In need of a miracle? Wish you even believed such things were possible? In his new New York Times bestselling book, Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life, Eric Metaxas offers testimony, history, theology, practicality. He talks with me about Miracles …
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Did you ever think a big book on miracles would make the New York Times bestseller list?
ERIC METAXAS: The hunger on this subject is huge, so I suppose yes, I really did hope and think it might make the Times list — and I am tremendously grateful that it did! I know that most Americans want a civil and fair-minded conversation on this subject, but typically one finds either sneering atheistic rants that are mostly vicious ad hominem anecdotes or overtly religious and not appropriately skeptical books that don’t challenge one’s critical mind very much. Most people live in the middle of those icy poles and this book is for them and I’m not surprised there are many of them out there.
KJL: How can miracles change a life?
METAXAS: You’ll have to talk to Lazarus about that one. Although there is a rumor that after he rose from the dead he eventually died again and now isn’t available for comment until Doomsday. But if Obama can finagle a third term, that could be just two or so years away!
KJL: Why is your own miracle story so important?
METAXAS: Because it blew open the door to all of the other amazing miracle stories in this book. What happened to me in the summer of 1988 changed everything for me. And no one can tell me it didn’t happen, because I was there. That’s why I tell that story in this book, to show that an ordinary person like yours truly can experience such things. I didn’t expect it and it changed everything.
KJL: Can a life actually change overnight though? Doesn’t the Christian life require constant faithfulness?
METAXAS: The Christian life does require constant faithfulness, but sometimes God gives us an initial stimulus package, as it were, to grease the skids. But somehow God must intervene and must help us to be faithful. We cannot do it alone. Therein lies the paradox of it all. We cannot climb to heaven. Heaven must descend — must stoop — to us; and does.
KJL: You confess that some of the stories in the book had to pass your “initial skepticism and questions.” You add that “Just because some miracles stories are true doesn’t mean that they all are true.” How on earth do you tell the difference this side of heaven?
METAXAS: Most of us have what Ernest Hemingway called a built-in “b.s. detector” and I think that if we really want the truth, we can tell the difference between a smarmy religious fib and a bona fide true-to-life story.
KJL: Why is it important to consider that miracles may be real, as you say?
METAXAS: We’re really talking about the nature of reality itself, of course. It’s not about religious truth; it’s about truth. So if there is something beyond the material world of time and space — and that something wants to communicate with us who are inside this material world of time and space — that is about as significant as anything ever could be. It touches everything.
KJL: What’s your pitch to someone picking up the book thinking it to be a little pious nonsense — filled with well-intentioned but delusional stories?
METAXAS: Read it. I simply defy anyone who’s read it to tell me that the stories I’ve included are delusional. The details and the context and the persons telling the stories make that effectively impossible. So one may well find oneself in the position of not wishing the stories to be true, but conceding that they likely are true. And the first part of the book is science, which we can hardly dismiss so easily.
KJL: Is there any one story in the book you find particularly compelling? That you wish you really truly could make known household by household?
METAXAS: Yes, but ironically, it’s not one of the miracle stories in the second half of the book. It’s the story in the first half of the book about what science tells us about the creation of the moon. That has to be the most astounding thing imaginable. And just as astounding is that almost no one knows about it. We’re talking about the Moon, for goodness’ sake! It’s not some obscure and distant asteroid, it’s the glowing disc whose waxing and waning mankind has carefully observed since time immemorial. What science now tells us about how it got there — and about how that affected the creation of the earth — is an outrageous and mind-blowing tale. The question is, why aren’t we teaching this in schools? Why isn’t this on the front page of the New York Times. Oh, sorry, strike that last question. But you know what I mean. What science is telling us about the creation of the moon makes it sound as though it never ever could just have happened… It all seems “a put-up job,” to quote physicist Fred Hoyle, who gave us the term “Big Bang.” So yes, that one part of my book is what I’m dying for the world to know.
KJL: Is the question about suffering – why does God allow it? – and why does He intervene sometimes and not always the reason you wrote the book?
METAXAS: It’s not the single reason I wrote the book, but yes, it’s central to the larger conversation. So ducking that thorny question is ducking the whole shooting match, to grotesquely mix metaphors. The suffering question is the one question about which most people, myself included, long to have at least a substantive discussion.
KJL: You write: “Of course, no one wants to suffer. Let’s be clear about that. Let’s also be clear that that is normal and healthy. We shouldn’t want to suffer. But what we are talking about here is something else. It is understanding that as much as we wish to avoid suffering, there is more to life than merely avoiding suffering. In fact, good can come out of suffering. If we know this, it changes how we suffer. It gives it meaning. So what we desperately do want to avoid is not merely suffering but suffering without meaning.” Were you going to try to make that case to Brittany Maynard? Who is someone relatively healthy and happy to tell someone they need to suffer? Easy for the writer to say?
