Unless Christianity updates its doctrine and adapts to a changing world, it’s destined for irrelevancy!
A century ago, many church leaders made this sort of claim about God’s supernatural intervention in human affairs. The Bible’s miracle stories were simply unbelievable for modern people in a world steeped in the discoveries of science.
As a result, some churches jettisoned Christian teaching about miracles, while others downplayed the importance of these events in favor of more palatable interpretations. (One of my favorites: the feeding of the five thousand is the “miracle” of people sharing their food, not Jesus providing bread from heaven.)
Strangely, the churches that chose to deny or downplay the miraculous are now more irrelevant than the “fundamentalists” they opposed. And the fastest-growing wing of Christianity in the last century–the Pentecostals and charismatics–has insisted on supernatural signs and wonders as a mark of Christian experience in the present.
Naturalistic philosophy hasn’t won over the world. In fact, some would say that the secular worldview has created a hunger for mystery and spirituality. Whatever the case, a century later, biblical miracles can no longer be labeled as the most controversial aspects of our faith.