The Virgin Birth and Miracles
I grew up hearing the Christmas story and reading about the miracles of Jesus. Then I became a scientist and a Christian at almost the same time.
I remember hearing atheists using science as some kind of club to beat religion. This always bemused me, as it is like using Mathematics as a weapon against English or Art.
For me, the universe is like a giant tapestry. Look at it from one side and you see beauty, patterns, colours, stories and much more. Look behind and you see a complex weave of thread and the "mechanics" behind it all. To me, science is the exploration of what is going on behind the tapestry. That some use that understanding to try to disprove that the tapestry was ever created has always bemused me.
I completely understand why many people are agnostic or atheist. We are so influenced by our parents, friends, school teachers, role models etc. that each of us goes through life with the inherited views on much of what is around us. Few of us take the time to challenge these things. While I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, I do so with a questioning faith. Many times I've asked God "why?" and when I read something in the Bible I don't just accept it at face value, but I remind myself that it is a collection of translated sacred texts that need careful interpretation to discern what God would say to us through them.
I always understood why a non-believer would struggle to believe that the Virgin birth was a real event. I completely understand why they would doubt that a resurrection or miracle could actually take place.
(On a side note, one of the things that I think damages Christian witness most is when a believer tries to prove God by describing some kind of miraculous event and they claim there is no other way it could have happened, but by God. That is laying down a challenge to a scientific mind and where does it say in the Bible that the mechanics of all God's workings could never be understood?)
But what confused me most was Christians who did not believe in the Virgin birth or the resurrection. There are some who see the virgin birth as just meaning that Mary was a young girl, and who think Joseph was probably the real father, but it didn't suit the writers so they wrote another angle into the story. Some say the resurrection is a symbolic story rather than a literal one.
I wonder if this might in part be a counter response to the dogmatic unquestioning if-it's-in-the-Bible-it-must-be-true-and-needs-no-interpretation attitude of some? Perhaps a way of reconciling a faith we love to a universe we (partly) understand is to reject literal understandings of much of the Bible.
However, as a scientist, I actually find that science helps me have more faith and I actually believe in a literal virgin birth and literal resurrection.
Firstly, there is an importance, I am led to believe, to a Jewish audience, that sin is passed down the generations through the male line from Adam. The virgin birth would have been a proclamation to the Jews that this child, this man, was not born with sin (and therefore would be a perfect and flawless sacrifice when he gave himself up to take on all the sins of man, according to their custom of giving up meaningful sacrifices as part of their covenant with God to show their thanksgiving, their awareness and repentance of their sins and their total dependence on God).
Secondly, I have no problem theologically if science were one day to discover how God actually got Mary pregnant without a biological father. There have been many "miraculous" things that science has begun to understand over the millennia. Take for example the regular message that by trusting in God and lifting our anxieties to him, we find peace and comfort. Psychology has shown us that the things we think about have an impact on our emotions. There is a deeply mechanical (for want of a better word) process to prayer and faith, but this understanding doesn't diminish in the slightest our need for it or the wisdom God gives us in commanding it.
When faced with amazing "I can't believe it!" events, rather than jump to a conclusion that it probably didn't happen, I remind myself that if our earth were a few centimetres out of its orbit of the sun then life as we know it would not exist. I remind myself that the beautiful child I see living in my house did not even exist a few years ago, but this sentient, conscious, delightful being was created into existence... It's a scientific miracle!
I remind myself of the beginning of our universe. Either it was suddenly created out of nothing in a Big Bang, or it has always been and is always growing (growing into what we might also ask?). The world around us is so full of amazing things we barely understand. Each year we understand a fraction more through the wonders of science. I remind myself to never try to prove God by something I don't understand ("if we can't understand, it must be God"), and I cringe when I hear Christians try to engage with others that way. We don't demonstrate faith by arguments. There is a place for logical arguments and apologetics but we demonstrate faith (and by this, I mean our relationship with God) by love. It was the greatest commandment Jesus gave and remains the best form of evangelism.
I believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus because of the witnesses and accounts of the gospel. It was also something he predicted and Jesus was an entirely trustworthy man. It also was core to his message of salvation and hope. But also, as a scientist, I have no reason to doubt that it could actually happen. If my wife and I can create a child, if the sun can rise and set, if the world can actually support sentient life, if humanity can evolve into what we know it to be today, then why would I have a problem with Jesus being put to death, found to be dead (the piercing of his side and the fluids that emerged were physical proof he no longer lived), being buried and then rising again to show that God had conquered death and by putting our faith in Jesus we need never fear!
You see, I don't believe miracles are there to prove to a scientific mind that God must exist. I think they are there to remind God's people that we can depend on him completely. If Jesus can turn water into wine, then he can turn my despair into hope. If Jesus can feed the multitudes on only a few small loaves and fish, then God can use a small number of Christians to feed the needs of a starving world (literally and metaphorically).
I actually think there is a danger in Christians beginning to doubt the miracles of God. It is understandable to find them hard to believe (we are skeptical humans after all), but if we are not careful, we might start to doubt that we can actually depend on God. We might lose confidence in hope. We might doubt salvation. We might drift away from the rock and find ourselves buffeted by the waves and storms with nothing to offer the world in terms of witness and confidence (a word that actually has faith at its root).
I don't write this to condemn or judge Christians who don't believe in miracles or the virgin birth. But I do hope to encourage some who doubt because of reaction to the over confident bragging of some, that it is actually okay to believe in the miraculous without leaving our brains on standby, and we don't need to ever convince a world of miracles. Leave that to God. Instead, let us unite, whatever we believe on smaller issues, to show a world just how big and inclusive God's amazing love is!
