 Bottom |
Burning Coal |
Faith, Fear & Trembling
Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son.
There is a musical lilt to this passage of scripture. But the reality is not quite as poetic. Abraham has been directed to travel to the land of Moriah to do something which is neither aesthetically appealing, nor ethically correct according to anyone's understanding. Having been given a child in his old age, his wife giving birth at the age of eighty and himself one-hundred years old, Abraham is now being sent to draw the knife and cut the throat of the son of promise. He must sacrifice his promised hope for descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abraham has been directed to do something ugly and just plain wrong. For him, faith means that he must trust that God has spoken and that there is a good purpose in it.
Søren Kierkegaard explored the faith of Abraham in his book Fear and Trembling. Faith is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. For Kierkegaard, Abraham's faith is of a much higher order.
Faith is the highest passion in a person. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not come to faith, but no one goes further (Søren Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling, 120).
Kierkegaard puts flesh on the bone of this statement of faith. The first thing that jumps out at the student of faith is that Abraham's faith makes no worldly sense. It doesn't even make sense biblically. Let's look at what God is asking of Abraham, starting with God's promise to Abraham, which He will be asking Abraham to violate:
Genesis 15:5 And [God] brought [Abraham] outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Genesis 22:1-2 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Abraham's charge is to do the unthinkable, and not only to violate the promise given in the person of Isaac, but to do what is just plain wrong. For Kierkegaard there are two sets of well established principles with sometimes competing demands (or laws) that every right and moral person adheres to: aesthetics and ethics. We can mostly agree that there are some things which are agreeable to the senses and some things that are not. We can agree to disagree about the rest. We can also mostly agree that there are actions which we take that are acceptable or even desirable, and there are actions which are just plain wrong. In between there are a lot of disagreements there as well. Philosophers refer to these identifiable truths as Universals. Our founding fathers referred to them as “natural laws”.
Jesus says,
Matthew 7:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
He is referring to a truth which is self-evident. Not only Jews and Christians, but pagans and atheists can easily understand this is a true statement of good (moral) human conduct. Jonathan Edwards uses Matthew 7:12 as an example of “moral necessity.” This statement is always true, and therefore, a moral person must necessarily comply with it. When God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham is placed in a position, by God, in which he is asked to violate moral and aesthetic truth. He is being forced to an immoral necessity.
Abraham's meeting with God leaves him with an odious task to accomplish. His instructions are so at war with everything that would appear to be lovely and beautiful, everything that would appear to be right and correct, that he is left speechless. He cannot tell Sarah that he has been sent to murder her son. He can't tell the victim, his son Isaac, that the knife he carries is for his throat. He doesn't dare to explain to his trusted servant Eliezer the purpose of his journey. Had he dared to speak, they would have joined together to declare him mad. ‘Surely,’ they would have agreed, ‘now, at the age of one-hundred and twenty-seven, he has spent too long staring up at the face of God; madness had overtaken him.’
And so, Abraham climbs the hill in silence. When Isaac dares to ask, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham evades the question, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis22:7-8). As Abraham has placed all of his trust in God, even to destroying the son he loves more than his own life, and forever rupturing his relationship with Sarah, so, Isaac has placed all of his trust in his father. He carries the wood to the top of the mountain, but now he knows that his father's silence means that he Isaac is the sacrificial lamb. While Isaac is usually depicted as a young teen or pre-teen, his actual age was likely closer to twenty-seven, and Abraham one-hundred and twenty-seven. Isaac was carrying the firewood because he was the stronger of the two. Did Isaac have faith, or was he simply obedient unto death? It is hard to imagine that as he was being prepared for sacrifice, Isaac was unaware of what was about to happen. It is also hard to imagine that he is unable to resist. Isaac accepts his fate. In one way or another, Isaac is complicate in Abraham's act of faith.
