Here's my take at all this.
Also there are many ways to interpret a single miracle.
What's up with the guy who was blind and Jesus put mud on his eyes and then asked if he could see? The dude says men look like trees walking, meaning that there was not a full healing, and then Jesus finishes the healing. Strange.
This man was born blind; it wasn't a recent event. The condition had become his norm, and so I believe his heart was at least slightly hardened toward a full (20/20 vision) recovery. Too much to believe for. Jesus typically met people at their point of faith, so maybe "men like trees" was the blind man's point of faith, i.e. the best he could expect.
Another way to look at it was that this man had no idea what normal vision was. Who knows, he may have been overjoyed at seeing men like trees, believing that was how every person saw things. But Jesus obviously knew the man had faith, and so he rewarded it with full manifestation.
A third way to look at it: This man was obviously going to tell all his friends what happened -- that miracles are available. What if his vision had come back perfectly in one second? That would have been the wrong message to send other people, because miracles can take time to manifest fully. The last thing people hoping for a miracle need to hear is that miracles always manifest instantly. Can they? Yes. But not always. Each need is unique, each person's faith is unique, and oftentimes a miracle depends on the intervention of another person who may or may not take a while to get a clue or, once he gets it, actually to act on it.
Then when he is walking on the water it says that he walked as if he would pass them by. I think that's a hilarious picture. Jesus just out for a stroll on the water with a little head nod saying "Sup?" What reason would he have to pass them by, or make as if he would pass them by?
Jesus was "out for a stroll" on top of the very problem that was about to kill the disciples, and that's the whole point. Jesus was walking on the problem. In the Middle East, a sign of disrespecting something is to walk on it or otherwise touch it with your sandals.
As for almost passing by the disciples, the point is that you have to come to Jesus. You have to ask. You have to call out. Jesus (or God) won't act where he/He doesn't first see clear evidence of faith. This is a common thread throughout the Bible. "I am here. Call out to me."
Then there's the cursing of the fig tree
Nothing at all strange about that. The fig tree was not behaving as it was designed to behave -- whether the fruit was late or the leaves were early. The details don't matter; what does matter is that it was a perversion of God's original design/intent. So, the fig tree incident was just a mini version of Sodom and Gomorrah and the fate it incurred for being a perversion of God's original intent.
the many times that he uses his spit in the process of healing someone
It's not necessary to understand how miracles are accomplished. Lots of people debate how spit played a part -- even going into the chemical analysis of spit, and its possible medicinal effects. Ridiculous. The whole idea is to accept a miracle the way it is delivered and not to question it with our limited human understanding. Our brains and our five senses are useful only for survival. To understand the things of God, they're useless, and often counterproductive.
Think if the man who got spit-mud put on his eyes had said, "But... I don't understand how this is supposed to work. What's this spit going to do? I've had lots of people spit on me when my face was dirty, and I never saw then. This is dumb. This can't possibly work." He never would have received the miracle. We are supposed to BELIEVE, and stop thinking as rational human beings. Miracles are not rational. They manifest in irrational ways. A person's rational human thinking will pretty much guarantee he never, ever sees a miracle.
his propensity to speak in parables
We are supposed to meditate on God's Word -- to meditate on all the mysteries in it. It's not supposed to be delivered to us on a platter, pre-explained, pre-digested. There's got to be effort and concentration and commitment and focus on a person's part. These are the things you give something you love and respect and consider having extremely high value. However, most people are just plain dull. They're so wrapped up in sports, culture, music, gossip, and all kinds of other worthless junk that they're totally mis-tuned to things that are spiritual. Meditation on God's Word takes quality time and quantity time. That means excluding 99% of the junk that fills our lives. When you make all that space available, and start spending lots of time thinking about what all those parables are supposed to mean, that's when things start to pop. That's when you begin receiving
revelation knowledge. At that point, the Word has become alive for you.
Warning: It can become highly addictive.
