Last week I heard a show featuring two for-real climate experts, one an ecologist and the other an oceanographer, who were debating the whole climate change thing. Yes, they were debating, not denying or acclaiming, giving their interpretations of the data and the models. They both agreed that warming was occurring, and that roughly half of the warming was due to human activity, largely because of fossil fuel emissions (there is also deforestation and plankton death or growth, and more). They disagreed, however, on what the rise of global temperatures would be, and how much life on earth – and humans – would be affected. The ecological biologist looked to the 5 degree F rise model and spoke of extinctions; the oceanographer spoke of a 1 or, at most 2 degree F rise and said that life would overall benefit from the increased carbon in the atmosphere. Both were using the same data, and both were genuine climate specialists. They disagreed on some things, but agreed on others. Of the first, they each gave credence to different computer models generated from the same data in an attempt to peek into the future. The models both went in a similar direction, but with very important differences.
We might say, then, that we can expect some man-affected climate change in the future, but how much we simply do not know. And yet, the French government has caused street riots because of plans to tax carbon-based fuels out of existence. For the first time in ages, it seems that the people governing France have found their Faith in an unrealized and unproven prophecy.
Religions, too, almost always have some grand prophecy. We have gone through some of them here, such as the coming of Lono to the Hawaiians and of Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, both of which have actually come true, although not exactly as expected. Those of scientific mind do not know how these things can be, and most certainly don’t put full credence into the prophecies yet to be fulfilled, such as the Second Coming. Still, there is some pretty strong evidence that some kind of spiritual force (or forces) does exist in this world that can affect us in powerful ways. Like the computer models based on the evidence of global warming, we can haggle about the interpretation of spiritual data, but we should not doubt that much of the data is based on real-life, real-time spiritual activity that can be documented as clearly as the numbers on a thermometer. And yet, there are deniers. The “why” of this is fascinating, and gives us a picture into the nature of the spiritual itself.
Evidence of spiritual power: I have just read two books that proclaim the reality of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as put forth by the New Testament by way of documented miracles of healing. One, Touching Heaven, is by cardiologist Chauncey Crandall, who is by profession and creed a healer. At the beginning of his practice, he was a compartmentalized Christian, keeping his professional life and his spiritual life separate, but with time and circumstance, he began to see that faith and prayer sometimes worked when regular medicine did not. Like someone testing ice, he began to make small forays into combining the two, finding quickly that not only did the two often overlap, but that all but one of his patients over the years actually welcomed the addition of his spiritual attention.
They had good reason to. While he gives many examples of extraordinary spiritual healing, the one that made me sit up with shock and awe was about a woman born with one leg shorter than the other. As she aged, the disparity in leg length increased to five inches, forcing her to wear a large heal on the shorter until eventually, she had to use a wheel chair to get around. By the time she came to Dr. Crandall’s attention, she was obviously beyond the ordinary means of being cured. By then, Dr. Crandall was not shy about his faith healing, and so (after asking the woman’s permission) he began to pray for her leg to heal, somehow, in his office. Nothing happened at first, and so he said something like, “Come on, Jesus, I know you can do it! By the power of your name, heal this woman’s leg!” Then both watched as the leg grew to normal length as the woman screamed, not in pain but in amazement. After, since her leg had grown to full size before their very eyes, she had to take her special shoes off to walk barefoot out of the doctor’s office. Both were still alive as of his writing, about 6 years ago, with all the evidence of the woman’s short leg still stacked up in her medical records. The facts can be checked. How does one interpret this besides the doctor’s own interpretation of healing by the Holy Spirit?
Then there is Charles Price, a doctor of religion born in the late 1800’s (making this book, The Real Faith, that much cheaper). After some struggle with his choice of vocation, he became a Protestant minister in the 1910’s, counting himself a member of the rational clergy – that is, one who placed such things as miracles in the Santa Claus sack for kiddies. After being persuaded to go to a Pentecostal - style meeting, however, where he ended up on the floor speaking in the tongues of the Holy Spirit, his position changed. He became open to the power of Spirit and witnessed many genuine miraculous healings. He also quickly found that he, too, could bring healing down to the crowds, and for the next several years, he helped in healing dozens of lost causes, many of which, again, can be documented. However, he was disturbed by the greater number of people who he could not cure. He knew that he believed, and usually that the people believed; so what was missing?
