Frances Finn broke her leg skiing when she was 13 years old. The accident has led to limbs of different lengths.
However, at a Christian Conference in April 2008 an audience of over 100 people witnessed her shorter leg grow.
And they recorded the video on their mobile phones! The story made it to BBC news where they interviewed Frances personally to hear her take. The video is less dramatic than I was expecting, but it is thought provoking nonetheless. We know God has the power to heal, but we don’t have any clue why he picks the times, places, and people so it’s very easy for us to get skeptical over miracle stories. Here’s one, from western culture, among educated people, that claims a woman’s leg grew an inch and a half by a miraculous act of God and caught on video.
What do you think? Is this an elaborate scam? Did God do a miracle? Is it worth even asking the question?
Here’s the link:
Um, no. If it isn’t an outright lie, I’m sure that there is some physiological explanation for this that hasn’t been explored or even considered. If it were true, it would certainly be amazing, but I’m not ready to jump on any miracle bandwagons until more investigation is completed (which won’t be happening any time soon, I’m sure).
I remember going to a meeting like this once where people put their hands all over me while making suggestive prayers about lifting my burdens and spouting gibberish for twenty minutes. The funny thing was that I did feel better afterward, but once I considered it for a while, it seemed as though it was more a power of suggestion accompanied by a perception that someone else cared enough to say nice things about me. Our minds are wonderful tools that way. We are the ones who choose to feel certain emotions about different situations. If you want to be angry, think about something that makes you mad for a while and you’ll be angry. Want to feel sad and depressed? Concentrate on something that makes you cry. Obviously, this video presents a different, more physical scenario which is why I’d be curious about other non-miracle opinions before I considered it any differently.
Probably going off-topic here, but consider truthiness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness): If I feel like something is true, it must be true. If I believed that mountains are a heavenly miracle, then using truthiness, I can point to them as inscrutable evidence of the existence of God. However, if I believe that mountains are not so much a miracle but the result of shifting plates of rock on the Earth’s crust, I can’t use them as proof of anything supernatural. Considering the latter point, I can still believe in God and that God designed the planet that way if I choose to do so, but I can’t say that mountains prove that God exists.
Chuck: I tend to be a bit skeptical, too. I lived overseas and heard reports from the States about things happening in my host country which no one could confirm or which were distorted in the reporting. So, I tend to prefer first-hand testimonies. Considering the report is from the BBC, however, should lend a little credence to it.
If there was a real lengthening of her leg, then something physiological had to have taken place, but what provoked that physical change at that time? If the mind is so powerful, might there be a link to faith in this when faith is placed in God and not in faith itself?
Now, what if the “wonky” healing of her leg when it was originally broken which left it 1 1/2″ short was merely a psychological phenomenon? I could believe some psychological condition could cause muscles to contract and give the illusion that the leg was shorter when in fact it was more of a posture issue beyond her conscious control, but I would find it hard to believe such a condition could cause a true shortening of the bone. What the case was here, we aren’t told.
So, for the sake of argument, let’s say her condition was merely psychological. Is it any less a miracle that her psychological condition was “healed”? I guess comparing the ministry you received to hers isn’t really helpful in that you walked away merely feeling good for a bit but she walked away without a limp. There’s a bit of a difference in results.
I guess your real question, then, is: was it God, or could goodhearted people have accomplished the same thing and God wasn’t involved at all? In other words, the result was merely natural with nothing supernatural taking place at all.
My question for you, in that case, is why are you asking that question? Is Mark Marx trying to gain from this somehow? Then I would probably be more skeptical, too, but the article isn’t written to this end, although, unbeknownst to you and me, Marx could be making hay out of this. That sadly does happen.
What I think is going on more so is that we seek and expect mere natural explanations for things and miss out on miracles when they really do take place or would have taken place except for our skepticism. No, we don’t want counterfeits, whether demonic or human. At the same time, we don’t want Jesus to say to us, “Be it done according to your skepticism.” In fact, it is too often being done according to such faith as we have which is in reality more skepticism.
May I also suggest that your dependence on natural explanations is just as much a faith statement as any correctly act of God, but your faith statement has less authority at its foundation than faith statements based on the Scriptures. You trust science, if you will, more because it seems to have proven itself more to you than what you find in the Scriptures, and that, sadly, is the experience of most Christians.
Rob