Kierkegaard begins his account with several snapshots, retelling parts of the story. In one, Abraham, having reached the summit, throws Isaac violently to the ground and raises the knife over him, causing Isaac to cry out to God for salvation. Abraham approves, telling Isaac that his purpose was that Isaac should put his trust in Abraham's God, not in Abraham. But this is not the story that Moses tells; Abraham has resigned himself to God's command, not to threaten, but to kill. Let us not forget, God is not killing Isaac; He has given that task to Abraham. Kierkegaard declares, “The fate of Isaac was laid in Abraham's hand together with the knife” (Fear & Trembling, 240). In Abraham's mind, it would have been much better if he could cover his eyes while God's angel did the awful deed.
The Law is broached and the glory founders in the storm. There is no justice in a father slaying his son for no apparent reason. Human sacrifice is not a part of God's Law. It is specifically forbidden (Leviticus 20:2). In Kierkegaard's terms, the individual (Abraham), having conquered the wildness and the anarchy of independence from God's Law, has risen to the Universal. In conformity to “moral necessity”, Abraham has come to conform himself to God's Law. If we remember the story of Job, this is the place where the Book of Job starts. Job is perfect in his adherence to God's Law. Abraham is now asked to step beyond the Universal, beyond moral necessity, beyond conformity to God's Law, in face-to-face confrontation with the Absolute, God Himself. Simply put, Abraham has placed his life under the Law. But now, Abraham's faith has to carry him, beyond the confines of the Law, to do something unimaginable under the Law.
Reason itself is nowhere to be found in this request. Isaac, the intended victim is the miracle child. Born to Abraham and Sarah in their extreme old age, (it is worth repeating Sarah was eighty and Abraham was one-hundred at the time of his birth), Isaac is a miraculous gift from God. On Isaac is placed the promise of future generations as numerous as the stars in the sky. When God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it defies reason. Kierkegaard made a margin note in a pre-publication copy of the book, “it is not a collision between God's command and man's command but between God's command and God's command.” Why produce the joyous miracle on which hangs an incredible promise, only to ask Abraham to put the miracle child to death?
(Genesis 22:1) Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
Abraham's climb up Moriah's mountain is not at all like the climb of Zarathustra, Nietzsche's fabled seer, who climbs his mountain to find enlightenment. Abraham is climbing because he has already met with God. Abraham's faith is in the encounter with God. He has met with God so many times in his life that he has a reason for faith. Abraham's faith is the certainty that he has in his God. But this encounter—this encounter wars against reason in every way, against everything lovely and pleasing, against everything right and true. This encounter is the destroyer's ask. Abraham does not hesitate: “So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey…” (Genesis 22:3). Is Abraham afraid to hesitate? If he pauses to think, to ask for a second opinion, if he gazes too long at the proposition, surely reason will tell him, ‘This can't be God. This does not align with the heart of heaven. God would never ask this of me.’ If he hesitates, he will bury the thought and never again want to hear the word of the Lord. The glory would depart from Abraham's house.
Abraham is and must be absolutely certain that he has heard the word of the Lord accurately and correctly. He is a man who has been given the most odious task imaginable. The only answer is to put his head down and quickly move to accomplish God's ask. He can't explain himself. He silently proceeds. He avoids all small talk. He just climbs the dread mountain, knowing that God is drawing him to this terrible denouement. He carries the knife as if lodged in his own heart, pressed against his own neck, ready to drain his own life blood.
This task is unreasonable in every sense of the word. Abraham is in motion because Abraham knows God. His God has asked this of him. Everything that Abraham has is by the hand of God. For him, this is not a theological position. The hand of God in his life is visceral. Despite all of his wavering and hesitation, God has blessed Abraham with great wealth, and protected him and his wife. Finally, Isaac is born by pure miracle. Isaac is God's gift to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. Abraham has learned by trial and error, and now he knows that God's word to him is absolute. To question is to lose faith. To lose faith is to lose God. Somewhere in his journey, Abraham has become so wrapped in God, that he recognizes his voice without question, and he understands God enough that he knows that this is not a time to question God.
