Grace, Causation, and Miracles

When I was in high school I didn't believe in miracles.

I wasn't an agnostic. Even then I had this kind of unstoppable awareness of a Great Divine... and I think people would have described me as religious.

But I was also very logical. Goaded by a sense of order perhaps, I sought the causal explanations for any and all events. So while I loved God and God's stories... I was fascinated with physics. Had someone walked into the foyer of my fancy and held a gun to my head, I probably would have chosen God over physics... but that choice would have been a hollow one, a bit like choosing to be with the safe girl you've been dating for years because you should, while the other one runs off to South America to feed the homeless.

As a teen God and God's ways never fascinated me. Miracles... yeah. Prayer... right. I enjoyed prayer. I had left behind the days when church was my weekly hour devoted to getting all the dirt out from under my nails. I would pray, and it would calm me. I sorta thought about it like meditating. Good for me. Cleared my head.

But physics! Ah, there was something. It lay at the base of all science, and if you played your disciplines in the right order, it was the foundation of all of learning. "Aren't all the realizations of the humanities just a sloppy approach to sociology?" the conversation starts. "And sociology, that's just an unfocused way of doing psychology." Whoever this is has now alienated 70% of all academics, and they haven't even really gotten started. "And psychology, psychology is just a behavioral approach to a few organs, all sufficiently studied by biology. Biology is nothing more than the chemistry of living things." Once basically everyone in the room has been insulted, the clincher, "And chemistry is just simplified physics."

Or, put more succinctly by Ernest Rutherford, the New Zealand scientist who discovered that atoms have a small charged nucleus:

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

Of all understanding, physics seemed king. It has at its core a bit of very reasonable reasoning. Things reliably cause other things to happen. (Or maybe "Things cause other things to happen reliably." Wherever the reliably goes, you get the point. Things making things happen, so long as the same situation comes up again, it will all happen the same.)

This assumption of reliability its what makes experiments so damn cool. Instead of waiting for events to randomly occur in such a way as to enlighten you about the world, you can start throwing spheres out of windows over and over and watch. To describe this reliable activity the physicists chose the language of mathematics, as math is the second most reliable language on the planet. (The first is French, but the lawyers managed to get their hands on that one.)

Armed with observation, experimental design, and mathematics, you the physicist are free to discover anything about the universe. Or rather, to do a lot of observations so some arrogant ass can come along fifteen years later, use your data, and become way more famous than you ever will be. But who cares? All in the name of science! (You always liked that kid anyway.)

Right. I loved physics. And I was good at it, too! Abstract math always came more easily than arithmetic, and I thrived on those word puzzles mixed with a kind of CSI flare that always dominates physics tests. (If a car explodes and raises to a temperature of 220 degrees Celsius while launching off of a 60 degree ramp over a 30 degree lake going 120 m/s, what is the temperature of the water at the base of the ramp 10 minutes after the car sinks into the water? Assume no air friction and a spherical car. Way more fun than multiplication tables.)

I gleefully sought to answer all the world's mysteries. I didn't believe in ghosts, curses, superstitions, aliens, spirits, faeries, psychics... the closest I got was fearing that I was some kind of demon who could psychically, albeit unconsciously, hurt people when I was upset. I think some guy tripped on a hurdle when he was beating me and some clothing fell in my closet one night when I as crying. Anyway, apart from the angsty teen inner drama, I pretty much saw the world as solidly welded together, with not much room for weirdness. Occum would have been proud.

But college brought me into a new world. Lots of things happened in college. My liberal leanings solidified into clearly expressible beliefs, like loving gay people and hating war. I started ironing out that whole demon complex. But probably most importantly, I started hanging out with people who not only believed God existed, but really actually believed. There's an important difference. Everybody believes that Chiropractic care exists... but talk to those people who believe in it. They want its healing power and they get it every day if they can figure out how. I now had friends who sought the presence of their God every day, and there was no tragedy to severe nor worry to small that they hesitated in bringing it before their loving creator.

Some of these people were hippy Pagans, syncing their magic to the phases of Mother Moon and identifying within themselves and others the primordial animism that animated all things.

Some of these people were devoted Christians, praying with such surrender that the dogmas of their church were dwarfed in the face of their relationship with their savior.

And some of these people were philosophers, acutely aware of how their ideas shaped their experience, guiding their thoughts so as to better orient them to the Divine.

Somewhere in the midst of these influences, the physical world started to seem less reliable. I took physics my first year of college, and while it was the only A I got either semester, it didn't feed me in the way other pursuits did. Philosophy, communication, and religion became my intellectual mainstay. I learned about every faith I could read about, or even more importantly, worship with. The world I had always sought to understand mathematically was suddenly coming into clearer focus asking questions about my perception and the acts of God, spirits, and the fae.

So long as we are quoting famous physicists, lets do one more. Good Ol' Einstein, who hopefully needs no introduction, puts it like this: "There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."

I had definitely started to see the hand of God in all places. Swirling spiritual causes now dominated my thinking. All things made through this loving creation. The full realization of this presence of God came quite by accident when a handful of very enthusiastic non-Catholic Christians came to the Catholic bible study. They were totally welcome of course... but very quickly it became clear that they had not come to learn anything... but rather to correct our erroneous understanding of just about everything. I ended up getting into a lively debate concerning the creation of the earth with a pair of guys.

Pair of guys, "The earth was created by God in seven days, so sayeth the bible."

Tim, "No, the earth was created by God through a process uncovered by science." (Still love my physics, God just happens to be really good at it too!)

