It’s Easter Sunday as I write this and, unsurprisingly, I have just read a news article about the Resurrection. The one thing that sets Jesus as a Messiah apart from the others and upon which the entirety of Christianity rests. And it led me to ask the question – why do we struggle to believe in miracles?
The article I read was the breakdown of research carried out into whether the Resurrection was likely to have actually happened or not. It examined non-religious texts from around the period (for example, Tacitus), it examined the reports from those whom Jesus appeared to, and it examined the reports of the conversions of the sceptics after the seeing the resurrected Jesus. On the balance of probabilities, the research concluded that it was more likely that a miraculous Resurrection occurred rather than any other explanation for it (which have included hallucination and that Jesus had merely fainted on the cross, not died).
For centuries there have been the sceptical, those who have denied the Bible’s assertions that Jesus existed, had his ministry, died on the cross, and was Resurrected to repeat his message one last time. For centuries, historians and others have trawled through the evidence to agree or deny that any such person existed and had the impact that they had on the world. Archaeologists have sought to confirm or deny Jesus’ existence through digs in the area where he lived and preached, seeking to find that ultimate piece of evidence. The Holy Sepulchre was built on the place where Jesus’s tomb was – but this is always prefaced by the term ‘supposedly’ or some such word. Because it hasn’t been empirically proven.
And, for me, it begs the question – why are we relying solely on our five senses to answer this question? Why do we only believe what our five senses tell us, and why do we believe that the data we receive from them is objective?
Now, I am not a signed-up Christian. I am not a follower of organised religion at all. I am not saying I don’t believe in Jesus, I do as it happens, but not the Jesus who is portrayed in the Bible. I don’t believe the Bible to be a factual account of things that happened but more a collection of allegories. I am not making a case here for the Christian religion at all. I am, though, making a case for there being more to this life than just what our five senses tell us. Because, as I often ask, where is love found in our five senses? Do we feel love for others through our five senses? No, we don’t. We do not feel any emotion first and foremost through our five senses, yet no one seeks to argue that our emotions do not exist. We do not experience memories and thoughts through our five senses, yet no one seeks to argue that our memories and thoughts do not exist. And we do not experience ideas through our five senses, yet no one seeks to argue that ideas do not exist. I remember Wayne Dyer saying once that a surgeon had told him that they did not believe in the existence of a soul because in all their years as a surgeon, they had never physically seen it in the body. To which Wayne Dyer responded – when you were inside the body of someone, did you see a thought or an idea? And in not doing so, does that mean they do not exist?
We choose to believe that miracles, magic, all sorts of things we do not experience with our five senses do not exist. Why? What possible reason could we have for switching off our Reticular Activating System from experiencing those things? Is it because we cannot control them? There are all sorts of examples of them happening, after all. Conception is nothing short of a miracle given the ridiculous odds against it happening. But babies are born every minute of every day around the world. We are told that the odds of winning the lottery are at a ridiculous level of likelihood – and yet, people do. Regularly. I remember reading an NDE about a woman who was quite literally riddled with cancer, her body had shut down and she declared dead. Whilst dead, she saw and subsequently described in precise detail so many things that were happening in the hospital she was in, that she could not have known. And when she regained ‘consciousness’ or came back to life, her cancer was gone. She made a full recovery despite all medical interventions having failed and her cancer being throughout her body. How do we explain this? These happenings are not flukes. There are many other examples of miracles happening in a similar vein. Yet we seek to explain them through logic or science and when we can’t, we dismiss them out of hand and denounce them as lies or fantasies.
Why can we not allow ourselves to believe them? Why do we tear down those who talk about them? Denigrate them, even?
We have been conditioned to do so by religion and the media for a start. Magic and miracles are uncontrollable, they are in the power of the individual and that is something none of the authorities want people to believe they have. The power to bring about miracles and magic. That’s why manifesting is decreed as being ‘woo woo’. Why people laugh at those who believe in it. It is why spirituality is not embraced in the same way as structured religion because it embraces personal responsibility and not abrogating it to the religious authorities or the state. It is interesting that the things that have been found that cannot be explained, or run contrary to ‘accepted’ thought such as the Dead Sea Scrolls are just quietly put aside in the hope that the public will forget about them. It’s similar to the nonsensical idea that in the vastness of the universe, the majority of which we are completely unaware of I imagine, we believe we are the only living creatures and anything that seeks to tell us otherwise is laughed at. What makes me laugh is the certainty with which people speak of the universe one day only to have to retrace their steps on what they are saying because the universe shows them it is categorically untrue. Just goes to show how much we really know, eh?
So, I am going to lay down a bit of a challenge for the next 7 days. Open your mind to the possibility that magic and miracles exist and happen on a regular basis. Decide every morning when you wake up that you are going to see one or more examples of magic and miracles – as you define them. Make a note of them. And at the end of the 7 days, reflect back on your notes and ask yourself: are magic and miracles real?
Louisa Simpson 