A Supernatural Beyond Sacred and Secular

The word “supernatural” is almost universally tied to a religious worldview. Regardless of whether one affirms the supernatural or denies it, the term seems inextricably and necessarily connected with some belief in higher powers. Interestingly however this religious definition of the supernatural is almost concerned only with the purely natural realm. For instance, miracles are ascribed to physical occurrences like a resuscitation of someone who was dead or the feeding of a vast crowd with a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish.

In contrast, there is a different way of approaching the supernatural: one that doesn’t see it as describing a change in the natural realm, but rather as describing a change in how we interact with the natural realm (hence super-natural). This is a view of the supernatural that can be affirmed by the theist and the atheist alike. Here a miracle isn’t directly encountered in being able to raise someone from the dead or in feeding a vast crowd of strangers with crumbs (amazing as these acts would be). Rather it is indirectly glimpsed in that change in our life when we judge a person’s life worthy of being brought back to life, or when discover a compassion that makes us believe a crowd of total strangers should be fed. It is then testified to in that moment when we come to believe that life has a depth dimension worth living for. A depth dimension worth dying for.

This is something I explore in my (almost completely unknown) book The Fidelity of Betrayal.