How
Strong Is Our Faith?
June
12, 2022
The Scripture quotations contained here are from the New
Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and
are used with permission. All rights reserved.
I say I’m a
Christian. I’m even an ordained Christian minister. I suspect that if you’re
reading this blog you say you’re a Christian too whether you’re ordained or
not. I know that some conservative Christians in this country say they are
persecuted because they are Christians, but they aren’t. Having people dislike
and even avoid you because you’re Christian or because of the sort of Christian
you are isn’t persecution. People are free to dislike you for any reason,
although of course the law prohibits discrimination against you in various areas
of life because of your religion. That it does is another reason no one is
truly being persecuted because of their Christian faith. Public schools not
being permitted to lead prayer in school isn’t persecution, it’s American
constitutional government. Actually, it is quite easy in this country at least
to say that you’re a Christian. Certainly no one is going to throw you to the
lions for making that claim as happened to some of our earliest forbears in the
faith. At least claiming to be a Christian in this country is easy, safe, and
mostly without negative consequences.
Which raises an
important question. How much of a commitment does it take to be a Christian in America
today? Is just saying that you are one enough? Or does it take more than that?
I’m not sure I know the answer to that question, but I do know this. Over the
course of Christian history there have been people who have said that being a
Christian, or at least being a good one, takes the kind of commitment few of us
are called on to make today. I’ll give you two examples here from very
different times and contexts in that history. Saint Paul is one of them. The
great Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard is the other.
Saint Paul could
at times boast about how humble he was, but it is true that he suffered a great
deal because of his Christian faith. Here’s a passage from 2 Corinthians in
which Paul lists some of the hardships he has suffered. He begins by asking if
other people are ministers of Christ as, I guess they claim to be. Then he
says:
I am a better one: with far greater labours, far more
imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I
have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was
beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for
a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from
rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from the
Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger
from false brothers and sisters, in toil and hardship, through many sleepless
nights, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. 2 Corinthians
11:23-27.
Paul certainly believed that all
of these hardships made him a better Christian.
Then there’s Søren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855).[1]
He may well be the founder of existential theology and therefore important to
the likes of Paul Tillich and me, but I’m interested in him here for just one
of his ideas, an idea about the nature of faith commitment. In is book Fear
and Trembling Kierkegaard considers the story from chapter 22 of Genesis of
God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. At Genesis 22:1-2, God
tells Abraham to take his son, go to the land of Moriah, and there offer him as
a burnt-offering, that is, to kill him and burn his body as a sacrifice to God.
In this story God really does tell Abraham to commit child sacrifice.
Abraham obeys. He
takes Isaac, the wood he would need to do a burnt-offering, and heads off for
Moriah. Isaac, who has no clue what’s really going on, asks his father where
the lamb is for the burnt-offering. Abraham replies, “God himself will provide
the lamb for a burnt-offering.” Genesis 22:8. Was Abraham lying to Isaac? Or
did Abraham really believe that God wouldn’t actually make him kill his son? We
don’t know. When Abraham and Isaac reach Moriah, Abraham builds an altar and
arranges the wood. Then he “bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the alter, on
top of the wood.” Genesis 22:9b. Abraham takes his knife and seems about to kill
his son. Would Abraham really do it? We don’t know.
We do know that
he didn’t have to. At the last instant God calls to Abraham and says, “Do not
lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear
God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Genesis 22:12.[2]
God seems to assume that Abraham would have killed Isaac had God not
intervened. but would he have? I guess that we must assume that Abraham would
have done it if that’s what God thinks. Still, the story is better literature
if the question is left open.
I and most people
I know find the story of God supposedly telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac as
a sacrifice to God to be repugnant and morally repelling. The God that I know
and seek to serve would never command anyone to kill anyone else, much less
tell a father to kill his son. I, and most people I have discussed this story
with, say that even if we were sure God had ordered us to kill one of our
children we wouldn’t do it. I think I’d be more likely to seek psychiatric help
than to obey any such command. When I read this story I just want to shout, “No!”
Not so Søren
Kierkegaard. He can be as obscure and difficult to understand as any other
nineteenth century Germanic philosopher, but we know that In Fear and
Trembling he makes one major point. Abraham would have killed his son, and
we must consider him justified in his willingness to kill Isaac and not just in
his willingness to do it but even if he had actually done it. That’s because,
Kierkegaard says, faith, if it really is faith, demands that kind of
commitment. We are either committed to God or we aren’t. For Kierkegaard there’s
no in between. Abraham’s supposed willingness to kill the only son he had
through whom God’s promises to him could come true necessarily follows form
Abraham’s faith.[3]
The whole story is a test of that faith. It even says that it is. It begins, “After
these things God tested Abraham….” Genesis 22:1a. Abraham passed that test, or
at least God said that he had. God let Abraham off the hook at the last second,
but God still says Abraham had passed the test by not withholding Isaac from
God.
