Where to Look for a Supernatural God in a Natural World
22 "The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. ... 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, ... 27 When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, ... 30 then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. [Pro 8:22-23, 25, 27-28, 30-31 ESV]
If you go back and read this chapter from the beginning, you see that the "I" and the "me" in these verses is wisdom. I've left out a few verses to shorten this up, but it is worthwhile to read the whole section. It's a pretty big deal. Most of us think of wisdom as really insightful and pithy sayings that old people know. "When the horse dies, dismount" and stuff like that. That's not what's meant here.
In these verses wisdom is order, and repeatability, and predictability. God chose these instead of chaos, disorder, and randomness as characteristics of His creation. He did this because He wanted man to live in an ordered, predictable world where effect always followed cause. Apples always "fall", hot air balloons "rise", and days last 24 hours. Orbits are stable so the location of the moon can be precisely calculated in advance and we can send men there and bring them back. Every time.
The rules that insure these things have names like Newton's Laws of Motion, The Laws of Thermodynamics, and Relativity. God invented the universe and made everything in it, including us, subject to these laws. He picked order over chaos. Only God and his angels and to a much lesser extent Satan and his angels, can do things outside these laws.
When God goes outside the laws, we call it a miracle. When God set it all up to start with, His intentions were only good so all "causes" led to desirable "effects". There was no need for miracles at first. But Satan messed that up when he convinced Adam to sin. Sin put sand in the gears of the universe. Sin led to the rise of causes intended to do harm instead of good. And the laws still worked, even though the intent was harm, because the sand slowed the gears, but it couldn’t stop the gears.
When bad things happen to good people, it is not because God decided to shorten their lives. He would never do that. Bad things happen as a result of natural laws running from cause to effect, just like they are designed to do. We don't always see, know, or understand the causes, but they were there.
If we understand this, it is easy to understand why we pray. When we pray for someone who is sick, or has a terminal disease, we are praying for God to do something that defies the natural laws that He set up. And that is the definition of a miracle. We want God to turn back the natural laws that brought this about and change the outcome. That's a big deal, and we need to realize what we're asking Him to do. And if we understand that even the bad things that happen are following the rules of the universe, shouldn't we rather ask why God is ever merciful enough to make an exception instead of why He doesn't always do so?
So we see that God chose order instead of randomness in his creation of the universe, and how only He can decide to change the rules for His own purposes. I mentioned though that to a lesser extent, Satan and his angels can do a little rule breaking also.
When Satan and his crew break the rules we call it clairvoyance, magic, voodoo, witchcraft, sorcery, ghosts and things like that. Now that we understand how and why God set up the rules, and that sin entered by man's choice at Satan's instigation, we can see why God would hate these things. It is because Satan and his angels break the physical laws for no other purpose than to divert us from the true ruler of the universe. They are pretenders to the power of God.
Their purpose is to deceive us into believing they have the same kind of power to bend or break rules that God does, and that they will be far more liberal with their favors. If they can convince us of this they can demand our worship in exchange for their services. At the very least, they can keep us from appealing to the one and only true source of good in the world.
God wants us to worship Him exclusively and He hates it when Satan disguises himself in this way so that we will worship him. These verses sum up God's attitude about Satan's petty rule breaking: 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. [Deu 18:10-12 ESV] God cuts no slack to those who participate with or assist Satan in his deceits.
So we have established the logic of a Christian view of the supernatural events in the world. We accept as fact that God made the rules the universe obeys, and that He despises those who try to circumvent Him. Why then are so many – Christians included - fascinated by things God so clearly hates? I’m talking about things like ESP, voodoo, and witchcraft? Why do we so easily believe that these have some basis in fact? Why are fantasy movies and books that portray magic and supernatural abilities as harmless - movies like Harry Potter or even Frozen - so universally popular? And why are there so many places to get your palm read, your fortune told, or your own séance to contact deceased loved ones?
We all allow a little room in our minds for these "unscientific" things to be real. Yet so many who accept that voodoo and fortune telling might have some credibility will absolutely reject the possibility that God could ever do anything supernatural. So many flatly discredit claims that Jesus could be born of a virgin or that He could have cured every disease from leprosy to blindness in front of hundreds of witnesses. Or how about the claim that Jesus rose from the dead after a brutal public execution and then showed himself to those who knew him best and would recognize any attempt at trickery? Just look at the contrast in the power God has exercised to save mankind and the low tricks of the trade that Satan trots out to win us to his sorry side! The difference is plain as day.
If we are not only willing to believe, but downright enthusiastic about the world's counterfeit signs and wonders, why do we balk at the miraculous things that God did to establish and verify that Jesus was God incarnate? How can we accept one and reject the other? And while this obvious contradiction in what so many are willing to believe may not seem like a big deal, there is this verse to consider: 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." [Jos 24:15 ESV] I think it is ok to believe that supernatural things really happen because the Bible is full of supernatural events. What is not ok is belief that black magic, ESP, and fortune telling are real and harmless, but that God cannot possible be either.
I think the verses that follow, from Paul in the New Testament, will put into perspective the principles we’ve established so far for understanding supernatural events in a natural world. When Paul and Barnabas are preaching at Lystra, Paul heals a lame man. Those who see this believe that Paul and Barnabas must be gods, and call them Hermes and Zeus, and prepare to make sacrifices to them. Paul and Barnabas are upset by this because it is directing attention away from God and toward the idols these people worship.
Here's what they do about it: 15 "Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. 17 Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." [Act 14:15-17 ESV]
What Paul is saying is that if we observe how nature operates, we will see that it stays within the confines of what we call natural law. The science of modern times makes this fact ever more certain. More importantly, we should also see that natural law operates to the benefit of mankind more than any other creature. If rain was random, we could never count on a crop getting water when needed. If winter and summer were random, we wouldn't know when to plant crops. Animals don't depend on sowing and harvesting. Only man depends on order for his survival. Paul says God made it work this way so that it would be obvious to any objective observer that these laws operate for the benefit of mankind. Evolution, as we know it today, plays no favorites. But if you look at how things really work, what we refer to as "nature" certainly does play favorites, and the clear favorite is mankind.
The people Paul is talking to had always attributed beneficial natural events to the mood and whimsy of the idols they worshiped, and they looked to magicians, sorcerers and so on to influence those gods when things were not going well. Paul tells them to look at the evidence. Based on the evidence, praying to stone idols or paying vast sums to "rainmakers" are alike a waste of time and resources, because natural laws established by the creator determine the timing of the rain. So if you want the rules changed, don't look to the pretenders. Direct your prayers to the One who made all the rules - and He made them for our benefit.
When people ask where God is in a world so full of injustice, misery, and disease, this is my answer. The world works according to natural laws. Cause and effect rule the day. Sin in the world is the cause that leads to so many awful effects. God has the power to suspend what we call natural law. Sometimes, and for His own purposes, God does exactly that and we see a miracle. Even when He doesn't give us a miracle, the evidence of God as creator and master of all that is can be seen all around us. And the revelations of science, looked at objectively, make it ever more certain that the world exists by design, not by chance. If we believe in the design, we must believe in the Designer. Please don’t ignore the evidence!