Ether 9

(December 22, 2014)

                In our modern society, it seems as though we believe something is not attributable to God just because we can unwind the naturalistic explanation of the event.  So, for example, we see a famine today and we think that it must be because of the jet stream or the ocean currents or anything or everything.  But we can no more than control these things that we can explain than the priests of Pharaoh could stop the miracles of the Lord even though they could imitate them.

                A famine may have a naturalistic explanation and, at the same time, be a miracle and a catastrophic consequence of sin.  Disease may be disease, or it may be punishment for sin.  Just because we can explain the origin of a plague doesn’t mean that the plague isn’t the Lord’s intervention in our lives.

                Science provides us with the opportunity to understand a great number of things, and included in the things we can understand is the mechanism by which the Lord performs His work.  Denying the Lord because we sometimes understand (but rarely can control) the mechanism is like denying lightning because we can build a power plant.