The question was answered for him by revelation through both Spirit and the Bible. He found that it was faith rather than belief that cured – that is, that it was through the action of God on the heart and soul rather than by the will of mind that miracles occurred. Humans cannot will anything beyond the normal physical; rather, they have to rely totally on the grace, or the gift, of faith by God. To implore God continually helps, but God will do what he will in his own time. We humans simply do not have the power. It is not, then, a matter of mind over matter, but of grace bestowed by God through faith that we can truly move mountains.
This is a good thing. If we could will healing, or will getting a pony or moving a mountain, we would all will our way into blind alleys. We do not know what is best for us. Think of what you would have willed for yourself at the age of 5, or 15, or 25. In my case I know without question that my answered desires would have ended in disaster.
This explanation of faith, that it is given to us as a grace, not as a power of our own will, explains the incomprehension and often hostility of many in the scientific community to something that so obviously has real-life results in the real, physical world. For one, since this holy power cannot be compelled by our own will through some formula or method, it takes away individual control. Rather, it requires a humbling of self so that Spirit can dominate our will. This is not welcome by those who wish to control their environment through knowledge. Second, the power of God through the Holy Spirit is so vastly beyond the limits of this world and human reasoning that the laws governing this power cannot ever be worked out through our own thought. Again, we must become compliant and meek as little children to receive this vast power, if we receive it at all. This is not the kind of power the scientific community seeks.
And so, the reality of Spirit, even as it has been evidenced since the time of Christ and before, is met with greater and greater denial. It is not what science wants, and so it is simply pushed out of mind, along with all the evidence. Even as global warming deniers are denigrated for refusing to see the evidence – even though this very evidence has yet to produce most of the feared results – those who seem to be in control of global information likewise deny what is clearly before them. While it is true that many of the models based on the power of these “miracles” – the religious prophesies – have yet to come to pass, the information- people do not care to even look at the facts that support them. They are deniers by belief, not by reason, which is just what they claim to hate most.
What is more important, though – certainly to Pastor Price - is to understand that faith is both infinitely powerful and wholly dependent on the will of God. While our prayers can help bring it to us, it is ultimately God’s decision as to how, and to whom, this power will show itself by overcoming natural law. We must understand even as we find ourselves or others in desperate straits that his will, not ours, will be done, and that this is ultimately for the best. But that this power manifests itself today, much as it did in Biblical times, is really beyond question. We have, then, the verifiable data. Now, we only have to fit it to the right model.
Last week I heard a show featuring two for-real climate experts, one an ecologist and the other an oceanographer, who were debating the whole climate change thing. Yes, they were debating, not denying or acclaiming, giving their interpretations of the data and the models. They both agreed that warming was occurring, and that roughly half of the warming was due to human activity, largely because of fossil fuel emissions (there is also deforestation and plankton death or growth, and more). They disagreed, however, on what the rise of global temperatures would be, and how much life on earth – and humans – would be affected. The ecological biologist looked to the 5 degree F rise model and spoke of extinctions; the oceanographer spoke of a 1 or, at most 2 degree F rise and said that life would overall benefit from the increased carbon in the atmosphere. Both were using the same data, and both were genuine climate specialists. They disagreed on some things, but agreed on others. Of the first, they each gave credence to different computer models generated from the same data in an attempt to peek into the future. The models both went in a similar direction, but with very important differences.
We might say, then, that we can expect some man-affected climate change in the future, but how much we simply do not know. And yet, the French government has caused street riots because of plans to tax carbon-based fuels out of existence. For the first time in ages, it seems that the people governing France have found their Faith in an unrealized and unproven prophecy.
Religions, too, almost always have some grand prophecy. We have gone through some of them here, such as the coming of Lono to the Hawaiians and of Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, both of which have actually come true, although not exactly as expected. Those of scientific mind do not know how these things can be, and most certainly don’t put full credence into the prophecies yet to be fulfilled, such as the Second Coming. Still, there is some pretty strong evidence that some kind of spiritual force (or forces) does exist in this world that can affect us in powerful ways. Like the computer models based on the evidence of global warming, we can haggle about the interpretation of spiritual data, but we should not doubt that much of the data is based on real-life, real-time spiritual activity that can be documented as clearly as the numbers on a thermometer. And yet, there are deniers. The “why” of this is fascinating, and gives us a picture into the nature of the spiritual itself.
Evidence of spiritual power: I have just read two books that proclaim the reality of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as put forth by the New Testament by way of documented miracles of healing. One, Touching Heaven, is by cardiologist Chauncey Crandall, who is by profession and creed a healer. At the beginning of his practice, he was a compartmentalized Christian, keeping his professional life and his spiritual life separate, but with time and circumstance, he began to see that faith and prayer sometimes worked when regular medicine did not. Like someone testing ice, he began to make small forays into combining the two, finding quickly that not only did the two often overlap, but that all but one of his patients over the years actually welcomed the addition of his spiritual attention.