There are others in Scripture who were asked to do something that they did not want to do. Jonah comes immediately to mind. His attempt to avoid God's call and its consequences are unforgettable. It would appear that Jonah would have had no problems if he had simply done as he was asked. God was only asking him to help save an enemy from harm. Others among the prophets were asked to risk their lives to speak the words that God gave them. Like the disciples of Jesus, many paid with their lives. Nevertheless, God's request in Abraham's case rises to a higher level. Would not Abraham prefer that God should ask him to sacrifice his own life, rather than the life of his son?
I have had my own encounters with God, but nothing as piercing as this. I know several who have had powerful encounters with God, encounters that filled them with fear and trembling, but none like this. The only encounter in the Bible that rises above Abraham's encounter, is that of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. Abraham is hollowed out and there is nothing left but to move forward with God's request filling his vision. All else is darkness. Everything else in his life must remain in darkness until the task is complete. If a single thought intrudes, an awareness, a whisper pierces the darkness, he will come to a halt, and the task will never be faced. Abraham moves to the mountain of Moriah as quickly as possible, because he must answer the encounter before he is turned from his purpose.
Kierkegaard quotes Jesus, noting, “the words are to be taken in their full terror…” (Fear & Trembling, 72):
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)..
Jesus' challenge to faith should not be taken at its face value: “to hate.” It should be seen as a call to hate the burden that love places on an individual which would draw them away from full and unvarnished love for God and God's will. Abraham, climbing to the top of the mountain, doesn't now hate Isaac. If anything, he loves Isaac all the more deeply and longingly. He wishes he didn't love Isaac so much right now. For now, Abraham is forced to climb against the dark desire crying out, “No, No, No! A thousand times No!”
In contrast, Job, in his encounter with God, is being asked to have faith. But, Job has no eyes to see, nor ears to hear. Job has no certainty of encounter with God. His encounter has always been with the Law. His faith is in what is reasonable, what is beautiful, what “seems right to a man.” He has faith in the Law, as he knows it. The Law, in men's hands, has its tricks. Religion tells us that when it appears that the devil is in control, when what is right and good and beautiful seem to have been thwarted, it is an illusion, God will make it all come out right. Job is believing for this. But he is not being satisfied. Job is being called to the mountaintop, to an encounter with God, knife in hand, but he refuses to go. He digs in his heels.
In the book Repetition, published at the same time as Fear & Trembling, Kierkegaard describes Job's position as an ordeal. Like Abraham, Job is an exception to the universal categories. This ordeal is forcing him to leave all of his learned explanations in the ditch. He has entered a realm where the laws no longer apply. Job is forced, not by the encounter, but to the encounter:
This category, ordeal, is not esthetic, ethical, or dogmatic—it is altogether transcendent… This category is absolutely transcendent and places a person in a purely personal relationship of opposition to God, in a relationship such that he cannot allow himself to be satisfied with any explanation at second hand (Kierkegaard, Repitition, 210).
Job resists. He wants God to come to him. He wants God on his own terms, according to the Law that he knows. Job wants his own legal counsel. Please don't forget that our portrait of Job is not the portrait of a finished work; Job as we know him is a work in progress. We have reason to believe that Abraham struggled. He wasn't born faithful. In fact, we see him risking his wife's dignity and honor, to protect his own. Abraham learns faith slowly, over many years. At the moment we see him in Genesis 22, Abraham is ready to grit his teeth and face the greatest challenge to faith imaginable. One that only he is capable of. His life up to this point is a life of preparation for this moment.
For Job, his ordeal has caught him unawares. Everything in his life seemed to be in perfect alignment with all the laws of aesthetics, all the laws of ethics and all the Law of God. There is no reason in his mind that his life should not continue in an uninterrupted flow. All of the boxes have been checked and re-checked. Job is right with the Law. Job's faith is in his right standing with the Law. Abraham's faith is in the encounter with God. Abraham's faith is being proved in the fire. Job has yet to enter into the encounter. God is forcing Job into an encounter with Himself.
