I thought it
might be useful to give a personal example regarding something I regard as a
“personal miracle.” We have been
discussing the possibility of conducting an experiment to see if God is there[1]. We’ve defined a specific question to guide
our experiment. Last time we talked
about one possible experimental design <here>. But it is probably helpful to have some
examples. At least, for me, I always
find examples very helpful. Vague
theories never cut it for me.
OK. So I’m going to relay a personal story. It is from my own personal experience and it
is true. But, since you probably don’t
know me, you have no way of knowing whether it is true or not. Even if you do know me, you weren’t there to
witness it, so all you can do is judge whether I’m likely to tell the truth or
not. The point of telling you this story is not to try to get you to believe
that it is true. I can’t really do
anything about that. The point of
telling you this story is to motivate you to become open to possibly having your own experience with God. I’m just telling you one example of how I
experienced an act of God in my own life, hoping it helps.
Many people
are influenced by what happens to others – I believe that’s pretty normal. But a skeptic has a hard time accepting
anything without seeing it with their own eyes.
I understand that. All I want is
for the skeptic to open their eyes so that they can “see with their own eyes!”
When it comes
to “miracles”, there are certainly “degrees” of miracles. For example, there are frequently people who
get healed from sickness and claim it was a miracle. But people recover from sickness all the
time, so such events are easy to chalk up to chance. But as the events become more unlikely, there
becomes a point where the skeptic has to change tactics. Instead of chance, he has to resort to “it
never happened.” For example, some far
out miracle, like Jesus rising from the dead, is never chalked up to
chance. Instead, people spend their time
trying to show that it didn’t happen.
OK. So what I’m talking about are personal events
that fit into the second category. They
are so unlikely that you can’t chalk them up to chance. But, if you are the one experiencing it, then
you can’t say “it never happened”. That
is the category of events that I call a “personal miracle.” By “personal miracle”, I mean an event that
only I am really able to judge how much of a miracle it is. It is one of a few such “personal miracles”
in my life, but it is the easiest to explain, so here it goes…
From as far back as I can remember,
I’ve always been very interested in devices and machines and things like that. As a kid, I would take apart anything I could
find to see how it worked. Sometime in
the early 70’s, when I was in 6th or 7th grade, I had a
small electric motor that I was taking apart.
It had two small permanent magnets inside of it. Magnets always fascinated me. The fact that these hunks of metal could pull
things together and push things apart seemed quite magical. I thought they were the way to solve a lot of
the world’s problems! As I was taking
them out, one of them popped out and fell on the floor. I looked down and I couldn’t see it. I got down where I could look closer and I
still couldn’t find it. I was very
unhappy that I couldn’t find the magnet because I was so excited to have these
magnets to play with. I got down on my
hands and knees and crawled all around under the desk and chair, looking for
the magnet. I looked everywhere under
my desk. But I just couldn’t find
it. It didn’t make any sense – it had to
be there – it couldn’t just disappear.
So finally – I don’t know why – while I was down there on my hands and
knees, I folded my hands and closed my eyes and prayed to God and asked God to
help me find the magnet. “God please
help me find this magnet.” I don’t know
how strong my faith was, but I certainly didn’t have a deep understanding of
God or what he did or anything like that, but I did think that if there was
anyone who could help me find it, it was God.
And I also knew that I couldn’t find the magnet – it wasn’t anywhere to
be seen. It seemed to have disappeared
as far as I was concerned. So I
prayed. When I was done praying, I
opened my eyes, and the magnet was right there in front of my nose. Six inches away! Right
where it would have been impossible to miss. To this day, as far as I know, that magnet
wasn’t there when I started to pray, but it was there when I was done
praying. I don’t have any other
explanation for it.
As I’ve grown older and thought
back on that event, I’ve tried to come up with some logical explanation for
it. For example, most kids are pretty
bad at searching for things, so couldn’t it just be a case of bad searching
technique? However, I’ve always been
pretty thorough at searching for things – even at that age – so that doesn’t
seem very likely at all. I also wondered
if maybe it was just dark under the desk and my eyes slowly became accustomed
to the dark, allowing me to finally see the magnet. But I’d already been searching for some time
down there, so my eyes were already accommodated to the darkness. Despite my thinking about this for the past
40-some years, I haven’t figured out any other explanation that fits the facts.
That event comes to my mind every
once in a while and I still remember finding that magnet as if it happened
yesterday. That event was an important
turning point in my early travels to faith in Christ (but it was not the only
one). As I would think about deep
concepts and struggle in my mind about ideas like whether God exists, whether
the Bible was true, etc., I would sometimes think back to that event and say to
myself “if there is no God, then how did that happen?” Even now I wonder, what else could be the
explanation? I know it sounds like an
odd story – almost corny – but that’s what happened.
Again, the point is not to get you
to believe this really happened. I don’t
think God did that to help you
believe – He did it to help me
believe. You need your own experience!
But before you can experience anything like that, you have to unlock the
door. Many of you would never “pray to
God” about anything. To you, it’s
childish. I think you’re missing
out. Many of you have decided, a priori,
that there is nothing supernatural. If
you had been in the situation I just described, you might have momentarily
closed your eyes (without praying) and then opened them again to find a magnet
in front of you. You would have chalked
it up to bad lighting or bad searching technique and never thought about it
again. I can’t fault you for that type
of thinking. But what I can fault you
for is then saying “…and besides, if there was a God, He would make Himself
obvious.” You can’t have it both
ways. Either unlock the door and allow
for the possibility of God; or admit that you’ve decided a priori that there is
no God and no amount of evidence can
change your mind. Just don’t claim
that latter view is based on science and don’t claim you are “open-minded”!
[1]
Note: this is part of a long
thread. To go to the beginning of this
thread, *click here*. You'll have to scroll down to the bottom - they are in reverse order and I haven't ever figured out how to change that - sorry!
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