Review: Miracles by Eric Metaxas…Why?

As most of you know by now, I’m homeschooled and the curriculum that I use, while being good at teaching me things like history, math, science, English, etc. leans towards Christianity and includes reading for understanding the faith and stuff like that. Unfortunately, however, the lady who now runs the curriculum is very much into the hyper-charismatic movement and while I can give her props for at least trying to be neutral on most topics concerning Christianity and the differing beliefs stemming from it, a lot of the books about faith that she includes with the curriculum could be chosen with a heck of a lot more discernment or just cut out entirely. One of these books was Eric Metaxas’s Miracles, which is a bunch of stories from people he knows personally who have had some sort of miracle happen in their lives and the purpose of the book is to show how miracles are God’s way of letting us know that He cares. While that seems okay and all, after reading the book, I was left quite concerned, not just because of what’s being promoted, but also by what else could’ve been going on.

#1: Pros

Let’s start with the only good thing about this book: the beginning wasn’t so bad. It talked about the miracle that the universe even exists, that humans exist, that Jesus came and died for us, etc. These are all things that I can get on board with. It is indeed miraculous that these things happened. From there however, everything goes downhill.

#2: Powerful Prayer

While I will agree that there is power in prayer, the way this book describes the prayer ability of certain people makes it sound like prayer is just some sort of magic spell that certain people can do better than others because they have more powerful faith jiu-jiu or something. This is something that is often found in NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) and hyper-charismatic circles and boy is it stupid and manipulative. Often, people end up paying a ton of money to people (mainly pastors) that they think are “anointed” (in other words, have more of that super-powerful faith jiu-jiu), and because of that, God will listen to them more and be more likely to heal them of their ailment (which is something that happens multiple times throughout the course of this book, though money isn’t involved or mentioned).

This is completely ridiculous and goes against what the Bible tells us about prayer. God hears all prayers equally. You don’t have to be some influential pastor with a bunch of money or someone with a crazy testimony for God to hear you. You certainly don’t need to be going to certain people in hopes that they will make your prayers be answered by God. God does what He wants. If it’s in his plan, He’ll do it, regardless of if you were the only one praying for it or if you had a bunch of people praying for it.

#3: Benny Hinn

For those of you who don’t know who Benny Hinn is, he’s the pastor of Faith World Church and is huge in the NAR and hyper-charismatic circles. He claims to do a bunch of faith healings, to be a prophet, and a bunch of other stuff that would take too long to explain in this post, so I’ll direct you instead to a very in-depth video by Mike Winger about him (sorry that this is as long as the extended cut of The Return of the King) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Ip_3A32W0). Needless to say, if you know anything about his church, he is a false prophet and should not be looked up to as a good pastor or any other sort of spiritual leader.

Unfortunately, Miracles did not get the memo and instead tells a story from a Lutheran pastor who went to a Benny Hinn crusade (where many of his “faith-healings” are performed) and his leg – which was unusable after he had had a stroke – was miraculously healed after the third time Hinn prayed over him. He also got a “prophecy” from Hinn that he would go on to run a successful ministry doing faith-healings and whoop-di-do, he went on to do just that.

While there are cases where real healings happen at Benny Hinn crusades (though I wonder if that’s God or if that healing is from something else that’s not from God), many of these “healings” are simply mind-over-matter. The power of your mental state to affect your bodily health or how you feel things is insane. Just look at people who have anxious or panic disorders. Their minds are stuck on something, be that worry about something from the past, something that’s happening now, or something that might happen and symptoms may affect their body in the form of sweatiness, heart palpitations, nausea, etc. It’s the same with positive emotions. When you have been hyped up to think that going to this crusade will heal you, the music is super loud and everyone around you seems super happy and excited and you’ve maybe been invited to go up onstage, your brain is releasing adrenaline and a whole cocktail of feel-good chemicals that will affect how you feel and process things like physical pain. That’s why the dude with chronic backpain all of a sudden feels wonderful or the person in the wheelchair for something similar like severe arthritis is jumping around before being confined to the wheelchair again a few minutes later. The power of your emotions to cause your body to release things like adrenaline is so powerful that it can make you oblivious to injuries. If you look up how to properly fall from a high height, you are even warned not to move around a lot and to call 911 because you could be injured and not even know it yet from all the adrenaline that’s still going.

And that’s not even taking into consideration whether or not the people on stage are lying about being healed or having medical issues in the first place. The fact that this book is featuring a story that paints Benny Hinn in a positive light without even putting a disclaimer in to warn people that he’s a false teacher should raise some questions.

#3: Seeing Angels

Another notable set of stories in Miracles are those about people allegedly seeing angels. One dude reported being in an Episcopalian church and praying with the congregation, then feeling as though he could see into a realm that everyone else couldn’t. He then saw a 30-foot-tall angel dressed in a bunch of gems and holding a sword and later reported seeing another one that was 50-feet-tall. Other stories (these ones I tend to believe a bit more since something similar to these happened to my dad when he was young), include being in dangerous situations where no one was around to save the person where the person was miraculously saved by someone or something that pulled them back.

Once again, while I do think that angels doing God’s will can help us, I’m very skeptical about stories where people report seeing angels, especially when the angels they’re reportedly seeing don’t cause them to pee themselves in fear (look up some Bible stories where the person sees an angel. Most of the time, they’re terrified.) I chalk it up to one of three categories: 1). They saw or were saved by an angel 2). They are experiencing something demonic (evil can masquerade as good) or 3). They’re lying for attention or are just convinced that it was an angel because of how convenient the timing was or something. Unfortunately, since these stories are on a person-by-person basis, we have no way of totally validating their claim.

My main problem with these stories is that depending on who your audience is, it might cause people to seek after the experience of seeing an angel more than seeking after worshipping God. This happens a lot in hyper-charismatic and NAR circles where experience with angels, spirit guides, etc. is often deemed more important than God Himself. This can lead down some dangerous roads spiritually, emotionally, and mentally as suddenly, everything that might be a bit odd could be something supernatural that means that you’re special and you get stuck on focusing on those things until you lose track of the plot.

In conclusion, though this book was supposed to show how God cares for you, I came away with a lot more skepticism than anything else. I also came away with the question of “Why the heck was this included in my curriculum?” Maybe I’ll send an email to the lady who put my curriculum together to let her know why this book shouldn’t be included. I don’t know. Just don’t read this book. It’s garbage.

Until next time,

M.J.