1 Timothy 6:11-12 …pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
In one sense, we stand on Abraham's shoulders. But in another sense, everyone begins at the beginning. I am forced to rediscover what my father discovered. When we look at the life of Abraham or of Job, we get a sense of what encounter with the living God looks like, at least in these specific circumstances. But no one can give you the encounter.
Our friend Keith Miller has had incredible spiritual experiences, but he cannot take me by the hand and say, “Come on, I will take you to meet the angelic being that I met.” I wish it were that easy. His encounters come out of his own life circumstances that drew him into those experiences. Some of those circumstances I would not wish for. No one longs to be placed in Job's or Abraham's crucible of ordeal.
Miller has a humble heart and pursues God in prayer. I am quite sure that his humility and his prayer life are part of why he has had these encounters. Because he has encountered God, he expects encounter. He teaches expectation and the presence of God is upon him to the extent that he is able to impart the tangible presence of God's Spirit. His experience makes his faith unshakable. His experience is not passive. He chases after God.
“Pursue,” Paul enjoins us, “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.” From all accounts, this is exactly what Job has been doing. Job loves righteousness. Unfortunately, he is like the priest who honors the sacred offering, but neglects the One who makes the offering sacred.
“You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?” (Matthew 23:19).
To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools (Ecclesiastes 5:1).
Job has become so enwrapped in the works of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness, that when God calls him to the encounter, he refuses to come. He demands that God come to him and explain Himself. Even when facing God in a whirlwind of fire, Job remains aloof, diffident (Job 40:3-5).
In his acts of “godliness” Job does not have ears to hear or eyes to see. When Moses sees the burning bush, he stops to see (Exodus 3:2-3). He approaches in his spirit. “When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush” (Exodus 3:4). it is when Moses turned aside to see that God speaks to him. Job, in his spirit, is not turning aside to see. He is holding back, standing aloof; he cannot see or hear. We see this in the children of Israel standing before the very same mountain where Moses encountered the burning bush, now burning with fire. Miracle after miracle have occurred, yet, Israel draws back from the fire:
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” (Exodus 20:18-19).
Later, Moses speaking to his hesitant followers recounts the miracles that Israel has seen, but laments:
“Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4).
Shutting their eyes and distancing themselves from the encounter with God, Israel falls quickly into idolatry.
“And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness’” (Deuteronomy 32:20).
Hesitation kills the move of the Spirit. In my own experience, the pursuit of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness, brings many encounters. Most of them small and easy to dismiss. I have had some more dramatic encounters, usually when I am reaching well beyond my comfort zone. These experiences strengthen the fabric of my faith. I have experiences with God; therefore, I have faith. I sometimes feel that if I knew how to shut my brain down at times, I would have even more dramatic encounters. I fear that if I were placed in Abraham's circumstances, I would be unable to shut out the voices of reason. The sensible thought would dash the knife from my hand, and I would turn from the mountain and never hear the voice of God again.
Johann Blumhardt (1805-1880) was a Lutheran pastor who stumbled into his encounter with the living God. A young girl in his village was suffering severe mental attacks and the house that she and her siblings lived in seemed haunted to the extent that neighbors became alarmed. Blumhardt was called to do battle with black arts for which he had no experience, nor did he know anyone who had. As the pastor, he found himself pursuing love for a tormented young woman, while hopelessly out of his depth. His testimony Blumhardt's Battle is a testimony of faith in action:
One firm conviction I have is that Gottliebin would have been lost if even once I had given in to unbelief as if it were not possible to do the seemingly impossible through prayer alone. But I always felt so strengthened that I believed my Savior could do anything. And the thought that took greater hold of me every day, was that through this battle a severe blow must be dealt to the black art of magic, and it made me endure the uttermost (Blumhardt's Battle, 43).
Notice that Blumhardt clung to the belief that Jesus could do anything through prayer. He was strengthened in his belief as he prayed. As the battle continued for two years, he was seeing results, thus, his conviction grew stronger. Faith in action builds strong and enduring faith.
