Bishop Spong and My Painting

Column by Fred Plumer on 20 October 2016 8 Comments

I am really not comfortable writing this article. There is a sense I am writing an obituary and nothing could be further from the truth. Bishop Spong is a beloved friend and he is apparently doing well in his recovery. I suppose I am a little nervous knowing that he will be reading what I write and we already have a history about this. For those who do not know, I am the President of ProgressiveChristianity.org. and we have been publishing Bishop Spong’s weekly articles for over six years now. About a two years ago I had dropped him a line indicating that his contract was running out and wondered what his plans were. Be assured, I wanted him to extend the contract but we needed to know. I do not remember exactly what I wrote but I may have written something like, “Jack, I know you are approaching your 85th birthday, but thought we should get this cleared up.”

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Question

"What is a miracle? Do you believe in miracles?"

Answer

Dear Neil,

It depends on how you define a miracle. I think my marriage to Christine is a miracle. How could I, just by chance, have met this incredible lady? I think parenthood is a miracle. There is no way I could have produced children like the ones who call me their father. I believe that friendship is a miracle. I know people who have enriched my life dramatically. In that sense I believe that life is full of miracles.

But that is not what most people mean when they ask that question. What they normally mean is 'Does God set aside the laws of the universe to intervene in life in supernatural ways?' There was a time when our ancestors in faith were quite sure that God did. But when those ideas were prevalent, people understood very little about how the world operated.

In a world where sickness was viewed as the punishment of God, the kind of cures we produce today from antibiotics, surgery or chemotherapy would be called miracles. In a world where people believed that the weather was the instrument of divine wrath, a hurricane that turned out into the ocean and away from land would be called a miracle. That, however, is not the kind of world we inhabit.

If religious people believe that God can miraculously intervene in history to cure cancer, to stop war or to redirect a storm, they have to tell me why God doesn't do it regularly. No Neil, the people who make these claims have simply not embraced either the complexity of the world or the mystery of God.

That is not all that can be said about miracles, but it is a start. I invite you to walk down this path and to see where it leads. God can no more be boxed into our world view than God could be boxed into the world view of our ancestors who saw miracle and magic everywhere. It is our task to walk into the mystery of God, not to fit God into our existence.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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