Jesus performed “healing miracles” all around the Galilee countryside, except in his hometown of Nazareth. The people there knew him and his tricks.

Threatening to throw Jesus off a cliff - Luke 4: 19

As one young “Christ follower” says: “After bringing Jesus out of the desert, God calls Him to preach in Nazareth where he is unable to do many miracles because of their lack of faith (Matt 13:58). But it gets worse. He then preached in the synagogue and offended the people (Mark 6:3). They were so incensed by His sermon they tried to push him off a cliff (Luke 4:14-30).”

That doesn’t stop Christians like the blogger quoted above – they just go into their Have-it-both-ways mode. Jesus as God is not the same as Jesus as man… Jesus as God is omniscient and infallible, Jesus as man is fallible and still learning… How can you tell which Jesus you’re dealing with? By the results, of course! If a miracle succeeds, it was God. If it fails, it was just the human.

This is the heart of faith: A person is in a car crash and survives – “Praise the Lord!”… but their spouse is killed – “God works in mysterious ways.”

A child is in hospital with doctors and medicine and survives some rare and often-fatal illness: “Proof that prayer works! Praise the Lord!”

Meanwhile there are 30 countries in Africa in which over 10% of children die before the age of 5. The leading causes of death for them are simple: acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, measles, malaria and, of course, malnutrition. Worldwide, according to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 7,000,000 children a year die from preventable causes. So why do so many innocents die? “God works in mysterious ways.”

Faith means never admitting you were wrong. It’s not a good attitude for raising children, making educational policy, or running a government.