The Doubt of Miracles
Summary of Headings
Introduction
Modern Distractions
Seeing with Faith
It's always rather astonishing to contemplate the idea that the people who witnessed this miracle that our Lord had just performed. He cast out a devil, the dumb man begins to speak, and immediately people begin to, A, doubt what he had done, saying that he had cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub, which is an obvious, obvious distortion of reason to be able to arrive at a conclusion that they wanted to arrive at, namely that our Lord worked in cahoots with the devil. And the second is for to show them more signs. Human nature doesn't change much, because this is exactly how we always are. We tend to doubt what is evident to our eyes. We tend to look away from what is given to us to see. We tend to turn a blind eye to what is obviously God's attempt to help us, or God's attempt to work with us, or work in this world, and instead we tend to focus on something else. Agendas, politics, noise, whatever. All of those things. This comes particularly home in this day and age, where we have to deal with a world that is so polemically divided. Everybody is at each other's throats all the time. There is nothing but rage and outrage in the internet. There is nothing but noise and chatter from everybody all around us. People are constantly speaking about the latest scandals, the latest problems, the latest wars, the latest events of the day and the like. And then there's always the thoughts and conspiracy theories and the digging for information about what is behind all of this. Who are the responsible people? Who is to blame? Et cetera. And how far does it go? The problem is the more that we dig into these things and the more that we put so much emphasis or attention into this, and the more that we become filled with a justified outrage at these events or at these situations, we overlook one very, very simple and very important point. And that is, does it serve God? Does all of this serve God? Does all of this serve God? The reason that the Jews got distracted by our Lord's miracle wasn't because they were looking for Christ to be God or to do miracles. They were looking for they were looking to catch Him out. They were looking for what was really going on behind the scenes. Where did He really come from? How did He really do that? Like trying to investigate a magician's parlor tricks. I need to know how He did that, not just being marveled at the fact that He did it. They treated Him in that way, but they also treated Him as a political enemy. Because they saw things through polemics. They saw things through politics. They saw things through their agendas or through what they wanted to see. But they did not see with the simple eyes of faith. These things happened. Christ did this action because He is God. And because He showed mercy to a man who was suffering. Because He gave him a faculty that he had been deprived of thanks to this power of the devil. That is not what they focused on. They focused instead on trying to blame Him for doing what He did. On trying to accuse Him of something else. On trying to turn it to their advantage to some way. To accuse Him of being demonic which would undermine Him so that it brings more power and influence into their camp. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, whoever else. That was what they wanted. That was all they wanted. And again, human nature doesn't change much. Because our favorite pastime very frequently is either to scroll through the news feeds and read all about the latest things so that we can get to the bottom of it. We can impose our agenda on these events and all these circumstances. Or we sit around and collectively discuss them to try to either catch somebody out or to encourage some sort of an echo chamber of conspiracy.
Summary
It's always rather astonishing to contemplate the idea that the people who witnessed this miracle that our Lord had just performed. He cast out a devil, the dumb man begins to speak, and immediately people begin to doubt what he had done, saying that he had cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub, which is an obvious, obvious distortion of reason to be able to arrive at a conclusion that they wanted to arrive at, namely that our Lord worked in cahoots with the devil. Human nature doesn't change much, because this is exactly how we always are. We tend to doubt what is evident to our eyes. We tend to look away from what is given to us to see. We tend to turn a blind eye to what is obviously God's attempt to help us, or God's attempt to work with us, or work in this world, and instead we tend to focus on something else. Agendas, politics, noise, whatever. The reason that the Jews got distracted by our Lord's miracle wasn't because they were looking for Christ to be God or to do miracles. They were looking to catch Him out. They were looking for what was really going on behind the scenes. Where did He really come from? How did He really do that? Like trying to investigate a magician's parlor tricks.