Elijah Stephens who is in charge of the upcoming documentary on medically verified healings has written a blog post on Think Theology where he debunks some common myths about miracles, like that people don’t see many miracles today, that educated people don’t believe in miracles and that skeptics won’t change their mind when they are presented with miracle evidence. It’s a very good read, and it reminded me of something that I’ve been pondering for some time: why do so many people in the minority world believe that miracles don’t happen?

I’ve been there, I grew up as a non-Christian and didn’t believe in miracles. Historical miracles like in the Bible were fairy tales to me, and if somebody said that a person had been miraculously healed I would have mocked them and argued that there is a “natural” explanation. I was fascinated by ghosts though, and mediums… the logic wasn’t strong with this one.

Now, I realize that to say “science has disproven the existence of miracles” doesn’t make any sense. There are thousands of medically verified healings, such as the ones documented by World Christian Doctors Network and Craig Keener’s excellent work Miracles. These events, which take place after prayer, are scientifically inexplicable.

An atheist would of course say that we will find out a natural cause in the future, but this is a belief and not a fact. Science is agnostic to the existence of God and, hence, the existence of miracles, just as science is agnostic to morals or political beliefs. Still, the existence of numerous medically verified healings and other inexplicable events strongly supports the existence of miracles.

Likewise, it’s wrong to claim that “miracles are impossible because they break the laws of nature”. If “the laws of nature” are defined as everything that occurs, then miracles are obviously part of those laws if they occur. If “laws of nature” are defined as our interpretation of natural patterns, then they are broken all the time, as in the case of medically verified healings. There is nothing that suggests that miracles are impossible, just as the existence of God isn’t impossible.

Last Tuesday, I was out evangelizing with my church, and a young man of my age approached us for some coffee that we handed out. I asked him is he was a believer and he said yes, “but I’m very new to this Christianity thing.” He explained that he had grown up in a non-believing family, but a few years ago he started to seek God, and then he saw visions of Jesus. Now he had joined the Pentecostal church of Uppsala, learning more about the truth.

Isn’t that great? To say that miracles don’t happen is basically a belief without any substantial support, that limits one’s worldview so that one becomes biased and blind to what is actually going on around us. But glory to God, He’s doing mighty stuff in the lives of ordinary people. Just embrace it.