The Faith of Abraham

One night God took Abram out under the night sky and showed him the stars. I have seen some spectacular night skies, but I can only imagine what the Middle Eastern sky was like some 4,000 years ago. To have the artist Himself pointing out His handiwork must have been stunning. Abram was stunned alright, but it wasn’t the stars—it was the preposterous offer that God made him. “Your future here on earth will rival this, my astronomical masterpiece, in glory and success.”

How absurd.

But there is a chapter in the Bible sometimes called the “Hall of Faith,” and in that chapter, this Abram (now known as Abraham) is highlighted for his exemplary faith as a kind of first among equals figure with other heroes of faith. The same man and faith are spotlighted in other passages as well, including Romans, Galatians, and James. Clearly, the man was a man of faith, the kind of man who took God seriously even when He said absurd things.

It would seem fair to say, therefore, that whatever it means to have faith or to be faithful, Abraham was it.

Some time ago I heard a sermon in which the preacher produced the graphic above and invited the congregation to score themselves from 1 to 10 . After an appropriate pause, he went on to say that while most Christians he asks this question of settle for a number 2 or a number 3, he puts himself down as a solid number 1. As a thoroughgoing Anabaptist, I was a bit startled by this unabashed proclamation of his own exceptional faith; here was a preacher as confident in his faith as his graphic allowed him to be, and he seemed to imply that he rarely, if ever, faltered. Like Abraham, he said, his faith was rooted and grounded.

I found myself wondering where exactly Abraham would have scored himself on the chart? From the narrative so far, we could hardly be faulted for having him pegged to the left, with a smile on his face and stars in his eyes. Resting comfortably next to the aforementioned preacher.

Maybe it is my contrarian instincts, or maybe misery just loves company, but I suspect we could find him on the right some days. And by right, I mean wrong. Or some years. Or maybe even he even spent whole decades pushing the limits of just how far to the right the chart could go? Are there any faces available with x’s over the eyes and the tongue out?

I wonder how Abraham would have scored that day in Egypt, as he nudged his wife into another man’s harem to save his own skin? Or years later when his faith had had plenty of time to mature, yet he did the same thing to Sarah again, this time with Abimelech? I wonder how Abraham’s faith rated as he delivered a harsh laugh in God’s face at the idea that a son would yet be born to an elderly Sara. Sure, Lord, sure… Look, how about we just roll with Ishmael, huh? It was a nice dream while it lasted, but we can stop pretending now. The smile on his face and the stars in his eyes had long since gone, and left something sick and tired in their place. Sick and tired of hoping. Sick and tired of faith. Sick and tired of promises. Sick and tired of being sick and tired, some 4,000 years before Fannie Lou Hammer made it famous.

Those who know Abraham know that between the divine astronomy lesson and the realization of the promise were the grinding decades of hope deferred which wore Abraham’s faith vanishingly thin. So thin that even the weak light of the mocking stars burned right through it. So thin that one had to squint to be sure it was even there.

Paul paints a seemingly rosy picture of Abraham’s faith in Romans 4, but Paul is talking about the end of Abraham’s faith. In the end he did not waver, in the end he staggered not, in the end he was fully persuaded, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. In the end, he triumphed. Genesis has the grim back story. Along the way Abraham staggered. A lot, actually. Along the way, Abraham laughed cynically and told God to buzz off. Along the way, desperation set in, and a shortcut named Hagar got involved, which produced a complication named Ismael which ended with a cruel betrayal by Abraham of his own child and his mother. Along the way, things got messy, and there was no sign of a child of the promise. No good news. Just the hot sun and growing regret and the deafening silence of divine inaction.

Perhaps the greater part of the wisdom gleaned from Abraham and Sara’s story is that projecting a false sense of certainty and peace and delight in the promises of God usually helps no one in the end. Not me. Not those watching. It certainly doesn’t impress God. We live in a war zone, and sometimes war is chaotic and confusing and extremely disappointing. In these circumstances, we often desperately want to believe, but fake faith is a brittle thing with sharp edges, like Isaiah’s broken reed, stabbing those who lean on it.

Abraham and Sarah’s faith at times was more like a question that couldn’t be answered than an answer that couldn’t be questioned. Sometimes they laughed bitterly at the promises. Sometimes they cried at the pain as they picked the shards of broken faith out of bleeding palms.

Sometimes, faith looks like desperate laughter because the only alternative seems to be to curse God and die. Sometimes, it is taking one dragging step after another, deflecting awkward questions about missing lambs while the mountain rises high and the stars immeasurably higher, taunting pinpricks of light signifying empty promises. Sometimes, the star-studded summer nights with God give way to bleak and empty mountain nights that make no sense.

Abraham’s was a dogged faithfulness, not without doubt, not always on the left of the chart, not always confident in God, sometimes losing its way. But always eventually taking the next step.

That, I suspect, may be one of the best definitions of faith—taking the next step. The one right in front of you, the simple one, the lowly one, the useless one, maybe even the wrong one at times, but always the next one. The one where you show up when you’d rather have stayed home. The one where you decide to give (or not to give) the benefit of the doubt to someone (or a church full of someones) who doesn’t deserve it. The one where you decide, not to rise above, but to stoop and serve your critics, embracing the upside-down power of suffering love.

It takes tremendous courage to take a step sometimes. As Mr. Baggins once said, “It’s a dangerous business, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Indeed.

Even the faithful can get swept off their feet at times. Even the faithful might crack, and laugh cynically in God’s face. God doesn’t seem squeamish about this, he knew Abraham and Sara after all (not to mention David and some of those Psalms He gave him). The secret weapon of the follower of God is not certainty but hope, along with its two siblings in that fearless trio of virtues, of which faith is one and love is chief. Not a blind hope, not an irrational hope, but a dogged and battered hope rooted in the character and love of God.

Hope that holds out against all hope believes that such faithfulness as this will in time produce new strength, life, and light, led relentlessly on by a clear-headed love which transcends bare sentimentalism as a lightning bolt transcends a lightning bug. Always, the winter passes and a new beginning flowers. When God takes us out and shows us the stars, he is not being an idle dreamer. He has the ability, the desire and the love for us to bring it to pass, if we can muster the patient faithfulness to take just one step—the next one.