(From my book. Chapter 16.)
"For general purposes used here,
a 'miracle' may be defined as an
extraordinary event
with an unusual supernatural cause."
- Craig Keener[i]
Carl Cocherell was a long-distance runner. He trained for, and ran, marathons. He ran the Detroit Free Press Marathon and did well enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I remember being in Carl’s home. He showed me a photo taken of him running in Boston.
Your
feet are important when you run like Carl did. His family told me a story about
Carl’s obsession with running. One time Carl’s wife Sarah said to her husband,
“Carl, we need to get some bread. We’re out of it. Would you run to the store
and get a loaf of bread?” And he did. Literally. Carl ran a few miles, round
trip, to get a loaf of bread.
I
have never been able to run like Carl ran. But I admired him for his athletic
abilities. And I felt sad when he broke his foot.
Carl
was on a spiritual retreat in Branson, Missouri. He was checking the oil in his
car, and stepped down, and heard a crack in his foot. He went to the emergency
room in Branson. The orthopedic surgeon showed him the X-rays.
After
setting the break, the orthopedist ordered Carl to stay overnight. He put
Carl’s foot in a cast, and told him, “You will need months of therapy.”
I
remember hearing what happened to Carl. At our church, on the Sunday following
his accident, some of our people prayed, asking God to heal Carl’s broken foot.
Craig
Keener writes about what happened next.
Apart from the ankle being blue for a couple of days, Carl had no problem with it. At church that Sunday, where he used no crutches or other support, he testified how God healed him. Carl provided me with the radiology reports from before and after the healing supporting his claim."[ii]
I have the
radiology reports, before and after, in my office at home.
"Scholars often note that miracles
characterized Jesus's historical activity no less than his teaching and
prophetic activities did. So central are miracle reports to the Gospels that
one could remove them only if one regarded the Gospels as preserving barely any
genuine information about Jesus."[iii]
Western
culture, influenced by David Hume's skeptical arguments, dismisses the
possibility of miracles. Thomas Jefferson, architect of the "American
Jesus," insisted that miracles "were an affront to the demands of
reason and the laws of nature, and Jesus had performed not a one."[iv]
One of the
innumerable strong points in Keener's book is a thorough debunking of
Hume's argument against the possibility of miracles, thus clearing the way for
their possibility and, in examples such as Carl’s, their actuality.
Miracles were performed through the Real Jesus. They were central, Kingdom-confirming signs and wonders. In my fifty-four years as a Jesus-follower I have seen several of them, which I have recorded in my journals, spoken publicly about, and written about.
“Mary, Did You Know?”
[i] Keener, Miracles: The
Credibility of the New Testament Accounts - Vol 1, p. 110
[ii] -
Ib. P. 440
[iii] Ib. Pp 23-24
[iv] Stephen
Prothero, American Jesus, p. 23
