OK, so I have the following challenge for my dear brothers and sisters who have doubts about miracles. It seems to me that you’re doubting one of two possible things: (1) God’s willingness to perform miracles, or (2) God’s ability to do miracles.
I’ll concentrate on (2): for some reason, you doubt God’s power to perform miracles. Let’s take the virgin birth, for example. Some people doubt the virgin birth because they don’t see how such a thing could be possible – implying also that they don’t believe God has the ability to cause a woman to become pregnant without the contribution of a human male’s sperm.
Now as miracles go, a virgin birth isn’t actually that implausible from a scientific perspective. Why? Because virgin births do happen in nature: it’s called parthenogenesis. In amphibians, lizards, fish, and sharks for instance, a female can give birth without ever being impregnated by a male; the fetus develops from an unfertilized egg alone. Obviously the child is always female in such cases.
To be fully accurate then, the idea of the virgin birth of Jesus is scientifically implausible for two reasons: (1) while observed in other species, whether parthenogenesis has ever been observed in humans is controversial, and (2) it is a case where the child is male, not female.
So a human virgin birth of this type, while undoubtedly unusual, isn’t as inexplicable as something like parting the Red Sea or Lazarus rising from the dead, or the Resurrection of Jesus. You can imagine a mutation or something like a genetic engineering experiment causing the virgin birth of a male child today. So if you doubt the virgin birth of Jesus for “scientific” reasons, what you’re saying is that you doubt God’s power to do what a genetic mutation can.
That’s a strange position to take, isn’t it? Why do you think that? What’s your evidence? And if God lacks the power to cause a virgin birth, how can God possibly have the power to raise Jesus from the dead? Or cure cancer? Or do anything else in the world, for that matter? If one believes in such a powerless God, at that point is one still even a Christian? Was Jesus God divine, or just a nice guy and a charismatic political leader, like MLK, jr.?
That’s why I think the question of miracles is important. Indeed, what is at stake in this debate is the very nature of who God is, as well as our own ability to act as God’s children in the world.
As Christians we’re on (or at least supposed to be on) a walk of getting to know and love God more and more. Is such a purpose served by having limiting beliefs about who God is and what God can do? Imagine if you told someone you’re on a date with, “I want to get to know you better, but I know for a fact that you can’t dance or cook, I don’t care what stories other people tell about you.” That might put a bit of a damper on the relationship, don’t you think? 
Even if your date forgives your rudeness, you’ll lose the opportunity to experience those things with your date if you dismiss them as possibilities from the outset. Wouldn’t a better attitude be to approach the relationship with a spirit of open-mindedness, humility, and perhaps a joyful expectation of the surprises in store for you as you get to know the other person better?
I’d like to suggest the same thing is true with God, who is a person too. We will always be able to learn something knew and wonderful about God, forever, so why get in our own way with a priori commitments to limiting beliefs about God’s power? To state firmly and have strong faith that God cannot cause a virgin birth (or cause an earthquake, or whatever) is not a humble position to take, and should be viewed with suspicion for that reason alone.
A faith against miracles also causes problems for us in other ways. Witness:
“He couldn’t perform a miracle there except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was utterly amazed at their unbelief.” – Mark 6:5-6
“He did not perform many miracles there because of their unbelief.” – Matthew 13:58
These verses clearly show that a lack of belief on our part affects what God does, probably because God rarely if ever forces anything on us. You can’t force love, after all. So if we insist that we can only be healed by scientifically verified methods, or that a miraculous abundance of food can’t suddenly be produced, (or whatever our chosen limit of belief is) then most likely God will not force these things on us.
But the irony is that we’re having faith not in God and his mercy and power, but in physical limits that make it harder for us in every way. If we believe that God can somehow provide enough food for everyone so that there’ll be no starvation this year, then we can pray for that and try to do our part to help make that happen; if we believe that God can heal the hearts of those on Wall Street we can pray for that, and act compassionately even when we’re oppressed; if we believe that by practicing love in our daily lives God will bless and increase that love mystically so that the whole world is benefited, then we can pray and live in accordance with that belief. But if we don’t believe that God has the power to do these things then we’re not going to pray and live as if he does, obviously – and so our power to affect the world for Christ is compromised.
And God is, I am sure, amazed at our unbelief.
So what are your thoughts? Have I gone wrong somewhere? Am I being too harsh? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!
