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In biblical times, you couldn’t go to the market without encountering some kind of miracle, according to the tales in the bible.

People getting healed, enemy armies getting blinded and slaughtered, talking donkeys, people rising from the dead. And there are many Christian stories from the past 2,000 years of miracles that were even more amazing.

But funny thing, as soon as cameras and film and video recorders and tape recorders were invented, miracles seem to have all but disappeared, except for the odd case of someone’s aunt being healed something which showed up as a dark patch on a scan which may have been cancer. Maybe miracles have gone the way of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and UFOS, which still cannot be captured definitively on film or video even though almost everyone has a camera with them on their cell phone at all times.

Although video and photography equipment has become cheaper, higher quality and more accessible, we still have to make due with rubbish blurry photos that could depict anything. That’s because there was nothing real to begin with.

Are miracles the same? Are they only real when no one can prove they happened? When the only way of recording them is through word of mouth?

Is the age of miracles over, like some conservative Christian churches teach? Funny, the bible doesn’t seem to suggest that there were any “ages” or that miracles would ever stop.

What’s the most likely answer? God doesn’t do miracles when anyone can prove them, because they must be taken on faith? God doesn’t do miracles anymore because the bible is all anyone needs to believe?

Or there never were any miracles to begin with?

Maybe miracle stories are just stories, made fantastic in the retelling. I’ve seen this happen many times. A number of years ago, our newspaper received frantic calls about a “chainsaw massacre” and we had to investigate. One person in the office even said she’d heard about it and offered some lurid details. Turned out some guy had been walking down the road with a chainsaw, and may have waved it threateningly at someone he didn’t like. No one was attacked or “massacred” with a chainsaw, but the story spread and turned into the plot of a B-movie splatter flick.

Maybe that’s how miracle stories work, too. All it takes is a small grain of truth to be twisted into a story about something that never happened.

At an outdoor mass Tuesday in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, and also at the Dome of the Rock, Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians, Muslims and Jews to put their differences behind them and move towards reconciliation.

He called on Jews, Muslims and Christians to put aside things that divide them.
“Jews, Muslims and Christians alike call this city their spiritual home… There should be no place within these walls for narrowness, discrimination, violence and injustice,” Benedict said. “Believers in a God of mercy … must be the first to promote this culture of reconciliation and peace, however, painstakingly slow the process may be, and however, burdensome the weight of past memories.”

In a speech to Muslim leaders Tuesday morning, he said reason shows us the shared nature and common destiny of all people. He then said:

“Undivided love for the One God and charity towards ones neighbour thus become the fulcrum around which all else turns.”

Good luck with that, Benny.

This message has been approved by the Space Pope.

The New York Times has an excellent article on Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, his comception of a “macho” Jesus and the “New Calvinism” which drives much of his theology.

I have to admit I find a lot of what Driscoll has to say is attractive. I am sick of hearing about the wimpy sky fairy Jesus. However, he takes a lot of inspiration from classic Calvinism.

I am struggling enough with faith, with trusting the Bible and stripping away years of bad theology from my mind to search for what is true and right. I have huge problems with Calvinism, writing everything off as pre-ordained. A great exploration of this theology taken to its ridiculous conclusion is “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” by James Hogg who shows how a deeply-disturbed young religious fanatic uses the theology to justify a series of more and more depraved actions.

It’s satire, but its view of the theology is sound. This is not the answer. John Calvin burned heretics at the stake. What happened to Jesus’ “turn the other cheek?” That doesn’t mean “be a wuss” but Jesus definitely didn’t advocate going out and forcing the Kingdom of God to come by force.

Faith is not black and white. Jesus’ message, however, was simple. The hard part is figuring out what it actually means for each one of us.

A friend of mine wants me to get involved in church ministry again, helping with the youth group on a peripheral basis. She says it’s good to stay involved even a little bit and we talked a lot about “losing your first love” in terms of Christian faith.

Revelation 2:4-5:
4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. 5
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first
works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand
from its place—unless you repent.

Pretty serious-sounding stuff. Trouble is, I think I have lost my first love. I think I am still trying to find it again, but I don’t know I can do that through the filter of the same old fundamentalist approach to faith, through the same old church conflicts and politics and endless crises and pettiness. Would any other church be different? Is there anywhere I can go to talk with other like-minded people on a regular basis about my struggles of faith without being judged, or without someone trying to “fix” me?

Church is a place where people are either too false or too honest about themselves.

It’s also a place where hard questions are not welcome, encouraged or answered.

It’s a place people go to either feel good or miserable about themselves, depending on the denomination of the church. People are expected to be motivated to improve their lives from either approach.

“I don’t believe in you anymore,” I shouted to the sky.

“That’s OK,” God replied. “I still believe in you.”

I have stared into the palantir and it is corrupting me…
I can’t tear my eyes away.

Confess what you crave
a life without pain
you’d kill for the taste
But the hurt still remains

Still they don’t know who you are

Just be still my emerald
I’ll be waiting for you
Do exactly what your told
I’ll be waiting for you

Ashamed by the threats
you pierce the embrace
afraid and alone
In a dark lonely place

did you alway want to be
did they try to steal your soul
did they hurt you with deceit
can’t you come in from the cold
bestill my emerald
I’ll be waiting for you

– The Tea Party, “Emerald”