METAXAS: Not at all. I have suffered, so I’m not a fan of it. But I know that to suffer with the idea that God is with us in the suffering is infinitely preferable to suffering alone, with the idea that it’s all meaningless. I also know that if one must suffer — and most of us must at one time or another — one can be deeply comforted in knowing that the God of the Bible is not some indifferent Zeus or Thor — nor some elephantine Ganesh or baboonish Thoth.
KJL: What would you hope a reader might learn about prayer from your book?
METAXAS: That God hears our prayers. Whether he answers them precisely the way we want him to or not is another question, but if we know Who it is who hears them, it changes everything. He is not indifferent. Far from it.
KJL: What would you hope a reader might learn about marriage from your book?
Metaxas: That God takes a personal interest in our marriages. The two stories about failing marriages are two of my favorites.
KJL: What might Bonhoeffer or Wilberforce — who you’ve written books about — say about your Miracles?
Metaxas: I’d like to think they’d be fighting over who gets to write the foreword. Ha. In all seriousness, neither of them seems to have had any experience with the miraculous, which tells us that to be a hero of the faith does not necessarily involve the miraculous.
KJL: What is it you put down on your tax returns these days as your occupation? Obviously you’re a writer. But you take your faith seriously and explicitly and explicitly so. You’re talking about it and even preaching it. Why do you suppose you’re here? That this is your mission, if that’s how you see it? Does the world need more of it? Do you ever wonder if you might be too much for people? Do you not worry about it so much and pray instead?
METAXAS: I’m sorry, what? I was tuned out for a few second there… Can you repeat that please?
KJL: You talk a lot about real faith. What does real faith look like and who are you to say what it is and isn’t?
METAXAS: I’m nobody special, and I am very glad that I know that. But I think most of us know that a lot of what passes for religion doesn’t seem to be what we think it ought to be, if there is anything to it at all. We are all created by the same God, and we all long for truth and justice and love in our various ways. So typically when we see real faith, it strikes a chord with us.
KJL: So if I’m a reader who flips through titles… What’s your pitch for me to keep reading when you ask in a section title: “If We Thank God for the Good Things, Why Not Blame Him for the Bad?”
Metaxas: It’s a logical question. In fact, in the book I say that a friend has asked me this a number of times and that friend is none other than Emmy-award-winning TV legend Dick Cavett. No kidding. It’s an important question to ask and an important question to answer, and answer it I do in the book, now available at a quality bookseller near you, while supplies last. [Note: Cavett recently interviewed Metaxas — it can be seen at www.socratesinthecity.com.]
KJL: Not to sugarcoat or gloss over anything but do Christians have more uniting us than dividing us? Or am I delusional?
METAXAS: The more secular things have gotten, the clearer it becomes that the answer is yes.
KJL: Billy Graham is celebrating his 96 birthday this weekend. What is uniquely American about him? How has he influenced you? Is his public witness something of a miracle?
METAXAS: My love for Billy Graham knows no bounds. He spoke at Yale when I was there in the early 80s and I blew a chance to meet him which I’ll always regret. He’s a singular figure in our time. He has reigned as the face of evangelical Christian faith for over seventy years. He was a pastor in 1943. He was a college president in 1947. His crusades in Madison Square Garden and London in the 1950s affected millions of lives. He was close friends with Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson and Nixon and preached to the nation after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It’s all at the very least astounding.
The simple power of his simple message is undeniable: Jesus loves you and if you give your heart and life to him, you will become the person you were always meant to be; you will find the peace you long for. I can and do personally attest to that and like Dr. Graham long for everyone on the planet to know that same peace. Billy Graham was the messenger of that peace to millions over the decades and I am filled with gratitude for his time among us.
KJL: Be honest: What do you make of Pope Francis and his popularity in the popular culture. Time and Rolling Stone covers and all? Is it an opportunity for all Christians
Metaxas: Did I tell you he’s going to write the foreword to my upcoming biography on Luther? Whoops, I don’t think I’m supposed to say that publicly… Can we edit this out?
KJL: Some think it would take a miracle for American family life to turn around. What do you see out there? In the culture, in lives?
Metaxas: If one simultaneously believes in the possibility of miracles and is a student of history — I think of the career of Wilberforce, specifically — then one must be open to the idea that yes, it can certainly turn around. It’s very much why I wrote this book and why I write most of what I write. [He’s online at ericmetaxas.com.]