For Latin mass this morning, we had the priest with the grandiose voice who likes to talk about love. His topic today was Jesus’ statement in John 4:48: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”
The priest said that many people seek signs and wonders, but God offers us love. According to him, God is present with us all the time.
I somewhat struggled with this. Whenever I’ve wanted to see signs and wonders, a lot of that flowed from a desire to know that God loves me and knows my address. I always felt left out when I heard others’ testimonies about their experiences of God, and I’ve often wondered if God even knows I’m alive.
Some reading this may say, “Yeah, but James, God doesn’t speak to you because you’re a theological liberal. Only those who are faithful to his word and obedient will experience God.” Okay. But I didn’t really hear from God when I was a theological conservative, either!
This Sabbath, I was craving a touch from God, some reassurance from God that he loved me, some religious “fix” that would revolutionize my attitude and life and make me feel better. My weekly quiet time was rather tedious, but I somewhat liked the results, which you can read here: Fit to Rule, A Good Randall Flagg. The results were simple, yet they were sweet. My quiet time wasn’t the mighty wind that I was hoping for, but it was more like a still, small voice.
At Harvard, a Christian friend of mine said he used to be hurt when he heard others’ testimonies about hearing from God, whereas he didn’t feel that God spoke to him all that much. He then thought about Abraham, who didn’t hear from God every single day, but whose experiences of the divine were rather sporadic, with years separating each epiphany. He concluded that we don’t have to hear from God every single day to be assured of God’s favor, for God’s ultimate desire is for us to know him, not to experience a dramatic epiphany all of the time.
Joyce Meyer is a preacher who talks continually about hearing from God, yet I wonder sometimes if she thinks that’s the most important thing in a believer’s life. She said that it would take more faith to believe when one has no tangible evidence for God’s existence than it would to believe on the basis of signs. She said we often assume that those who have dramatic experiences are the ones who are God’s favorites, or are the truly holy ones. Maybe it’s the opposite: those who believe and follow God without evidence are the spiritually stronger ones. I don’t know.
I went to an AA meeting earlier this morning so I could free up the afternoon to write that paper I need to write. One man said we shouldn’t expect God to do everything for us, but we should ask ourselves what we are doing. Are we patient? Are we taking moral inventory? God works in our actions, not always above and beyond them. This stood out to me, because yesterday I heard a sermon in which the pastor referred to a Psalm that said God solves our problems for us. There may be times when God dramatically intervenes in our lives. But there are also times when God wants us to act and demonstrate his values. Dramatic experiences of the divine are not what is important, even though they can encourage us to keep the faith. Rather, us knowing God in his love and righteousness and walking in his values are the things of most interest to God. That doesn’t always involve being on a spiritual high, but it may entail clinging to God and the values he represents in the “bleh” of day-to-day life.
John 4:48 itself has often troubled me. A man asks Jesus to heal his dying son, and Jesus responds, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” I wouldn’t mind Jesus responding that way if the man had asked him for a sign from heaven (Mark 8:11), but the man was asking for his son to be healed, not for some sort of magic trick. Indeed, Jesus healed him, but I wonder if his (Jesus’) initial response was appropriate, and, if so, how? Was the man seeking a restoration of his family life, without desiring a relationship with God (even though the man and his household end up believing in Jesus in v 53)? Was Jesus encouraging the man to seek not just healing for his son, but God himself and his son Jesus Christ? Did Jesus want the man to cling to God and his righteousness amidst the chaos and pain of day-to-day life, without necessarily seeing signs of God’s favor?
As Jimmy Swaggart plays in the other room, I hear him saying God told him, “Don’t seek me for what I can do, but for who I am.” God’s eager to help us and demonstrate his love and power, but he’s even more interested in a relationship with us, Jimmy says.
I’ll close this post with something Retriever said under Terri’s post, How I Changed My Mind:
I believe in and have seen miraculous (and genuine) healings, but they cannot be prescribed, ordered, or controlled. Perhaps they work as random reinforcers for the faithful? As in psychology which discovered that unpredictable rewards sometimes motivate more powerfully than regular ones that one can be sure of. I put it down to disease and our living in as yet fallen and imperfect world.