A church that has new miracles to talk about can fire up its members far more easily than a church whose miracles happened in the distant past. It should not be surprising, therefore, that top church leaders often tell of miracles.
In the past couple of years, however, our neighborhood of miracles seems to have become a bit of a ghetto. Consider, for example, “miracles” offered in recent talks by Elders Ronald A. Rasband and David A. Bednar.
In an April 2021 general conference address titled, “Behold! I am a God of Miracles,” Elder Rasband told of a power outage that occurred at 5:40 p.m. on Sept. 13, 2020. The outage struck before the scheduled 6 p.m. start of a Face to Face event to be broadcast to more than 600,000 from the church’s Jerusalem movie set near Goshen, Utah. Elder Rasband didn’t give the cause of the outage but mentioned that there were wildfires in the area. He noted that a generator was on site “that some thought we might be able to power up, but there was no assurance it could sustain the sophisticated equipment at hand.”
Amid tears and confusion among those who were to take part in the program, including narrators, musicians, technicians and “even 20 young adults from our own extended family,” Elder Rasband said he stepped away and “pleaded” with the Lord for a miracle and for the power to come back on. At 6:07 p.m., 27 minutes after the outage, power returned. “Everything started working . . . we had experienced a miracle. . . . the Lord had put forth His hand, and the power came on.”
Elder Rasband also noted that he received a text from President and Sister Nelson after the event in which the church president said “as soon as we heard the power was out, we prayed for a miracle.”
While all of us who believe in Christ believe in miracles, Elder Rasband’s miracle in the land of Goshen raises a few questions.
First, if the power had gone out on a day in which no broadcast took place and no one had been at the site, would its prompt restoration still be viewed as a miracle? (Keep in mind that power outages routinely end in less than an hour.) In another context, if my family returns home from a movie and finds, by looking at our home clocks, that power had been off for a half-hour and had returned, would we more likely view this as “a miracle” or as an annoyance requiring us to reset the clocks?
Second, before proclaiming power restoration to be a miracle, doesn’t the proclaimer have a duty to inquire as to the cause of the outage and the means by which power was restored? Otherwise, if every restoration of power is a miracle, electrical maintenance personnel will be reclassified as miracle workers and will immediately demand huge pay raises. Yes, if an electrical maintenance worker was very near the outage site at the exact moment of the outage, that would certainly support the “miracle” narrative. But if the outage was caused, for example, by an onsite circuit breaker tripping after a short-circuit in an appliance, would unplugging the appliance and flipping the breaker back on be a miracle? In that case, rather than saying the Lord put forth His hand, it would surely be more accurate to say someone put forth his finger to flip the breaker back on. Also, we are not told if the power was restored after someone started up the generator. We don’t even know if it was merely a case of crews briefly disconnecting power to perform repairs to a power pole that was damaged by a vehicle the day before.
Perhaps those who are happy to say that restoration of power was a miracle don’t want to know the answer to the above questions because they fear the answer might show the “miracle” to be a faith-promoting fairy tale.
Third, while the Nelsons prayed for a miracle “as soon as we heard the power was out,” it would be interesting to know if their prayer was offered after power had been restored.
Power restoration in the land of Goshen could indeed have been a miracle and a direct answer to prayer. But lack of answers to relevant questions suggests that instead of elevating it to miracle status, perhaps we need to be content to call it a blessing. Otherwise, when power goes out briefly then returns at the start of a concert featuring a vulgar punk-rock band, what’s to keep them from claiming the “miracle” shows the Lord is a big fan of punk rock? (Most people know he prefers gospel, soft rock and rhythm and blues.)
On Jan. 26, 2021, the church’s Web site ran an article titled “Elder Bednar Tells of Temple Miracles During COVID-19” The miracles were connected to government officials in a certain area of North America announcing on Nov. 10, 2020, that in 72 hours, public gatherings would not be allowed. Knowing that closure of the temple in the area would be required and that it might last for an extended period, temple leaders went to an around-the-clock schedule with workers hurrying to contact members to fill time slots before the closure. In the COVID-era article, Elder Bednar praises the temple for rushing to get members to gather in close proximity during a three-day period, thereby presenting a stark contrast with First Presidency decisions that would soon close all 160+ temples for safety reasons and eventually include a mask requirement for everyone in all reopened temples.
Elder Bednar noted that one temple worker said, “Almost all available time slots were filled in less than a day and a half.” He described this quick action as “a mighty miracle.” However, those with a higher bar for what constitutes a mighty miracle might have described the same episode in these terms: “After a day and a half of calling, several time slots remained unfilled as some older members were either unavailable or were understandably apprehensive about gathering with no mask requirement during a time of elevated COVID threat.” (We do not know whether the three-day, around-the-clock schedule resulted in temple staff or patrons contracting or dying from COVID.)
Elder Bednar further noted another temple worker saw a miracle “in having one available appointment time precisely at the only time a patron was able to come.” Someone else observed a miracle in the fact that temple workers were “still smiling” at 5 a.m. (The less-faithful might see workers who were thrilled that their night shift was ending and that they could get the hell out of there.)
While temple workers deserve to be commended for their efforts, and praying for the return of electrical power shows faith, setting the bar for miracles so low suggests that we may have to come up with a new, more impressive term to describe things such as walking on water.
Offering gussied-up miracles might cause some to believe that the church has become one in which real miracles are in short supply. Besides, I fear that if my hard-to-impress grandfather had been around to listen to Elders Rasband and Elder Bednar tell of miracles, I might have been hard-put to persuade him not to hand them the card below, which he carried in his billfold.
My Card, Sir!
I,
too, am somewhat of a bullshitter,
But
occasionally I like to listen to a
PROFESSIONAL
Please Carry On!