Doubtful, skeptical folk inhabit the world
Spiritual indwelling, miraculous witness, and testimony mean we swim upstream
When more skeptical folk inhabit the world than believers, a miraculous interventionary loving God doesn’t have to operate with ferocious, even outrageous responses. The accumulation of miraculous reminders will overwhelm the deniers. Skeptics arrive at a strict, blindered-view from many paths. That our creation was intentional, and being related to the divine in a parental/child manner, takes courageous surrender. Miracles aid us in taking every step — some will be big, but most will be small, steady, and unwavering.
Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene
Song of Songs 3:1-4b
John 20:1-2, 11-18
It's appropriate in our physical world that a successful salve to skepticism is an actual miracle. Any other interventionary activity will only temporarily pause our hopelessness.
How’s that for an opening paragraph?
For explanation, my use of a barrel filled with scrunched-nose disdain, throwing all kinds of doubts into the generic category of “skepticism,” names the attitude that many of us take against believing in miracles over coincidence. More simply, I believe wariness and caution rightly guard our steps, but miracles assure us that we’re on the right track and correct our misdirections.
“Other interventionary activity” refers to transcendent events outside God’s activity within creation. It’s also a broad category (like skepticism), binding together aliens, demonic beings, extrasensory forces, and artificial intelligence. These invisible realities can lead us astray from God. People cycle through similar lists of optional forces. It’s natural to consider and even try them out. Inevitably, we should discard the truly bizarre things, proven to be foolish, malevolent, or hazardous. Sometimes it takes years. Some of us only set them aside, pretending a further review, as we ponder their credibility.
“Salve,” of course, is the ointment, balm, or comfort that would apply to a skeptic’s mindset. We need such medicinal treatments because we’re built for hope, not chaos. The skeptical ilk of protesting takes a lot of energy.
“Hopelessness” plays out in the end for skepticism left unattended. Worse for us is to decide that doubt is the confirmed state of all things.
I now introduce a new term. “Purist logicians.” Those guys and gals who remain ardent skeptics, insisting on the fenced-in boundaries of what scientific analysis and non-spiritual philosophy can describe. When more skeptical folk inhabit the world than believers, a miraculous interventionary loving God doesn’t have to operate with ferocious, even outrageous responses. He has done so, though, with Jesus, saints, and historical accounts that rocked the world.
The accumulation of many “minor” miraculous reminders (how crass is that to call some miracles minor) is more common. They, too, can overwhelm the deniers.
Skeptics arrive at a strict, blindered-view from many paths. Some experience, or some other person, convinced them to wear blinders. They tune out the miracles. Consequently, believing our creation was intentional and that we’re related to the divine in a parental/child manner takes courageous surrender. Miracles aid us in taking every step — some will be big, but most will be small, steady, and unwavering.
Who am I to question the skeptic’s journey? The decision to adopt what dictionaries call “secular humanism”* challenges just about everyone these days. It’s understandable for so many of us to quit our search for meaning and settle on a mindset and worldview that rejects the frightful reality that a loving God built our world and allowed it to be stunk up by creatures like ourselves. When the majority of the population we inhabit rejects spiritual indwelling and miraculous witness and testimony, we’re swimming upstream.
Yes, I did say frightful reality. The idea that a loving God exists is only a temporary, emotionally charged happiness. Not that surrender to God is only frightful. A loving God is good news, and solves just about every problem we might have about our afterlife. Yet, life now remains fraught with suffering as a constant, even as we believe in a glowing, growing, flow of lovely purpose in our connection to a God present to us.
The freedom we, hopefully, choose to allow — religious expressions that inspire and gather us — requires that we surrender to a supernatural, largely invisible entity. Without miracles, that surrender can be impossible. They make God visible, aligning our vision outside the blinders.
As said earlier, “purist logicians” quake at the concept of a transcendence that knows no bounds. They know what a divinity outside of time and space truly means. Firstly, that our creation was intentional, and secondly, we’re related to the divine in a parental/child manner.
Many religious expressions refuse to surrender fully to God, cauterizing the breadth of God in some form or fashion. They might conclude that God is an accumulation of human beings joined into an eternal wisdom. That position denies the pre-existence of a creator. It’s a partial surrender. Again, that’s likely part of our journey. Just as the religions that attribute many gods to managing the universe (with some gods being good and some being bad), our progress toward accepting a fully engaged divinity explains why we approach God gingerly.
That takes us back to the initial statement: It's appropriate in our physical world that a successful salve to skepticism is an actual miracle. Any other interventionary activity will only temporarily pause our hopelessness.
You see it, I think — we yearn for an actual miracle because God knows we need it. Over and over again, I might add.
We can dither about on the skepticism track for only so long. It’s pretty exhausting to keep from full-blown depression. The number of celebrities and prominent intellectuals who have made recent public conversions suggests a shift toward seeking the true God. Each one has testified to some miraculous thing that brought about the shift. Miracles are evidence that God exists. All of Jesus’ life, the whole gospel message, presents an evidentiary litany of miracles. They complete an Old Testament run of prophecies, and plant the future blossoming of a Church aligned to the Holy Spirit’s leading.
Mary Magdalene is a prime example of personal spiritual growth. She experienced every miraculous type of God’s intervention in her life through the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father. She knew the persons of God intimately, convinced of interventionary spirits beginning with Jesus’ exorcising her demonic possessions. She knew the incarnated God of Jesus, mourned Jesus’ death, witnessed and proclaimed his resurrection, and was present at the Ascension. She was the first human to acknowledge many of God’s miracles, likely living out the rest of her days in total contemplative harmony with the Father. A life lived in the fullness of the Trinity.
That life of interventionary miracles typifies our own. We, too, can identify the same progression of skepticism at all the levels she experienced. Wariness, answered by God’s interventions, did not happen only to her. It’s a witness to our journeys.
While we can rightly be doubtful of ably copying the trusting, never wary life of Mary the Mother of God, replete with welcomed sorrows amid the ultimate honor of grace-filled existence, we can more readily follow the progress of Mary Magdalene. From worry to hope, her ultimate embrace in a love relationship with the divine is precisely what God hopes for us.
* Secular humanism is a philosophy that emphasizes human reason, ethics, and scientific inquiry while rejecting religious beliefs and supernaturalism. It focuses on improving human welfare and promoting values such as compassion, justice, and individual fulfillment in this life. (Wikipedia)