miracles

When I was little, I thought Mount Rushmore was a miraculous occurrence. Literally. I truly believed that those four famous faces were divinely carved into the side of the mountain by the hand of God.

No one told me they were. I just somehow got the idea in my head, and it stuck. And since I was raised and schooled Catholic, it didn't seem far off from all the other things I believed. I guess when you're immersed in the stuff of Rea Sea partings, walking on water and resurrections after death, presidents on mountains don't really seem all that amazing.

The funny (and somewhat embarrassing) thing is, I think I was pretty old before I realized that my Mount Rushmore assumptions were slightly off. Seriously, I think I was like ten or twelve years old. I wasn't crushed by the realization or anything. It was just more like, "oh, yeah. I suppose that doesn't really make sense." It never occured to me to rethink my assumptions. Once I did though, it seemed pretty obvious.

In the same vein, it was only recently, in my thirties (ugh, that phrase never fails to bum me out a bit), that it ever occurred to me to look at things like the the bible and its miracles critically.

I had spent my childhood believing in God and my adult life as a pretty serious Christian. But somehow I had never stopped to consider the very basic, fundamental question why do I believe the Bible is true?

Stepping back, that strikes me as so very odd. How could I have never, up until now, asked those questions? They are kind of important questions ... no? How could I have based my life on a faith ... and much of my faith on a book ... and NEVER have bothered to discern whether that book was true, or why I believed it was? It almost borders on ludicrous when I think about it in those terms.

And when I think of it in the specifics, I am even more amazed. I could have told you that the gospel writers wrote years and years after the death of Jesus. But somehow it never struck me as odd (until recently) that they wrote (as history, fact and eyewitness account) about the miraculous events that surrounded even the birth of Jesus. Even the inner most thoughts and feelings of the mother of Jesus. How the heck did they presume to know (as an eyewitness no less) what Mary "pondered in her heart?" Or what she was thinking when an angel descended down to interrupt her day? Why did I never wonder?

And it wasn't until recently that I realized that stories of deities with virgin births, miraculous signs and resurrections from the dead are vast and numerous. And that quite a few of those stories (with many, many parallels to the Jesus story) predated Jesus by quite some time. How could I not know this? Doesn't this seem like kind of an important piece of information?

I'm certainly no genius, but I'm a fairly educated person. I've done my share of bible studies. Taken my share of philosophy and theology courses. Read a few books over the years. But there were these gigantic pieces of information that I never even explored .... and these very basic questions that I never even considered.

I take responsibility for my ignorance. But I also think in so many ways Christianity encourages a kind of blind faith. Not overtly, but in subtle ways. It certainly doesn't encourage questioning and exploring ... at least not in my experience.

I don't know where I'm going with this exactly. It just has been striking me lately how easy it is to isolate yourself. To never really consider the facts at hand. To have a blind faith .... even when you have no intention whatsoever of doing that. I always felt pretty informed. I never would have said that my faith was blind ... but in so many ways it was.