Loaves and Fishes

Artwork by Robert Dodd

There are a relatively few different possibilities when it comes to the miracles of Jesus and miracles generally. Even people who believe in frequent miracles must know they don't happen a lot, don't usually happen in a public manner, and often don't happen where they would seem to be most needed.

One possibility is, they don't happen and never did. The miracles of Jesus were either metaphors or evidence of the power of positive thinking. According to a strictly rational scientific approach, they are bunk and always were and that's the end of it. Problem is, I don't actually believe that. I have seen some pretty damn weird things happen in this life, and generally they happened without the benefit of intoxicants.

The second possibility is, they used to happen, but not now. This is a viewpoint of some theologians. That during the early evangelic age and presumably earlier, they happened so that God could prove the truthfulness of his approved spokespersons and firmly establish the early Church, but that no longer applies. Because, you know, we're not in trouble in this world anymore and everyone believes and everything is set up peachy keen. This interpretation is silly and I will peremptorily dismiss it now. ;) 

A somewhat more interesting twist on this second possibility is that they COULD happen now, but that there are no approved spokespersons. That the Church turned from God in the Great Apostasy leading up to the ecumenical conventions and now all the priests, pastors and Popes and everyone connected with Christianity (and Judaism too I guess) are now too corrupted, so there does not exist anyone who has God's blessing to feed five thousand people with a tuna sandwich, for example. Which in theory the original disciples could do some of that or at least some of that happened to them, which might be more accurate to say. This possibility is interesting so I will get to it again.  

Will not normally feed 5000.

The third possibility is that miracles do happen, but they do not happen when they are needed the most. Not according to a terrestrial evaluation of need, anyway. I say this because during the Holocaust, millions of Jews and no doubt a lot of Christians too (there were Christians in concentration camps as well) prayed mightily for deliverance from their torment, a deliverance which did not occur unless you consider the Allies winning the war to have been that rather tardy deliverance. The problem with a God that intervenes in the world is, babies still get brain cancer and stuff. And you would think that, along with stopping the Nazis from killing 10 million civilians, this would be kind of high on the priority list. 

What we can conclude from this is that if overt miracles ever happen at all, they are extremely rare, and that God does not generally interfere in terrestrial matters even under the most apparently worthy of circumstances. When miracles happened in the New Testament, they were generally for evangelic purposes - the reason Jesus was in a position to need to feed 5000 people at all was that his previous miracles had generated huge publicity. If we take those numbers at face value, this represents what would have been a really large crowd anywhere in the ancient world, nevermind in a backwater like Galilee. So clearly that worked. God is perhaps willing to bend the rules to send a message to humanity, but not generally for purposes that we might consider useful unless it serves that other purpose first. This appears to be God's priority in causing miracles: that spreading his message of love and redemption is the most critical thing and any worldly purpose served is very much subordinate to that central intention. 

All this touches on the Problem of Evil, which is that if God is both omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, he both could and would stop things like baby brain cancer and the Holocaust. The only major weakness with the Problem of Evil though is a world-centered standard of goodness. If this is the only world that matters, then the Problem of Evil is insoluble. If this is the only world and the only life that matters, God could not be omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent all at the same time. So perhaps we should ask first, what is the purpose of the world to begin with?

If the purpose and meaning of the world is contained within the world itself, the Problem of Evil is not resolvable. If the purpose and meaning of the world is in some higher reality and not strictly in itself, then it IS resolvable. This world then, that has implicit in it the possibility of genocide and uncured brain cancer, would be necessary to achieving a transcendent good. Thus the temporary evil of such things, however great that evil, would be transcended in a higher and permanent good which would be the actual purpose of the whole enterprise of this existence.

Is that actually true? If so, what is that higher good?

This is my thinking on the matter. The world is a training ground. For those who aren't allowing themselves to be trained, the world can be viewed as a kind of punishment but not in intention. If you don't learn, perhaps you come back to this world or one similar, and perhaps this is the fate rather than a picturesque flaming hell that Jesus referred to as entailing wailing and gnashing of teeth. Because there is plenty of that in this life, and it would be dreadful to keep going through that all the time rather than completing the course and graduating to better things. Okay, so training for what then? Membership in God's family. This membership probably should not be construed as sitting around in Paradise playing a harp all day. What do we know about the members of God's family, Jesus and perhaps angels? They do stuff. They constantly do stuff, in addition to of course praising God which is not incompatible with doing stuff too. Jesus in fact did everything about this world, according to the Gospels, he actually made it. According to some interpretations, God directly created only Jesus, and Jesus created everything else. So it is not unreasonable that upon graduation, graduates may be called into various roles, possibly an assisting administrative role. Assisting in the administration of existence itself, how do you get a more awesome job title than that?

After all, according to Matthew at least, angels told the shepherds what was going down in the manger. Angels told Mary what was going to happen to her, and told Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as a wife. Somebody has to do that kind of stuff. ;) How amazing would that be!

Now I mentioned previously the possibility that New Testament-style miracles don't happen a lot or possibly at all now because the original purpose of all such miracles was to spread God's word among humanity, and there now exists no uncorrupted spokespersons to spread that word. The Church was corrupted by the World almost immediately after Jesus left. All we have now is the word that was given then, and the Holy Spirit, to direct us towards God's will. It is also possible that this is regarded as sufficient, and that further miracles would interfere with Humanity's free will. After all, if your local vicar (and everybody else's) went around feeding 5000 on a tuna sandwich, nobody would doubt that he's on to something. ;) Maybe people wouldn't love the message, but they would have to respect the 5000 free tuna sandwiches. ;) And this would change the nature of human choice.

As things stand now, the message is available, but it is an uphill climb to get it. It is truly a matter of your own heart and mind whether you believe or not, and indeed it requires a certain determination of heart and mind to believe and believe with some degree of correct understanding. So that even after you believe, you are able to navigate around the fallen institutional Church to the real message. Some manner of tepid nonbelief is sort of the default state that I think people tend to gravitate towards unless they feel the impetus from within themselves to go elsewhere. Or if they gravitate towards belief in SOME religion somewhere, they don't think about it too much and mostly think about how it benefits them in this world. That's human nature, isn't it? To mostly think about yourself and what is of utility to you in this life?

I don't think any of this closes the door on miracles for good. Maybe the door was always closed on using miracles for worldly objectives, even the healing miracles were not really for medical purposes but evangelical ones, but the door might always be open for the right circumstance with the right servant. It is probably not likely that either arises often, however.