Friday, June 15, 2007

Any Room for Faith?

So I've heard that my last post seems a little bleak.

I have to say that this is pretty much how it ... Sorry for repeating the bleak part.

The "On the other hand?"

The experience of billions of people is that they experience patterns, events, feelings, circumstances that cannot be explained by viewing their life as simply a series of natural causes and effects. From answers to prayer, to physical healing, to synchronicities too amazing to be coincidence, the reports of the overwhelming majority of people is that there is some extra dimension to their life - some spiritual component that is required to make sense of their experience.

I don't doubt this. I experience it myself. I am, however, coming to recognize that, however it is explained, this is not what we have traditionally thought of as 'supernatural" experiences. I am not saying that they don't exist, and by calling them natural I am not trying to rule out the activities of God or what we think of as spiritual forces - I am simply suggesting that whatever these things are, they operate withing the natural world.

Why do I think this? Partially because of the evidence science provides, that natural causation is not violated. Before you insist that this is the case, consider that the world of the Bible is not supernatural - God is portrayed as potent in the natural world - Spirit, yes, but not without the means to impact this world.