The Paradoxes of Faith

(I will begin to republish some older articles that I thought had been lost long ago but are still quite relevant!)

In a religious forum discussion, one of the participants raised the issue of paradoxes in the Bible. Apparently Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, uses the story of Abraham and Isaac as an irrational paradox that invites us to respond with a faith that leaves reason out of the equation. Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son of promise in his old age. The claim being made with this story is that the Christian faith is something that should NOT be given a rational basis at all; that our faith is (and ought to be) a blind leap of faith. The assertion is that Christians should not waste so much energy attempting to 'prove' anything about their faith, because faith and reason are antithetical. "If you can prove it, it can't be faith", seems to be a prevailing sentiment, particularly among the postmodern crowds. Mark Twain apparently said, "Faith is believing something you know ain't so!"

I am reminded of a story that I personally heard from Dr. John White, a physician and psychiatrist who spent his early years as a missionary in Bolivia. He was stationed in an isolated region of the country, and had no access to modern medical equipment or help. One day, his young toddler son was playing outside when he tripped and fell on his face, striking his chin on a rock on the ground. His chin was split open, and he required immediate medical attention. But his father the physician had no anesthetic equipment or drugs with him. However, he realized that unless he acted immediately, infection would certainly set in. There was no time to wait for a plane to come and fly him out of the jungle to a modern hospital. That would have taken days to arrange. With loving care, they laid the screaming child on the table. First they cleaned the wound. That was painful enough, but then came the hard part. The father would now have to stitch up the gaping wound, without benefit of any painkillers. Now imagine the father as he begins to stitch up the child, all the while causing the child more pain than he has ever known in his life. Mother and assistants all hold the child down so the procedure can be done safely. The child's eyes look up frantically at the face of the father from whom he has only ever known love and acceptance, but now the child's eyes are full of abject terror as he feels nothing but unbelievable pain from the hands of his 'loving' dad.

At this very moment, the reassuring "I love you" from father and mother falls on deaf ears. How can this be love by any definition of the word? As Dr. White shared this story, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, as he invited us to imagine not only how the child felt, but how the father felt at that point. This is a great paradox from the child's point of view. More than that; it was a contradiction in the mind of the child, and no amount of reasoning would satisfy. In reality from an adult point of view, the father's actions were anything but irrational. The paradox is resolved from the adult point of view. The parent knows that at this point, love demands that the child's medical condition needs to be looked after in the most expeditious way, even if that way means pain and misunderstanding on the part of the child. Love at this point is NOT caving in to the screaming, superficial demandingness of the child, who is only interested in avoidance of pain and restoration of comfort. God often allows our faith to be tested in this way. Sometimes things happen to us the likes of which leave us wondering about the rationality of our God and our faith. As we try to figure things out, we need to remember that after all, our God did say, "My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." He did not say his thoughts were irrational. They are simply beyond ours. Otherwise God would merely be one of us. Think about it.