One criticism Christians often face is that we believe in fairy tales. It’s not just that we’re accused of believing the universe was created by some almighty being in the sky or that a talking snake led to the downfall of the world. Much of what we see throughout the Bible is miraculous – events that can only be explained by God directly interacting with His world. As scientific studies become more advanced and continue to explain things that once seemed mysterious, Christians find themselves asking whether miracles are real, or just a way for ancient people to explain the unexplainable.
So, can science and miracles exist in harmony, or are miracles nothing more than mysteries with scientific explanations?
Defining terms
The word “miracle” conjures different ideas for different people. For example, I once listened to a student hotly debate her teacher about whether miracles still existed today. The teacher was adamant in his stance, but the student wouldn’t back down. After several minutes, the student got exasperated and cried out “Well what about childbirth? That’s a miracle!”
And while childbirth is an incredible thing, especially once you really dig into the science of how God designed a woman’s body to hold a nurture another human being… it’s not a miracle. Childbirth can easily be explained and monitored through scientific means. So how should we think of miracles?
Miracles are anything that could not happen based on the basic laws of the universe.
In other words, pregnancy and childbirth don’t break any rules. Recovering from aggressive cancer isn’t necessarily a miracle. An addict no longer having a desire for drugs or alcohol probably isn’t a miracle.
Why? Because with enough time, microscopes, and scientific understanding, these things can be observed and explained as natural things.
In contrast, we can consider the beginning of the universe. The universe demands that everything comes from something else, and therefore “something created from nothing” is impossible. Trees come from trees, and those trees came from other trees. The same is true of birds, dirt, and rain. Everything that exists is the result of something else causing it.
Thus, God creating the universe from nothing is an absolute miracle.
Miracle or just bad science?
With that understanding of miracles, we need to go back to our original question. It’s not a matter of whether miracles still exist today, but whether we should even believe the miracles as they’re written in the Bible.
In other words, should we really believe that:
- God stopped the sun in Joshua 10?
- Lazarus was raised from the dead in John 11?
- Christ turned water into wine in John 2?
- Lots wife turned into salt in Genesis 19?
For many, it’s tempting to go the route of Thomas Jefferson and cut out all supernatural events from the Bible. It’s easy to treat God’s word as a collection of moral lessons from an ancient culture, explaining away the weird stuff as superstition in the same way we explain the mix of historical events and divine intervention in ancient texts like The Odyssey.
Still, others aren’t willing to quite say it’s all made up. A popular belief in Christianity, especially for those who want to stay on the right side of science, is to attribute supposed miracles to the ancient writers’ poor understanding of science. Someone rising from the dead was just a recovery from a coma. God creating miraculous events through nature was just a rare-but-natural phenomenon that needed to be explained without having enough knowledge to do so.
In other words, we assume that people just explained away perfectly normal, though incredible, events by saying “God did it.”
With that mentality, we can start explaining away miracles all throughout the Bible. Things like the sun standing still or God using Moses to turn the river into blood didn’t really happen, they just seemed that way. Jairus’s daughter wasn’t resurrected by Christ, her fever just happened to break and she recovered from the brink of death. Christ wasn’t born of a virgin, He was just a good teacher who was conceived from premarital sex.
On and on, people attempt to explain the miracles of God by making the events obey the natural laws of the universe. But is there a way to believe miracles while still respecting the reality of science?
God, the creator and breaker of rules
As we consider whether miracles are possible, we need to remember what they actually are. A miracle isn’t a freak occurrence of chance or fortune. It’s not a natural event with a scientific explanation we just don’t know yet. Miracles break the rules of the universe that were established by God in Genesis 1:1.
And that is exactly why we can take miracles at face value. Humans aren’t miracle workers. No miracle in the Bible, even one accomplished at the hands of a human, was actually accomplished by a human breaking natural laws. All humans, and indeed all of nature, must always obey the laws they were created under.
God is under no such restriction.
The eternal Creator of the universe is not bound to time and space like we are. He exists outside of our reality, choosing to interact with us out of His majestic love. God isn’t bound by what is allowed according to universal laws because those laws are under His authority, not the other way around.
For I know that the Lord is great
And that our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,
In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps. (Psalm 135:5-6)
To God, miracles have always been simple. He doesn’t have to strain against the rules He created. At His whim, He can stop the sun or start a dead heart. He can rapidly regrow dead cells and cause the broken to be made new. He can start and stop rains like flipping a light switch because He is God. He made the rules but is by no means bound by them.
Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me? (Jeremiah 32:27)
When it comes to the believability of miracles in the Bible, our answer lies in whether God allows Himself to be constrained. Throughout all of biblical history, we never see God fumbling about trying to make things work. We never see Him straining against the laws of the universe, wanting to do something but being unable.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)
Instead, we see who God truly is. We see that He is sovereign over His creation, loving us despite our utter unworthiness. We see Him directly intervening into the affairs of His people, demonstrating the truth of who He is.
Miracles and science are not rivals. Believing and studying the universe God created doesn’t somehow reduce God’s majesty or diminish His power. Instead, science shows us our limits and what laws we must obey. Yet God isn’t just ruler over the universe, but the very laws that govern how it operates. What scientific law will tell Him that He can’t move in a way that breaks the rules? In what situation will the Lord Almighty sit dumbfounded as He tries to find a loophole so He can do something incredible?
There is no such situation. God can, and did, work miracles as it pleases Him. We don’t need to feel shame for believing that the one who created everything from nothing can do anything. After all, to trust in God is to believe in the One who is beyond our own power and understanding.
Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised,
And His greatness is unsearchable. (Psalm 145:3)
This article is part of the series “65 Theology Questions People Will Ask You.” Click the link to read more articles like this one!