Faith demands action. But action isn't always deliverance prayer, starting a soup kitchen or handing out tracts. Sometimes our religious business, as we see Job discovering, is an impediment to the encounter. And the encounter is necessary to guide action properly. Sometimes the mountaintop we seek is in our own prayer corner. In the secret place where we talk to God, praise God and petition God. And sometimes, the most important action is silence. It is there, in the silence before God, the knife that we are trying to avoid.
There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill His purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God's purposes, and yours may be that life (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 30).
It should not be assumed that I am saying that Abraham wins God by his actions. Nor does Job win God by his faithfulness to the Law. It is my firm conviction that God is at work, not just in the lives of Abraham and Job, but in everyone's life, to bring us to a personal encounter with God Himself. It is God's work in us that brings us to do the right thing. My faith in God is a free gift of God's grace.
We greatly honor Abraham for his commitment to God, and rightly place him on a pedestal as one of the greatest heroes of faith. We assure ourselves that Abraham was a special human being. But, if I understand Jesus correctly, Abraham was merely doing what he had been asked to do; he gets no special credit from heaven. “Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded?” (Luke 17:9). For Abraham, the temptation is to do the right thing by all worldly and religious standards. To do that, he would appear to be right, when he would be wrong. He is caught, by God, in paradox.
God has not placed Abraham in this difficult place without preparing him ahead of time. His entire life, from the time his father gathered the family to go to Canaan, to the miraculous birth of Isaac, was preparation for this ordeal. Was Abraham free to refuse? That is another question. His father turned aside from his intention to go to Canaan, settling in Haran instead. Had Terah been directed by God to Canaan, but failed in the first step of his journey of faith? Specifically, is it possible to not do God's will? Somewhere along the line Abraham has placed himself fully in God's hands. He is fully resigned even when God asks the unthinkable of him. For Kierkegaard, this full surrender or “infinite resignation” is the prerequisite for faith:
Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation do I become conscious of my eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith (Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling, 46).
By that standard, I have to ask, “Do I have that kind of faith? Could I do the unthinkable?” Perhaps I could, if I encountered God in a way that darkened all the voices of reason, so that I could move forward without turning to the right or to the left. To reiterate, this movement of faith calls the individual to do what is unacceptable by all known standards of human conduct. From the world's viewpoint, this is not a hero, but a madman. It is sanctified because it comes directly from God, and only because it comes directly from God.
Any attempt to set aside the laws of God, ethically, aesthetically, or religiously, outside of a request of God borne in the encounter, is sin. For the individual to attempt to rise above the universal laws of ethics, or aesthetics, etc. is to move in the direction of the demonic. This applies especially to the religious. It is not uncommon for the religious person to decide that they are like Abraham, and the normal laws no longer apply to them. They do not understand the one who is called of God, the darkness that they walk into. They repeat their justifications endlessly, so they never hear God say, “Stop!”
…in the world of the Spirit cheating is not tolerated. A dozen sectarians go arm in arm with one another; they are totally ignorant of the solitary spiritual trials that are in store for the knight of faith… the sectarians deafen one another with noise and clamor… (Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling, 80).
Abraham was called by the encounter and justified by the encounter. By his encounter with God, he becomes a different person. We can hang on to his coattails to rise higher, but to emulate him… we cannot.
Job's situation is entirely different. He is not called by any encounter. He is being boxed in by difficult life circumstances, an ordeal of unnatural proportions. He is being called to the encounter with God. He has nowhere he can go except to God or to the devil. His justification will be in the encounter with God, when he finally gets there in the final chapter. Job's theology is changed in the unspeakable presence of the Living God. Grace would have been the last word Job would have used to describe his ordeal, but in the final chapter, Job suddenly understands grace. He is called to grant grace, and doesn't hesitate to pray blessings for the friends who have badly abused him.
Through Moses, God taught us that, when we have found faith through grace, we should pass on the same. It is commanded in the Law, the high priestly prayer:
Numbers 6:24-26 The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.