Almost 2 ½ years ago, I took a philosophy
class that I loved (partly because I love philosophy, overall, but partly
because I had such great respect for the professor and was committed to
absorbing as much knowledge and wisdom as possible during those weeks). I was pretty excited by the time I turned in
my first paper for the course and received a comment that stated, “This might
be the best first paper I have read.” Really? I mean, that’s fantastic! Cue me thinking I’m ‘all that’…
My second paper didn’t go as well, and it
was, in fact, the only paper I have ever been required to re-write in my entire academic career. I’m not sure I fully understood what this
meant, and I have apparently not saved the exact words from these associated comments, but the
meaning is burned in my memory. “L… you
really didn’t ‘get this’… maybe you could read it again and write something
else?”
Although I don’t quite remember it this
way, Phil says I was mad. If I had to
take a guess at this point, I would venture to say I was more embarrassed, but
angry and ashamed both project in hot tears and loud words, with me, so I can
see how it might have been confusing.
Interestingly, sadness is more like shutting down in silence lately, and
I’m thinking it would be great if I could somehow swap those two reactions, but
I digress…
I re-wrote the paper, got an A in the
class, fell in love with Soren Kierkegaard, and have never looked at this
passage of Scripture in quite the same way again:
Genesis
22:1-14
“Some
time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’
‘Here
I am,’ he replied.
Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and
go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a
mountain I will show you.’
Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took
with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for
the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On
the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.
He said to his servants, ‘Stay
here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and
then we will come back to you.’
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son
Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went
on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his
father Abraham, ‘Father?’
‘Yes,
my son?’ Abraham replied.
‘The
fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt
offering?’
Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt
offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an
altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on
the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached
out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord
called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’
‘Here
I am,’ he replied.
‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything
to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me
your son, your only son.’
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its
horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering
instead of his son. So Abraham called that place
The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord
it will be provided’” (NIV).
So… just in case you want to read my
re-write, here it is:
Faith is central to Christendom. However, there is a wide variety of ways in
which faith is defined. In the current
cultural climate of the western church it even appears that a multiplicity of
religions are being practiced, all in the name of the same faith. A misunderstanding about what faith is
intended to be may be at the heart of this disunity. I propose that the verbiage we use to
describe various aspects of spiritual formation may contribute to the issue at
hand. This paper will explore the
definition of faith and some ways in which we might bind it to the concepts of
resignation and trust, reducing the risk of misunderstanding what faith is
intended to be.
Resignation, put simply, is the act of giving up. This is often praised in Christian circles as
the ultimate act of faith, "for it is great to give up one's desire”
(Kierkegaard, 1985, kindle location 723).
There are certainly passages of Scripture that would lead us to embrace
lives of sacrifice. Primary among these
is the story of Abraham and his near literal sacrifice of Isaac, the child who
was to fulfill the covenant that God made with Abraham. It would be exceptionally rare to find
someone who would argue that Abraham did not love God. Although love is the key to many things, it
may not be the key to faith. Kierkegaard
suggests that it is possible to love God without
faith when he writes, "He who loves God without faith reflects on himself”
(Kierkegaard, 1985, kindle location 967).
In an act of resignation, Abraham could have reflected on himself that
day on Mount Moriah. He could have
chosen to be resigned to Isaac's death and focused on himself and on his pain as
he raised the knife and brought it down upon his own son. No one would blame him. But, if this was the life that Abraham had
chosen to live, he may have been too self absorbed to hear the angel of the
Lord, and he may not have seen the ram.
Resignation, while noble, focuses solely on what we can do,
on what we are required to do, and on how much it hurts when we do not get what
we want. A life of resignation may include
a love of God, even a deeply rooted love that is willing to give up everything
if God calls. It may look holy, but without
faith it leaves many feeling quite dead inside.
The natural consequence is that they lose hope for this life and begin
to look to eternity, as if this life is already over and there is no purpose
remaining. They often do not understand why God has
seemingly left them with nothing and their efforts have not paid off. There must be something more.
