Miracles

Depending on how you define them, I don’t think miracles exist. Most people would agree that a miracle is something that occurs against extraordinary odds, and in most cases they’d agree that some divine or otherwise supernatural force was responsible for its occurrence.

I have two problems with this. One; if you define a miracle as something that happens despite unlikelihood, then why is it only positive occurrences that receive credit as miracles? If your son has a 99% chance of dying during an operation and he lives, then you might consider it a miracle. But if he has a 99% chance of living, but dies, then nobody would consider that a miracle (unless your son is some crazy dictator or something). So is chance not enough to qualify something great as a miracle? Or do unlikely bad things that happen just not receive as much miraculous attention as they, by definition, deserve?

Let’s ignore that statistical aspect of the argument for a moment. People define miracles often—especially in the case of illness recovery. Growing up in a popular church, I’ve heard far too many people attributing the recovery of their loved ones to “miraculous intervention.” They honestly believe that God overcame the overwhelming odds specifically to save their loved one. Maybe that is true; who am I to say it isn’t? But I can’t help but wonder why God would choose to save the life of a single, 90-year-old arthritic woman over any one of the thousands of children in the world that starve to death every day or the innocent women that are habitually raped and abused in tumultuous countries.

Either we need to redefine what constitutes a miracle, or God has some fucked-up priorities.