In 2007, when he was in high school, a family sought his help raising their mother, who had been declared brain dead in a hospital. He told me that at first he refused because he had tried before and failed to raise someone from the dead. Finally he agreed to pray for them for a bottle of olive oil. “I lifted it up and said, ‘Father, let this represent me and be to this girl and her family as their faith requires, in the name of Jesus Christ.’ They didn’t thank me, just ran out and I thought, ‘I don’t have to go with them and be ashamed. What happens, happens.'”
He later learned that the woman’s daughter had poured the entire bottle over her while praying; the woman coughed and opened her eyes. The family threw a party to celebrate her recovery, where Dr. Chinedozi said he met her.
God instituted prayer “to impart to His creatures the dignity of causation,” according to Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher. But for those whose prayers are answered, there is a temptation to take credit. Dr. Chinedozi told me that his family and friends call him “man of God,” but he stressed that the woman’s recovery proved that he has no special powers, not even superhuman faith. “People say God only works if you have faith,” he told me. “I don’t think that’s true. God sometimes goes above our unbelief and pride and proves that He is God. He does not need our faith to be God.”
Why are stories like this so common outside the West? Skeptics say that people naturally pray more and over-interpret lucky breaks when they don’t have antibiotics or doctors around — although Dr. Chinedozi described took place in a hospital. In the Bible, people see miraculous signs of God’s power where the gospel spreads to new lands, and Jesus refuses to perform magic tricks for skeptical Pharisees, but heals those whose desperation drives them to faith.
J. Ayodeji Adewuya is a professor of New Testament at Pentecostal Theological Seminary in Tennessee. He saw his share of miracles in his home country, Nigeria, including, he believes, raising his stillborn son after spending 20 minutes screaming and pacing in prayer. “I’m kidding, you don’t really need to pray the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us our daily bread,’ if you have everything from Walmart and your fridge is full,” he told me. “When you are in a place where you have nothing, the only thing you can do is depend on God, and at that moment you expect something. The average white evangelical Christian expects nothing.”
Western skeptics have ignored testimonials from places like Nigeria, at least since David Hume, in his 1748 Essay on Miracles, complained that “they are chiefly prevalent among ignorant and barbarous nations.” Such a dismissal is more uncomfortable for secular liberals of the 21st century, who often say Westerners should listen to people in the South and recognize the blindness of colonialism. “Some people argue that listening to people’s experiences is the best way to learn from them,” said Dr. Chinedozi. “Yet these people will be the first to find a way to refute experiences in other cultures and contexts.”
Witness testimony in general has taken a beating lately. Courts overturned convictions when DNA showed witnesses who sounded confident on the stand were horribly mistaken. Yet we rely on it all the time in the course of ordinary life. “If your epistemology is that eyewitness evidence doesn’t count, that’s where most of historiography, journalism, even anthropology and sociology is,” Craig Keener, a professor of biblical studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, told me. (He included the stories of Dr. Chinedozi and Dr. Adewuya in his book “Miracles Today”.)