide an alternative to hard work.  They are not asking for a "miracle" that obviates the need to study, but for a "miracle" that is complementary to study.  They are seeking divine guidance and assistance which works with, not against, their own efforts.

In Rwanda today, when a loved one is seriously ill, his or her friends and family will do something similar.  They will go to a church and pray to God for healing.  Of course, at the same time, the will provide their loved one with the best medical help possible.  They know that diseases have power, too, and that death takes its course on all people.  They ask God to help in whatever ways God can to extend the life of their loved one, until death can come naturally.  They are not asking for a "miracle" that violates God's will, but for a "miracle" that is complementary to God's will, whatever it is.

Of course, these kinds of activity are occuring all over the world today, and not just in China and Rwanda.  I mention China and Rwanda because, as it happens, I am faculty advisor for international students at the college where I teach, and I have been visiting with students from these two countries over the past few weeks.  On every continent people are praying for what John Cobb calls miracles of local significance.

In addition to these local miracles, there are people all over the world today who are praying for translocal miracles: that is, miracles which involve large numbers of people who do not know one another in an intimate way, but who are nevertheless implicated in one another's lives.  After the genocide in Rwanda, many people in that country prayed for healing for the people of Rwanda.  They prayed that the people in that country might come to care for one another and live together in peace and freedom.  And today there are people in China praying for their nation in similar ways.  They are praying for miracles.

Is it reasonable to hope for miracles?  Is is reasonable to pray for them?  Can a person believe in miracles and in science?  We asked John Cobb, one of the world's leading Christian theologians, to help us begin thinking about this question in a philosophical way.  He is not offering a final word, but he is offering an encouraging word.  Keep in mind that. for process theologians such as John Cobb, our universe is indeed enfolded within a Life whom people address by various names.  He uses the word "God."  And keep in mind that, for process thinkers, this Life is continuously influential throughout the universe, and also on our small planet, both locally and translocally.  God does not come and go; God is always here, with us.  But also know that God's power is that of love not compulsion.  Often this power is soft and quiet.  But sometimes, as John Cobb makes clear, this power can be dramatic and astonishing.   It can be miraculous.  Here, then, is an encouraging word about miracles:

Miracles have a bad reputation in the modern world.  Hume spoke for “modern man” when he said that it was vastly more probable that people lied or were deceived than that their accounts of miracles are true. 

The issue since the Enlightenment, however, has not been a factual one.  The flat denial of miracles is based on metaphysics rather than on experience.  The metaphysics is based on a physics that declares that “natural laws” have universal validity and can explain everything.  In this context “miracles” are defined as events that are in conflict with natural laws.  Clearly they are excluded. 

The fact that miracles play a large role in traditional religious thought shows, to the modern mind, that religious thought must be superseded by science.  Deception and fraud play a role in every dimension of human existence, and perhaps more in the realm of “miracles” than elsewhere.  In any case, the discovery that deception and fraud do occur in some accounts of miracles is used to justify the total rejection of miracles.

This modern way of putting matters, however, is confused and confusing.  Traditional religious teaching never affirmed miracles in the sense of "conflict with natural lawas."  Since traditional thought did not include the idea of natural laws it cannot say anything about the breaking of such laws. 

The critics of Christianity and other traditional religions are right in one respect.  “Miracles” play a large role in the Bible and in Christian history.  But if they are not violations of natural law, what are they?

In the Bible, miracles are astonishing events in which God is seen to work dramatically.  The definition is difficult, because the line between what is ordinary and what is miraculous is not always clear.  God is at work in everything; so simply appealing to divine agency does not draw that line.  However, a major significance of miracles was to give divine authority to someone.  In the Gospel of John, the miracles worked by Jesus are called “signs.”  The Catholic Church often appealed to the many miracles worked by its saints as a “sign” of its legitimacy and divine authority.

A very remarkable occurrence which is felt to represent God is a “miracle,” and in that sense I affirm miracles.  For example, there have been some very remarkable events of great historical importance that I think of as miracles.  The shift without violence that took place in South Africa from apartheid to an inclusive democracy was, for me, a miracle.  I think of it as a miracle not only because it was very different from what was expected but also because the key players were serious believers in God who were open to divine guidance.  Through them God brought about results that were the opposite of what I and almost everyone else expected.

Most miracles are events of local significance.  They are especially important in the Catholic Church because people cannot be named saints unless they worked miracles.  The great majority of these events are remarkable and unexpected healings.  When a healing occurs in direct contradiction of what responsible medical professionals anticipate, we are inclined to speak of this as a miracle.  When the one who is healed is a person of strong faith, or when some individual who is well known for the gift of spiritual healing has been involved, or simply when many people have been praying for this healing, the sense that it is miraculous is heightened.

There is no strict contradiction between affirming that natural laws are never broken and affirming miracles in the biblical sense.  No one supposes that we know all the laws of nature.  In any case, these laws need not be understood as rules imposed inflexibly upon the world.  They may be understood as descriptive generalizations about what happens.  In this case they are statistical.  Statistical laws are not broken when something happens very different from what they lead one to expect.  But astonishment and wonder are often appropriate responses. 

Further, one may even formulate some generalizations or “laws” about these miracles that we often call “faith healings.”  Common sense based on extensive experience recognizes that the emotions and expectations of one who is sick play a large role in the process of healing.  The effects that expectations have on the body are such that no test of the value of a drug is valid unless the drug is proved to have more benefits than a placebo.  A change of emotional or spiritual state can have a quite dramatic effect on the body.  This can be the result of the influence of others.  More surprisingly the attitude and expectation of one person may also have a direct effect on the body of another.  

The body is always working for its own healing.  Some of us associate that with God’s universal activity in the world.  When the mental and emotional state of a person supports this healing work it can achieve quite remarkable results.

Parapsychologists have engaged in numerous experiments that show the influence of a person’s mind on her or his body, of one mind on another, and of the mind of one person on the body of another.  Modernity has pushed all this to one side in order to develop chemical cures and remarkable operations.  This has led to astonishing advances.  But none of this in fact excludes the functioning of the human spirit in other ways that interact with the physical causality that modernity has emphasized.  In cases in which this other functioning becomes the dominant factor in what happens, believers speak of miracles, whereas modern people are likely to suppose that further scientific study will provide an explanation at the approved physical level.  

I do not doubt that more and more can still be learned about the body.  But I am a believer who is also convinced that more and more can be learned about the amazing capacities of the mind, the soul, and the spirit.  If their influence on the course of events is all considered “miraculous,” then the world we inhabit is thoroughly miraculous.  The events we are likely to call miracles are just the tip of the iceberg.