Kierkegaard argues that the "something more" is
faith. Resignation is a pre-requisite,
but faith moves a step beyond the giving up.
To put the quotation, used above, in greater context, "It is great
to give up one's desire, but greater to stick to it after having given it
up" (Kierkegaard, 1985, kindle location 723). At first glance, this seems like a
contradiction. In reality, it is the
point at which we move beyond what we can
do into dependence on what God can
do.
Abraham's story is a most excellent example, which may very
well be why Abraham is considered not only the father of many nations but also
the father of our faith. To accept that
God had asked him to sacrifice Isaac is no easy task. To carry it out is seemingly impossible. Like many biblical accounts, the story of the
sacrifice on Mount Moriah has lost its edge in the retelling. When we consider Abraham and Isaac as living,
breathing, flesh and blood, as opposed to characters in a clever narrative, the
horror of what is really happening begins to come back. Abraham hears God's voice and commits to the
murder of his own son. He takes no other
offering. He binds his child and prepares
to slay him at close range. The knife is
in his own hand. The altar is built for
the burnt offering. This is the kind of
story that we look at and exclaim, "This cannot end well."
And yet, we look at this narrative and laud Abraham for his
faith, citing his inclusion in Hebrews chapter 11, just after this definition, "Now
faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not
see" (Hebrews 11:1, NIV, 2011).
Abraham is coming from a different angle. I think Abraham believes that the encounter
on Mount Moriah will end well. Abraham has confidence and assurance that God
will keep the covenant that God has made.
This may be where trust plays a role in the question of
faith. Trust is not greater than faith,
but it is an intricate part of it.
Abraham and God have a history.
Abraham has a relationship with this God who has kept promises in the
past. There is no compelling reason to
doubt God anymore. And that word,
anymore, is important, because there was a time when Abraham may have wondered
whether God would really keep the covenant.
There was a time when Sarah laughed.
But God's response was, "Is anything too hard for
the Lord?" (Genesis 18:14a, NIV, 2011).
Abraham has seen God at work in impossible circumstances, and he knows that
Isaac must live in order for God to keep the covenant. To that point God had never broken a promise.
When Abraham makes the decision to obey, he
embodies the idea that, "He who loves God without faith reflects on
himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God"
(Kierkegaard, 1985, kindle location 967).
It is in this kind of reflection that we begin to see that faith is not
about what we can do, at all. For, when
we have given up, when we have resigned our desires and our dreams have become
nothing but a pile of dead bones, we can still believe that they will rise up only if God does something. Faith is believing that God will return the
things that we have surrendered, even though this is utterly and completely
impossible for us.
Abraham has climbed the mountain knowing that he may be
required to sacrifice Isaac, probably expecting that this will be the case,
since it is, after all, what God asked of him.
He does not waver, but I do not think this means that he is not in
anguish. Any loving father would
be. Abraham possesses a character,
though, that is willing to relinquish everything, even his son, if that is what
God demands. This begs the question,
"Why?" The heroic action in
this story would be refusal, but Abraham is not trying to be a hero. It seems that Abraham has left this role, if
there is to be a hero at all, to God.
Somehow I think that Abraham trusts God so implicitly that he expects to
walk back down the mountain with Isaac, even if that requires
resurrection. He believes that God can
do it.
Perhaps faith is doing impossibly hard things, knowing that
God will come through. It begins with
resignation but does not end there. There is great hope in a faith that believes
that those things we have surrendered will be restored. Faith moves us beyond resignation to a place
of anticipation, rooted in trust, waiting on what God will do to make the
impossible a reality. It allows
us to practice obedience, even in the midst of turmoil. And as God gives back to us, we build the
kingdom through our stories of a faithful God, one who compels us to embrace
difficult things.
Works Cited
Holy Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. Print.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. New York: Penguin
Classics, 1985, Kindle Edition.
Interestingly, that line about giving up and simultaneously sticking to
it is speaking rather powerfully into my life as of late… Preaching to myself,
today…
And also… look for the FGT podcast which will post later this afternoon. It is oddly related and not…
L.
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