Signs and wonders?
OK, let me toss something of a hot potato, based on Peterson's section "The Signs," pp. 92-99. I enjoy the way he challenges a popular understanding that, if we could just "get" God to do more signs and wonders, if we could only learn the secret of how to persuade God to do more miracles, the progress of the Gospel would be greatly enhanced. Let me make two comments (and this is me commenting, not Peterson):
First, wonderful as miracles, signs and wonders are, and as much a part of our Scriptures as they are, there will always be an ambivalent/ambiguous element to them. They don't have the power to change people and situations that we think they do. It's not that they don't have power, but I think it may be a different sort of power...
Second, I think that the quest for more signs and wonders may be a way in which we hide from and deny our failures to live faithfully as communities of God's beloved Son. I think that the demonstration of the Gospel that God intends to give may be confirmed by signs and wonders, but the real issue is the church becoming and being the church, demonstrating in and through our lives the Life that is Life Indeed.
Third (you can see that I have trouble counting or keeping track of numbers!) I'd like to suggest that our Chrstian approach to "the supernatural" is wrong-headed and maybe even heretical.
So let's put this in our pipes and light it up and see what kinds of smoke rings we can blow!
posted by Brian Emmet @ 10:11 AM
17 Comments:
Thanks, LeRoy. I look forward to more from you on this.
We need to avoid either/or here. We don't have to choose between experiencing God's power actively working in and through us and being weird. If I recall the passage correctly, Peterson is commenting on how John's gospel integrates signs into Jesus' ministry. Clearly, they are there--Peterson is no rationalist, claiming that "nothing happened" or that what happened was merely human or 'natural.' At the same time, the signs were not always persuasive to many, so the current quest for "more power" as if that would by itself convince the world is misguided, I think. It's not that we don't need more of God's power, but that God's power is and works very differently from how we tend to think about "power."
"Once you put it down, you can't pick it up again," huh? Boy, that's the last time i share with you my nominee for "the best book I've ever read"!
Roger, LeRoy . . . I jumped in first, last time, so I was just hanging back waiting to see what sort of receivers flooded the airways, kind of like a strong safety, just sitting there, waiting to make his move! Which by the way the Raven's defensive backs failed to do big time last weekend. The local sports editor, who gives a scorecard each game, gave them an F. He said he usually gives at least a D for effort, but they didn't even show up! Wow, was he ever right! Enough rambling. I will post a blog in my next addition.
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Signs and wonders . . . I am all for them! I have been reading in John, coverning the passages that Peterson covers . . . by the way, Monday I was with my oldest son, Eric, in Bel Air, Maryland, as we drove by a church, I happened to notice the name, "Christ the King!" That's where Peterson pastored for a number of years (p. IX)!!!!! Small world! It was a miricle!
Or was it a "sign" that we are on the right track? I "wonder" which it was? OK, OK, enough. I am enjoying this book; however, I am finding some gaps, too . . . which is OK for a spiritual devotional, but leaves me wanting with regard to a theological commentary. For example: When Peterson recounts the event of the man coming to Jesus and asking him to heal his son, he correctly states that the man believed and that when he returned home, his son was healed. However, he conveniently fails to leave out the second part of the final verse of this episode:"And the officer and his entire household believed in Jesus (4:53b)." Wow! That is not an isolated comment!
I have recently had several conversations with folks where a supernatural event occured in their lives that helped launch them into the kingdom, or at least deepened their walk in the kingdom. Fred has an incredible testimony of a spending a day in Washington, D.C., protesting the Vietnam War, as a Jewish hippie, being met by some "Jesus freaks," who offered to pray for him. He was scheduled for surgery that Monday to remove his tonsils. He was not only supenaturally healed (still has his tonsils), but delivered from any desire to do drugs or engage in immoral behavior. At the time, he was living in a commune. His life was radically changed. I just received an email from a young man who grew up with my oldest son, Eric, Rob has always had a fine Christian testimony; however, it has been of your Presbyterian variety. He is now doing his residency in Psychiatry. Bright, young man. Unfortunately, he is also already divorced. His former wife had huge psychotic problems and left him. He just sent me an essay of his journey. It was so painful to read, that I was literally crying. However in Rob's deepest, darkest, moments, as he cried out to God, he felt that LORD say to get into his truck and drive 45" west of Ronoke, Va, which is where he was living. It was after 9:00 at night, and Rob is NOT the type to hear such "voices." However, in his desperation, he made the drive and found himself infront of a church, a Church of God, again not his variety. A fatherly, grey haired man, who identified himself as the pastor, greeted him. Rob told him his story, expecting to receive "fire and brimestone" (Rob's words) in return. However, instead the man said that he had gone through the exact same experience in the past two years, showed him (Rob) nothing but love and compassion. Rob was so on fire from that ecnounter that driving home the local sheriff stopped him and asked if he had been drinking. Rob (the stayed Presbyterian) responded, "No, but I am drunk in the Spirit!" Praise God for miraculous encounters!!! More, later.....