Pair of guys, "Weren't you listening... THE BIBLE! Its says otherwise."

Tim, "Bah, metaphors. I'll go by the evidence built into the geological data."

At this point, I think the conversation has come to an end road. For them, the authority is the bible, for me, it's paying attention to the world. But they go for gold.

Pair of guys, "Ok, so it looks like the earth is 4.5 billion years old. What if God created the earth in seven days, but gave it the appearance of age? All the rocks and stuff instantly in perfect place to make it look like it had actually happened"

Tim is flabbergasted by this logic. "Why would God do a silly thing like that?"

Guy 1, "We cannot know the mind of God."
Guy 2, "To test our faith in the Bible."

Tim has had it. They have presented what we call in the thinking game an unfalsifiable argument, as any evidence to the contrary is explained by the theory. Such ideologies aren't doomed to be wrong... but they are not though kindly of among philosophers as you can do so little with them.

So Tim fires back, "Ok, ok, what if God created the earth 15 seconds ago with all our memories instantly in perfect place so that it seemed like we had been having this conversation and actually believed what we were saying?"

Pair of guys, "Why would God do a silly thing like that?

Tim, "To test my patience."

Rest assured that my retelling of that conversation casts me as wittier than I really was. All my retorts were probably what I wished I had said after they left, and they likely left thinking they had saved my soul. And perhaps they had.

Oddly enough, it was that conversation that destabilized my notion of God as a distant creator, one who was really good at pool, big banging that perfect shot into the racked set, knowing perfectly how every ball would spin and bounce and eventually end up in the pockets. They had suggested that perhaps the beginning of time was not the last creative act of my Blessed One. I had somewhat insincerely suggested that it had been less than a minute ago. But as I ruminated on that retort more authentically, it seemed only natural to ask that if God could have created everything in its completeness 15 seconds ago, then why not now.

Why not now? Could it be that my brilliant creator was authoring everything, suddenly, perfectly, and completely in every now? Wow. Way easier to feel the loving touch of the Divine.

And so it was that my fascination with understanding the world from a causal framework came to an official end. If all things flood out of God in every moment, then a causal explanation is nothing more than a running commentary on the brush stroke of God as God lets it be revealed to us. Things accelerate as they fall not because of some rule God invented at the beginning of time, but rather because God gracefully creates the object moment after moment so that is each existence shares a fluid relationship to its past existences. Causation is then a story, a way of understanding events, and not an active agent in the unfolding of future events. God is the ongoing crafter, and an artist at that.

And so it was that I came to understand everything as a miracle. Everything as an act of God.

But that was college, and while I wouldn't have suspected it then, I have learned things since. Now, its always easier to tell the story of how you came to know the things you did when they are in the past. Explaining the root of your current beliefs is a bit trickier. I'll do my best.

I have more respect for honor than I ever have. I have come to understand people as both bound by circumstance and free in spirit. I have swallowed the bitter pill that God knows far more than me, and that I have to ask for help. My world explodes with gratitude, and I know I must serve.

I realize this is a kind of paltry description when compared to the narratives that mark the other two phases. But its the best I can do. I don't really know why I believe what I believe now. But I do know what I believe.

The Einstein was wrong. At least about miracles. Now, his formulation was simple and brilliant. There is a virtue that is used to evaluate theories, a sort of "less is more" sensibility. Parsimony, they call it. Basically, the fewer assumptions a theory has to posit... the more parsimonious it is... and therefore more valuable. Spoken so well by the Franciscan Occam, if two theories have the same explanatory power, then the simpler of the two is better. According to this aesthetics of thinking, Einstein's assertion about miracles is safe. Either nothing is a miracle or everything is. Sorta like saying it either all ones or all zeros. Both ways you only have to deal with one number. Both ways Occam is satisfied with the nice close shave you gave yourself with his razor.

And here is where I become a fanatic. Sorry Einstein. Sorry Occam. Perhaps my vision of the world will just have to make a few extra assumptions and posit a few extra entities. Or perhaps our two visions do not have the same explanatory power. However its is judged, here it is.

I believe that God creates the world in every moment. That much has not changed. I also believe that God tends to create the world with a certain finesse that makes a causal story to be worth pursuing and worth telling other people. But I believe that there are extraordinary miracles, miracles of a different order than the usual glorious ever blossoming of the All.

I believe that one of Gods coolest miracles is the will. My will. Yours, too. And, as God authors the world, God creates my body and my moods with much of the directions I desire with my will. Deftly my life issues forth from his will, but in a way that follows my design. In this way I am perfectly possessed. Possessed by God, much in the same way a ghost possesses someone in a movie, but unlike that clumsy specter who violates the subject of their habitation, Gods presence impinges in no way upon my psyche. The creator of all, a dexterous bull in the china shop of my mind.

God not only miraculously creates the world, but miraculously sanctifies it as well. Through me, without a single affront to my choosings, God works divinely. Touching, healing, blessing, enlightening, liberating...

I used to look for the physical cause for all things.

I used to look for the spiritual cause for all things.

But now I know that God's love of my will is so great that she will not violate it in pursuit of her perfect design.

And with that in mind, I know that it is not my task to uncover all the laws of the universe. Nor is it my task to understand all the spiritual mysteries. While neither of these pursuits are bad, they serve good only when in service to our greatest call.

To surrender to the will of God. When God comes to work thought us, we should get the fuck out of the way. In the quiet surrender to our God we become greater than any act of self could ever accomplish.