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During the video section Mart DeHaan interviewed people on the street in Tiberias. He asked them if they believed in miracles. He concluded: “I sensed in the residents of Tiberias that the ‘miracles’ they believed in would not have been as dramatic as someone turning water into wine or bringing a dead person back to life; yet according to the Gospelnarratives, Jesus displayed an authority and power over nature that had no natural explanation.” Do you agree with the responses of the people interviewed?
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Yes, I do not believe in coincidences. I think that things happen every day that sometimes we are able to “see” or experience and sometimes we aren’t given the gift of knowing about them.
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No, I don’t agree with the people interviewed. Miracles cannot be attributed to a natural order or occurrence. They are “beyond” nature – something that does not occur. What most of the guests described as “miracles” were really just being overwhelmed with the evidence of God’s creation of our world and things created for our pleasure – not an intervening power that gives a total unexpected outcome based upon God’s created natural order. For instance, rain falling in the Negev Desert is not a miracle. It actually does occur in the natural order God establishes. Manna coming down like dew is a miracle, because this is outside the natural occurrence established by God’s creation.
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The residents of Tiberias believed that miracles couldn’t be “dramatic”. However, the Gospels clearly explain that power that Jesus exhibited. I think that God displays His authority over nature in both extravagant (such as raising people from the dead) and daily ways (such as what the residents of Tiberias expressed). I have full faith in the Gospels, but I have also seen God work miracles in my own life.
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I do agree with the people interviewed. Miracles are happening all around us, every single day. While, yes, God still has the power to perform miracles of epic proportions (raising the dead, healing the sick, water into wine, etc.) I think those types of miracles are fewer and farther between these days. But simple things, such as the miracle of birth, making the conscious choice to love one’s spouse, or a rainbow after a rainstorm are still acts of God, which in my mind makes them miracles.
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Not really. I do believe in the power of God in our everyday lives, but I also believe in all the miracles Jesus did during his ministry and is doing now in this time