A: C.S. Lewis once said that miracles are the heart of Christianity. While they may lie at its heart, they have a harder time snuggling their way into the grey matter of the twentieth-century mind. Unfortunately, miracles are so much a part of the Hebrew-Christian faith that it is not possible to doubt them and affirm the faith that was created by them. Faith created by miracles? Exactly. It is the Exodus miracle of the parting of the Red Sea around which Jewish faith is gathered. The Seder ritual is a celebration of the final plague by which God does at last convince Pharaoh to let his people go.

In the New Testament the Resurrection is that central miracle around which the Christian faith is gathered. The apostle Paul said that without believing the miracle of the Resurrection, faith was impossible. Still, to the rigid logicians of our times the miracles seem to be scientific monstrosities. Science has made such formidable technicians out of us that we are not as open as earlier people may have been to miracles. We have painted ourselves into an empirical corner and have become the victims of the scientific monster we created.

Miracles in scripture are never random, pointless infringements on natural law. Miracles are not violations of cosmic order. They are not acts of God denying his own natural laws. Miracles occur when God sets natural law aside. When God sets it aside, he does it to say to those who encounter the miracle that people mean more to God than the mere observance of natural law. God split the Red Sea not to amaze the Egyptians but to say to Pharaoh, “I care more for the lives of the poor trapped Israelites than I care for buoyancy and gravitational laws. I therefore make the waters of the Red Sea misbehave that I may prove how much Israel means to me.”
In a similar way, when Jesus feeds the five thousand, the miracle plays havoc with the natural law that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Here matter is created. Jesus multiplies the loaves not to wow the Galilean peasantry, but to show how very much God cared for the poor, the hungry, and the dispossessed.

Perhaps one final thing must be said about miracles. They exist that God may be free from his own imprisonment in the system of cosmic law he established. When God performs any miracle he is saying, “I’m free to act as I will in th enatural world.” He proved to all at the Red Sea that he could act above the laws He made. By walking on the sea Jesus proved he was indeed the Son of God. He could perform a miracle to prove he was God and not imprisoned within the natural system over which he too took charge.

Miracles are those acts which establish the central beliefs of the Hebrew-Christian tradition. They create the faith.