Paul
claims that all his hardships make him a better Christian minister, and, I
suppose, a better Christian. Kierkegaard says Abraham must be justified in his willingness
to kill his son. Both of these stories, Paul’s of his suffering and, as
Kierkegaard has it, Abraham’s willingness to kill Isaac, raise a question of
vital importance. How much commitment does faith require? Does it require a
willingness to endure protracted and severe physical suffering because of one’s
faith? Does it require a commitment so radical that you would agree to kill
your own child if your faith or the One in whom you have faith required you to
do it? Paul, Genesis, and Kierkegaard all answer those questions yes. If you
really have faith you must be ready, willing, and able to do both of those
things though one of them is committing infanticide.
Is that
right? Must we concede that we have no faith if we say no, I wouldn’t do either
of those two things even though I was convinced my faith required me to it? I
must confess that those questions make me quite uncomfortable. See, while I
might be able and willing to endure physical suffering for my faith, there is
no way I would ever kill either my son or my daughter or anyone else for that
matter. Does that truth about me, which I suspect is a truth about you too,
mean that my claim to be a Christian is a lie? Good Lord I hope not! And I don’t
believe that it does. Here’s why.
I know in
my heart through Jesus Christ that God neither wants anyone to suffer nor wants
that anyone kill anyone else. It makes no sense to me to say that because of my
faith I must be prepared to do things I am convinced my faith would never
require me to do and God would never want me to do. Moreover, any object of
faith that would require the faithful to suffer horribly or even to commit
murder is nothing I could ever believe in, love, or seek to follow. My
Christian faith and the God I know in and through Jesus Christ do indeed make
demands on me. They demand that I live as much as I am able according to the
ways of God not the ways of the world. They demand that I love people it is
much easier for me to hate. They command me to eschew violence even when violence
looks like the most effective solution to a problem. For me, and I suspect for
you, those demands are plenty hard enough. I comply with them as best I am
able. Would I be willing to suffer physical torment rather than forsake my
faith? I like to think that I would, but I don’t think any of us knows the answer
to that question until we are face with and have to make that dreadful
decision. Would I kill one of my children or anyone else? No, I wouldn’t.
All of which
leaves me, and I suspect you, with an unanswered question: How strong is my
faith? I am proud enough to say that it is at least strong enough to help me get
through this life. It has done that so far, and I trust that it will continue
to do that until I shuffle off this mortal coil. But is it stronger than that?
I hope so, but I have to confess that I don’t know whether it is or not.
All of
which leads me to the great good news that I know in the depths of my soul. As
far a God is concerned, my faith doesn’t have to be stronger than it is. See
God, the God I have known in my life, is a God of limitless love, grace, and
forgiveness. I know in the depths of my soul that God loves, accepts, and saves
me no matter what my failings are, and God knows I have at least my own share
of them. God loves you in exactly the same way. God loves everyone who lives,
who ever has lived, and who ever will live in exactly that way too. So while
the question I have raised here about the strength of our faith is, I am sure,
and important one that we should all consider, I don’t lose any sleep over it.
I trust my God to love and save me though my faith may not be all I or God
would wish it to be. How strong is our faith? I can’t answer that question for
you. I’m not sure I can answer it for myself. I do know this. I can trust my
God of love and forgiveness. So can you. Thanks be to God!
[1]
Because our last name is Sorenson, originally Sørensen (the Danish spelling of the
name), my father once said he thought he was a reincarnation of Søren
Kierkegaard. He was a brilliant man, but still, I rather doubt it.
[2]
The only explanation for God calling Isaac Abraham’s only son when God
knows that Abraham’s other son Ishmael is still alive but Abraham does not is
that the priestly editor of Genesis has combined two different stories of
Abraham, one that includes the story of Ishmael and one that does not,
apparently not being too concerned with narrative inconsistencies.
[3]
Islam says that God’s promises to Abraham were fulfilled through Ishmael not
Isaac. The Judeo-Christian tradition says the promises were fulfilled through
Isaac. Either way, God’s promises to Abraham were fulfilled.
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