This is great stuff! Not that Peterson needs my defending him, but I don't think he would gainsay any of this, neither its reality nor importance. If I understand him, miracles and signs are "pointers"--their purpose is to point people to Jesus, but our problem is that we're too much like our dogs: when you point your finger, the dog looks at your fingertip, not to where your fingertip is pointing. Signs and wonders can become like that, where the church focuses on the divine fingertip, rather than on to whom it is pointing.
The signs are important, precious and necessary BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE GETS THEM!!
It's me again! I would like to piggy-back on Brian's thoughts. I think that signs are more than pointers and more than what Peterson states on page 92, "Supernatural marvels have wonderful entertainment value, but not much else." However, Peterson also writes the following: ". . . signs are evidence that God is still at work in creation and not just its maintenance engineer" (p.91). Is he (Peterson) contradicting himself? I am not sure; however, what I feel that he may be trying to communicate is summed up in his words, "We cannot make Jesus do what we think he ought to do. A sign is no a blank ticket that we can use to write our agenda for Jesus" (p. 95). He also states: "God reveals himself in Jesus, but the revelation rarely conforms to our expectations. We have such stereotype ideas of what God does and how he does it that we frequently misread the signs" (p. 98). THIS, I believe is the problem, especially for Charismatics. We believe in miracles, signs, and wonders, and have witnessed them in our lives and the lives of others; yet, it seems that somewhere down the road on this journey that we call life, we begin to define who God is out of our experiences. We begin to make demands on Him, and somehow think we have Him figured out . . . i.e., the "blank ticket" syndrom. The result of this is that when God does not act or perform in the way we hope and have come to expect, then we find ourselves in a tailspin. As a former pilot, part of our training was how to pull out of spins. Some folks do this; others crash and burn. Sad, but true.
QUESTION? My last comment, at least for a day! Why did Jesus heal only one person at the pool (John 5:1-18)? This question has bugged me for years. One would think that He would have walked around laying hands on all the invalids. Any thoughts?
Now we're having some fun!
i think Randy's last Q--why didn't/doesn't Jesus heal all?--is unanswerable, at least by us. but it's still a good q, and germane to this immediate conversation we're having. A few quck comments: 1) Jesus does not heal everybody. This has always been the case, and I think it does bear on our conversation about signs and wonders. 2) our approach to the "natural" vs. the "supernatural" bifurcates things that I think God intends to keep together. If I become sick, and my body's "natural" capacities restores me to health, does that mean God was not involved in my healing? After all, it happened "naturally" and we can now pretty much explain scientifically just how my body pulled off this pretty amazing trick of restoring health and vitality. We certainly got more of a charge when a healing is "obviously" "supernatural" at least according to our categories. The problem is that this approach denies the reality that God is actively involved and at work in what we call the "natural" and the "everyday." We end up arguing that God is not really present or involved in something like 99.9% of what happens to us every single day of our lives, because, after all, that stuff just "happens naturally."
No quarrels from me, LeRoy. (I know better than to tussle with you...people get hoit!)
LeRoy wrote: "Reaction to the fake, or imperfect, leads us just as far astray as what we react to. Does that make any sense?" Makes sense to me! Hey, where is Robert in this discussion? He appears to be holding his cards close to the vest. Mmmmm, will he lead an ace or a king?
No, LeRoy, you're not being too intense.
Are we reacting, or assessing? Ok, OK, no one favors chucking the baby out with the bathwater (I first wrote "the babe" and then figured that would lead us on a merry chase)... anyway, do we suspect Peterson's position is a reaction (negative) or an honest attempt at assessment (we seem to share his perspective that much off the hoo-hah about "the supernatural" is lots of smoke but not too much discipleship.
Robert, sorry to suffer with you in the loss of your comment...hope you can recreate it, or that god would grant us the miracle of restoration! After all, those electrons are still out there somewhere!
i think it's Cliffe's Notes...? No, that doesn't look right...
Sooooo, sorry, Robert, I just experienced the same thing, only on a much smaller scale! As one of our "great" Presidents once said, "I feel your pain." I was writing to say that the books are called "CliffsNotes." My superior wisdom is only because I have a copy in front of me! Macbeth, which I used for my British Literature class, so that I could stay one step ahead of the students. By the way, I was teaching this great play, when the president that I previously referred to was embroiled in his affair. One my absolute favorite lines from that play described the circumstances to a T. One of the witches stated: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Act 1, Scene 1, line 10). Shakespeare was truly a man for all time!
I am gaining new ingsights on the Trinity . . . it was originally three bloggers, kind of like LeRoy, Brian, and me! Anyone else out there?
I think we'll leave the current post up till after ACM. I hope those of us involved with this can grab some time during ACM to kick around how well this book and blog are working for us.
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