Instead of clinging to the idea that God can do whatever we can imagine, we might instead think that God’s power in our world is limited because creating a world where creatures like us exist involves a kind of pouring out of power.

The preacher at the memorial service no doubt thought he was giving a message of comfort to those who had lost a loved one. The central thrust of his message was that it was Jim’s time to go. It was apparently the kind of message he had repeated many times before. Jim was my wife’s younger brother, and the memorial service had been delayed a year because of Covid.

I think that there are enough credible stories to lead an open-minded person who is not wedded to a materialistic worldview to think that in our times (not just in biblical times) there are events that can be called miraculous by my definition of the term (an event that goes against what we would expect to happen apart from the operation of some extraordinary power). Some events strongly suggest the operation of powers other than those recognized by contemporary scientific accounts.

Some people think that there are reasons why God might set up a system in which making prayer requests is a factor in what God does, but I don’t find any of the reasons I have heard convincing. However, the standard model is not the only option. Instead of thinking about petitionary prayer as trying to get God to do something, suppose we think of it as a way of accessing powers that God has made available.

Western education tends to bias people toward thinking that what happens in the world is fully explicable in terms of the forces recognized by contemporary science. Part of this bias is connected with the assumption that ordinary sense experiences is the only way to know about reality. Traditional religions arose in contexts where people presumed visionary or mystical apprehensions could put people in touch with deeper dimensions of reality than what we find in ordinary sense experience.

 It is a distortion of the New Testament message to understand the significance of Jesus’s resurrection as primarily about what happens when an individual earthly life ends. In the first place, it is about a transformation of this world that has made possible a new kind of life. His followers are called to participate in this new life in a community of faith that is dedicated to bearing witness to the overthrow of an old order and the inauguration of a better one.