Jacksonville Chapel/Emergence

Example:
Christianity sounds like it is built on a foundation of myths. With stories of talking snakes, someone sustaining life in the belly of a whale, a boat carrying all the world’s animals? why should anyone believe these stories to be true?

Let me start off by stating that I understand the skepticism towards these kinds of claims. I’ve wrestled with this, and certainly agree that there is a degree of faith required. Perhaps the best way to write this post, is to share my observations and why I do believe the Bible’s miraculous claims.

At some point in my Christian journey, my first realization of Biblical miracles came with the understanding that just because I may not believe something to be possible, does not mean that it isn’t possible. I came to understand that I am living in a specific point of history making observations about past historical events, and my ‘personal’ experiences along with living in a modern materialist culture, would certainly influence my beliefs.

Of course because something is possible, doesn’t mean it is probable. So my next step came when I heard G.K. Chesterton. I don’t recall the exact reference but he wrote about ‘lost wonder.’ When we are children, we have the beautiful awareness of wonder, like a boy who dreams about worlds with Dragons, and a girl who dreams about Princesses. But when we grow older, we allow hard materialism to jade us from wonder, and we become skeptical of anything beyond the natural world.

“The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.“
– G.K. Chesteron, The Ethics of Elfland

I am finding that as I grow older, I see the world as highly more complex. And like Chesterton, I don’t disregard the miraculous as mentioned in fairy tales.

My final observation came when I stopped reading the Bible as a collection of propositions, and began to read it like a narrative. In this fashion, the miracles function like the glue that sustains the events. It fits. Sure, I can question what seems “fantastic” but the miraculous events don’t stand alone. They fit within the narrative.

Chesterton continues with lessons learned by Fairy tales:
“…If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.”

If you live in the world of hard materialism, you may have lost the wonder, but the Biblical narrative tells you that there really is true evil that desires to devour you, and there really is real goodness and honor; there really is a rescuer that comes to save you from your plight and awakens you with a kiss from your slumber; You will indeed live forever and fly one day. The wonder is rediscovered. Do you believe it?