“Yet Abraham believed
and did not doubt, he believed the preposterous. If Abraham had doubted -- then
he would have done something else, something glorious; for how could Abraham do
anything but what is great and glorious! He would have marched up to Mount
Moriah, he would have cleft the fire-wood, lit the pyre, drawn the knife -- he
would have cried out to God, "Despise not this sacrifice, it is not the
best thing I possess, that I know well, for what is an old man in comparison
with the child of promise; but it is the best I am able to give Thee. Let Isaac
never come to know this, that he may console himself with his youth." He
would have plunged the knife into his own breast. He would have been admired in
the world, and his name would not have been forgotten; but it is one thing to
be admired, and another to be the guiding star which saves the anguished.”
-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Here’s an interesting fact: Kierkegaard coined the term
“leap of faith.” Only, he didn’t. You see, while that is the phrase used by
laypeople, Kierkegaard is actually quoted as saying the “leap to faith.”
Is there really a difference? Well, to Kierkegaard there was. To him, there
wasn’t just one leap you made and there, patiently waiting, sat belief. No,
the whole enterprise of following Christ is faith. See the difference?
I have struggled. Doubt is a part of me. I’ve read books and
articles on creationism. I’ve read books and articles on evolution. I’ve seen
videos of atheists preaching. I’ve seen videos of Christians preaching. I’ve
heard arguments for the historicity of Jesus. I’ve heard arguments for Jesus as
a mythical legend. I’ve learned much, but know nothing. For every fact that
lines up in the bookshelf of my mind, some forgotten corner starts to crumble
into dust. What obscure science experiment or historical trinket could stop
this vicious cycle?
Does the Christian need more knowledge? Does he need the
manual or the vehicle of faith itself? I’d argue the latter. All the books in
the world couldn’t bring someone to faith. As Kierkegaard himself noted, there
were no professors or associate professors during the first century of
Christianity. Everyone then accepted that faith could not be proven. There were
no philosophers in the pews who wondered if God could make a rock so heavy He
couldn’t lift. There were no baptized biologists that thought nature made
itself. No, this was a time of simplicity.
Consider Abraham, as Kierkegaard once did. He could have
offered himself to the Lord instead of Issac, his beloved son. Would this not
have been considered morally praiseworthy in the pagan lands? A stoic father saving
his son from a crooked and wicked deity. It is not true that he was to merely
“sacrifice” Issac. That’s a deceptive euphemism. No, Abraham was to murder his
own son. Isn’t that what the world would have believed? That an old man lost
his mind and turned homicidal?
The truth, however, known only to Abraham, made him full of
fear and trembling. He told no one his revelation, not even Sarah. Abraham did
one thing and one thing only: He believed. He suspended every rule that society
had put in place, and had faith in God instead. Tell me, of what possible use
would Paley’s Watchmaker apologetic make? Abraham decided to forgo the
universal and believe in his subjective (personal) relationship with the
divine.
Contrary to Hawking, we can never know the mind of God. We
can know what He did for us on the cross but we look through a glass darkly. We
can debate God back and forth and still not have an answer. If we were merely
weighing the evidence on some sort of cosmic scale, then we would cease to be
truly religious in any sense at all. We would be no better than the Roman tax
collectors.
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