They had good reason to. While he gives many examples of extraordinary spiritual healing, the one that made me sit up with shock and awe was about a woman born with one leg shorter than the other. As she aged, the disparity in leg length increased to five inches, forcing her to wear a large heal on the shorter until eventually, she had to use a wheel chair to get around. By the time she came to Dr. Crandall’s attention, she was obviously beyond the ordinary means of being cured. By then, Dr. Crandall was not shy about his faith healing, and so (after asking the woman’s permission) he began to pray for her leg to heal, somehow, in his office. Nothing happened at first, and so he said something like, “Come on, Jesus, I know you can do it! By the power of your name, heal this woman’s leg!” Then both watched as the leg grew to normal length as the woman screamed, not in pain but in amazement. After, since her leg had grown to full size before their very eyes, she had to take her special shoes off to walk barefoot out of the doctor’s office. Both were still alive as of his writing, about 6 years ago, with all the evidence of the woman’s short leg still stacked up in her medical records. The facts can be checked. How does one interpret this besides the doctor’s own interpretation of healing by the Holy Spirit?
Then there is Charles Price, a doctor of religion born in the late 1800’s (making this book, The Real Faith, that much cheaper). After some struggle with his choice of vocation, he became a Protestant minister in the 1910’s, counting himself a member of the rational clergy – that is, one who placed such things as miracles in the Santa Claus sack for kiddies. After being persuaded to go to a Pentecostal - style meeting, however, where he ended up on the floor speaking in the tongues of the Holy Spirit, his position changed. He became open to the power of Spirit and witnessed many genuine miraculous healings. He also quickly found that he, too, could bring healing down to the crowds, and for the next several years, he helped in healing dozens of lost causes, many of which, again, can be documented. However, he was disturbed by the greater number of people who he could not cure. He knew that he believed, and usually that the people believed; so what was missing?
The question was answered for him by revelation through both Spirit and the Bible. He found that it was faith rather than belief that cured – that is, that it was through the action of God on the heart and soul rather than by the will of mind that miracles occurred. Humans cannot will anything beyond the normal physical; rather, they have to rely totally on the grace, or the gift, of faith by God. To implore God continually helps, but God will do what he will in his own time. We humans simply do not have the power. It is not, then, a matter of mind over matter, but of grace bestowed by God through faith that we can truly move mountains.
This is a good thing. If we could will healing, or will getting a pony or moving a mountain, we would all will our way into blind alleys. We do not know what is best for us. Think of what you would have willed for yourself at the age of 5, or 15, or 25. In my case I know without question that my answered desires would have ended in disaster.
This explanation of faith, that it is given to us as a grace, not as a power of our own will, explains the incomprehension and often hostility of many in the scientific community to something that so obviously has real-life results in the real, physical world. For one, since this holy power cannot be compelled by our own will through some formula or method, it takes away individual control. Rather, it requires a humbling of self so that Spirit can dominate our will. This is not welcome by those who wish to control their environment through knowledge. Second, the power of God through the Holy Spirit is so vastly beyond the limits of this world and human reasoning that the laws governing this power cannot ever be worked out through our own thought. Again, we must become compliant and meek as little children to receive this vast power, if we receive it at all. This is not the kind of power the scientific community seeks.
And so, the reality of Spirit, even as it has been evidenced since the time of Christ and before, is met with greater and greater denial. It is not what science wants, and so it is simply pushed out of mind, along with all the evidence. Even as global warming deniers are denigrated for refusing to see the evidence – even though this very evidence has yet to produce most of the feared results – those who seem to be in control of global information likewise deny what is clearly before them. While it is true that many of the models based on the power of these “miracles” – the religious prophesies – have yet to come to pass, the information- people do not care to even look at the facts that support them. They are deniers by belief, not by reason, which is just what they claim to hate most.
What is more important, though – certainly to Pastor Price - is to understand that faith is both infinitely powerful and wholly dependent on the will of God. While our prayers can help bring it to us, it is ultimately God’s decision as to how, and to whom, this power will show itself by overcoming natural law. We must understand even as we find ourselves or others in desperate straits that his will, not ours, will be done, and that this is ultimately for the best. But that this power manifests itself today, much as it did in Biblical times, is really beyond question. We have, then, the verifiable data. Now, we only have to fit it to the right model.
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