Finger of God

[Candlepower]

The phrase, “a healthy skepticism” implies there is “an unhealthy skepticism.”

A healthy skepticism protects us from falling for everything, but it also helps us discern the truth and believe it.

An unhealthy skepticism can be one that is absent (a-skeptical) or one that is total (hyper-skeptical). Absent of skepticism, we automatically trust everyone and believe everything. Tyrannized by skepticism, we automatically distrust everyone and disbelieve everything.

There was a song a few years ago with the line, “Everything is beautiful, in its own way.” That could be the a-skeptic’s slogan. Unfortunately, not everything is beautiful. ________ (fill in the blank with a sin) is not beautiful.

The hyper-skeptic reminds me of the old gentleman who had limburger cheese smeared on his mustache. Unbeknownst to him, the odious stuff had been placed there, as a joke, by his grandson while the old gentleman napped on the couch. When the Grandpa awoke, he sat up and mumbled, “This place stinks.” When he went out on the porch he declared, “This place stinks, too!” When he went out onto the lawn and took a big breath of fresh air, he loudly proclaimed, “The whole world stinks!”

It is good to be neither gullible nor cynical. Where to draw the line can be difficult at times, but that’s when being well grounded in Scripture helps. Scripture is the plumbline against which we should measure the straightness of all things. (Acts 17:11)

CP

Note: On my 1/31/11 post on this thread, I referenced Ephesians 14:4. Obviously, there is no 14:4 in Ephesians. I meant 4:14. I’m surprised none of you caught that. Maybe you did and were just being kind.

[Ian]

Hi CP,

I appreciate your posts, including the last one, but to me smelling a "hoax" barely 2 minutes into part one does not indicate a skepticism that is quite 100% healthy. I have rewatched other parts of the Finger of God, this time more with a skeptic`s hat on. But I cannot dismiss all of it, not even much of it, as the deception of the devil or the workings of dishonest, manipulative men. If so, then why boldly step out onto the streets like those kids are doing for Jesus? You`re going to be deceived by the devil anyway!! So why not just stay at home?

Steve, you wrote that the miracles in the Bible all served a useful purpose. As to gold teeth - a pensioner with no adequate source of income is likely to be mighty glad that a massive dental bill has been spared them. I`ve got a loose crown that needs a bridge or an implant, and am putting off and putting off going to the dentist about it because I know how many kilometres I will have to drive the children in my school bus to pay for it (4000 kilometres for a bridge and 12,000 kilometres for an implant). So I just chew on one side.

I like your story, TK!

[steve]

I had not heard that all the recipients of supernatural gold fillings were persons without financial resources or access to dentists. Is this claim being made?

I believe that Jesus can miraculously heal rotting teeth as well as cure blind eyes—and that is what I would expect Him to do for someone for whom He was desiring to perform a miracle. If I am near-sighted, and cannot afford glasses, I suppose that God can materialize a pair of spectacles right on my face, but, if He is going to do such miracles, I would be surprised that He did not just heal my eyes, as He did with others. Such would be a case of the Creator working a repair on His own creation. A gold filling for a tooth, like a pair of glasses, is a human artifice. I do not know if God has ever created out of nothing a device previously invented by human ingenuity.

Every healing that Jesus did was of a condition beyond any known hope of medical cures. God did not deign to miraculously mimmic what many an ordinary man can easily do in a mechanical reclining chair.

I have heard that the later parts of the video document people being raised from the dead. As I said earlier, I have no problem with God doing that kind of thing, and can believe it. For such things there is divine precedent, and it is entirely agreeable with His style. I am not a miracle-denier. I simply am not interested is being gullible about such things as do not strike me as being Christ-like miracles, and which people can easily fake (there have been cases of people in the past claiming to have had their teeth miraculously filled, and then being exposed as having had the work done by a dentist).

Also, that gold dust—or something taken for such ("all that glitters is not gold")—should inexplicably appear near the crotch on the pants of a man lying on his back does not, to my mind, measure up to the standard of God's usually impressive miracles. There is nothing about the appearance that communicates anything specific about God, and it would be very easy for someone kneeling by a prostrate body to sprinkle glitter upon it without others noticing (ever watch a sleight-of-hand magician?). I think I could even pull that one off.

The God of the Bible always did miracles that were undeniably supernatural. I am surprised that people think that He has, in recent years, resorted to the kinds of actions that can easily be (and often have been) faked. It makes Him seem feeble. I see no glory for Him in such things. What I see is, most likely, a distraction for saints who think that "doing the works of God" is best done by seeking physical miracles of just any sort. Healings and bringing people back from death—or even walking on water—would not arouse my suspicions nearly as much as these "gold" miracles.

[TK]

Personally, I find Luke 24:32 one of the most frustrating of all the bible -- oh, to have heard that conversation!

Well- this little movie recreates what that conversation may have sounded like. i bet it comes pretty close- going through the OT to explain Jesus. It was excellent.

TK

[Ian]

I`ll forget the Finger of God and move on. But the answers here have unsettled me. In the past year or three, as I have spiritually woken up and indeed begun to pray again, I have thought that God has been using strikingly coincidental happenings to speak to me or even just to make me aware of his overseeing eye over my life. These apparent communications have often seemed to be intended to correct or even rebuke my behaviour, but also often seemed to be intended to reward little steps forward. They have been (to me) so striking and so regular that I have taken to writing them down and do reread them occasionally. But what Steve has written makes me wonder. I could, like the people in part one of that film, be simply deluded by my own imagination or worse, by the "enemy". I say the "enemy" because one of these coincidences is a very unpleasant one and serves no purpose at all, except to remind me of a past failing and painful event.

All very unsettling. But Steve, does God deal with us all in the same way? He maybe needs to handle people like me differently than people like you (or people at different stages in their walk with God)?

[TK]

Hi Ian-

Just don't fall into the pit of low expectations.

Unbelief is safe, because it involves no risk and almost always gets what it expects.

I see that type of attitude commended nowhere in scripture, and in my opinion being overly skeptical ultimately results in a mindset of having low expectations when it comes to God-- an attitude that says " i believe that God can do anything, He just doesn't do very much."

I am not sure how a person of low expectations can boldly approach God's throne.

I would rather be fooled some of the time than miss God all of the time because I am overly skeptical.

TK

[Perry]

I guess for me, and I don't mean to trivialize this, I just don't understand the need for the parlor tricks. When there are legitimate needs, God can and sometimes does meet them in ways which may seem unusual to us. Why can't we be more attuned to seeing His providence when he meets those same needs in the usual ways? I don't mean to imply that I do this perfectly, or, for that matter, even very well. But I do strive to see His hand in the every-day blessings of life, and whisper a short little "hey, thanks for that" when I notice them. He is never far from us, and in Him we live, and move, and have our being.

[Ian]

TK, that was a wonderful post, and resonates perfectly with what I feel about this. Thank you for those wise words.

Funnily enough, lying in bed last night waiting to fall asleep, i thought about you with your "waterworks" over your reading a piece of scripture. I wondered to myself, "how many people react like that to words in the Bible?" Not many I suspect.

[Michelle]

I wondered to myself, "how many people react like that to words in the Bible?" Not many I suspect.

Well, there's Perry...

[Ian]

Well, there's Perry...

Indeed. Sorry, Perry. My selective memory at work!