Miracles, standards, and authentication

Being an engineer, I often try to verify things I see and hear. When you work with different types of people, you realize that everyone has a different definition of a task being done. As a musician, I realize that my standard of playing a piece of music is different than that of other people. My musical standards for myself are a result of all the hard work I put into violin practice when I was younger...sometimes practicing 5-6 hours a day during summers when I would visit a younger brother at a music camp. I practiced like crazy during those days because I was motivated by all the younger kids around me playing circles around me.

I am reminded of a passage from Barack Obama's Dreams of my Father:
“In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer.

There wasn’t much detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change.

Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.

And my friends, black and white, would heartily commend me for my ideals before heading toward the post office to mail in their graduate school applications.

I couldn’t really blame them for being skeptical. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can construct a certain logic to my decision, show how becoming an organizer was a part of that larger narrative, starting with my father and his father before him, my mother and her parents, my memories of Indonesia with its beggars and farmers and the loss of Lolo to power, on through Ray and Frank, Marcus and Regina; my move to New York; my father’s death. I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone—and that that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.”

Similarly, I can see that my need for authentication and my standards are in part based upon my experiences and environment. Yet, the need for authentication is also due in part, to the world in which we now live. Science has given us much, in that we now have a more dependable way to observe God's creation. Still, no matter how much we delve into the nature of the universe, we are still making observations and creating models to explain how everything works. We do not have the ability to explicitly prove how things came into existence. And so in everyday we have to make decisions using data that is second hand, probable, or merely plausible.

Nonetheless, when it comes to miracles, I am a skeptic. I do not personally feel the need for a major miracle in my life nor do I want to depend on them. However, I can see that a miracle at the right place and time would transform a person's faith for the rest of their lives. I can also see that many miracles in one's life might have a negative effect in making one too dependent on future miracles and inhibit personal growth. It all depends on the person.

How does this relate to helping people in South Africa? For one thing, my missions trainers have said that miracles occur during every venture. One example that was brought up relates to a car dealership in India. The average sales for this dealership amounted to ~5 cars/month. The REP consultant went to the dealership and prayed with the client over the dealership. New idea for me...I have never really prayed over a workplace before. No salespeople were in that day. What happened?

11 cars were sold that day. Only the accountant was around to do all the paperwork. Miracle? Random luck? I maintain some slight skepticism especially because I was not there and I do not know the full details. However, what I like about REP is that they have a defined process for documenting miracles they see on a venture. Like any scientific experiment, you need to have a control or baseline. In this case, the baseline was an average of 5 sales/month. While the sales on that particular day could be a statistical outlier, no such observed variability had ever been observed before. As a reliability engineer, I do look for data at work to be statistically significant (a measurement difference that is larger than noise). That said, almost by definition, miracles will be statistical outliers...things that defy repeatability and predictability. So if an event like that at a car dealership falls way outside of the known experiences of my client, I am at least willing to believe in the probability that it was indeed a miracle.

The most important thing in a miracle is not the numbers. In order for a miracle to be "authenticated" on a venture, the client must believe it was a miracle and be willing to back it up with testimony. It would be great if this happened to my client...but I don't need a miracle for myself. The most important thing is that they have been transformed inwardly by the miracle. The most important thing is that they now believe.