Deep faith brings profound certainty in God
 Regular Network Norwich and Norfolk columnist James Knight continues his series on Abraham with a look at the amazing, paradoxical power of faith.
This week I want to look at the subject of Abraham’s faith, and what we as Christians can learn from the template he sets for us. The word ‘faith’ is so often misunderstood, particularly in the scientific domain, where the very mention of the word can bring about much frustration, repellence and dissonance. But if faith is to be understood properly, it must be seen as a means to an end, an end which, far from being an obscurant wall, is in fact a clear part of what is in us already. To have faith in the first place is to sense the God-shaped vacancy within each of us (Ecclesiastes 3:11) - that is, to have a vacancy is to have a part of the soul which needs filling - and often there is no recognition of the vacancy unless earthly things have consistently failed to fill the vacancy. In fact, I think it is only when we remove all fervently desired hopes from the inner-self at the first sign that what is being hoped for has not arrived that the real weakness of the soul shows itself.
That is why the pathway to the Divine cannot come every time a man bangs his fist on the table and demands some evidence; for any evidence would be rejected in place of something belonging to the worldly domain, his unawareness will likely stand in the way, and will only begin to allow him a pathway once he recognises what this vacancy really is and how it can be filled. Admitting the vacancy does not mean resigning oneself to anger and despondency - just the opposite is true; recognising the affliction within our own heart involves making concessions to the powerful nature of appeal. It is this ‘appeal’ that drives forth our search and gives us the self-honesty necessary to hand over to God those things that we were quite comfortable keeping.
Given the foregoing analysis, it seems clear that the real nature of Abraham’s faith was his believing that God’s instruction to sacrifice his son was not going to contradict His message that Isaac would be the progenitor of all the families of the earth who were to be blessed through him. Abraham’s willingness to accede to God’s demand represents a glorious harmonisation between love for mankind and love for the Divine; through one action based on love he prepared a template for us; something that brings certainty from faith to any whose trust is deep enough, and whose willingness for action is strong enough. We see this reflected in our Christian living - our attempts to love everyone as Christ loved the world are a fundamental part of the ‘full life’ that He talked about – it is in the ‘doing’ as well as the ‘being’. This explains, among other things, our desire to see everyone saved, even those who we do not much like. It is through this covenant with God that Abraham was able to feel a real sense of a sacrifice which is wholly detached from ‘reward’ or ‘gain’ - a sacrifice that could only be achieved in full in a relationship, with an act from God to man, and this is what we are exploring.
Beyond reasonable faith
I think what ought to astound us more about Abraham is that deep down all of us are aware that even the most beneficent acts of human kindness are underlined by some form of self-deception (usually a disguised self-interest). Yet Abraham was able to commit an act which was wholly pleasing to God, an act that could serve only those outside of the situation itself. Whatever Abraham would have gained from being tested in this way would have been unknown to him until the time of its occurrence, and that is a truly stupendous realisation of the levels that faith can take us to. I suppose this unawareness is much the same as the truth that a man cannot know the real feelings of some of his deepest emotions such as love, hate, anger, jealously, guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, etc, until they arrive – particularly given that outside of these feelings the sensations and emotions contained within them are only lightly sampled with fleeting hints. One never gets anything like the real thing unless it arrives – and only usually in childhood can one see the innocence and unblemished nature of a soul still awaiting the full force of these emotions.
You might say that Abraham’s propitiation was itself an act which served his own interest, but that would be to miss the real quintessence of the act. There are, no doubt, many things Abraham could have done if he simply wanted to make the right propitiations to God and there are many things that God could have called him to do if propitiation itself was enough to edify Abraham – but God had more in store for him.
Abraham wanted to display his faith, but of course normal faith in this instance would not permit him to think that the sacrifice of a life would lead to the retention of the thing sacrificed. God had to give him faith of a different kind; for under normal circumstances of faith you cannot make plans to kill your son and keep him alive, unless the interference in the normal case for appeal were understood by Abraham even before the act occurred. This is the extraordinarily ‘different’ faith that we are talking about; Abraham’s action symbolises the real nature of Divine knowing - it is a precursor to what the writer of Hebrews referred to as being certain by faith (Hebrews 11:1).
Abraham’s faith was a kind of faith which knew it would not be losing that which was being parted with. But this in no way trivialises his faith; in fact, it puts his trust beyond reasonable faith. This is not irrational faith, comparable to the sort of faith which tells a poor man that he is going to win the lottery or an unskilled man that he is going to fall into a top job. No, this is a faith of an altogether different level; a step which fills the inner-vacancy that normally accompanies faith – for faith by its very nature usually requires that something remains vacant while it is unknown or as yet unseen. Abraham glorifies that which he knows he cannot have by himself, he exalts that which he cannot do by himself; he knows that God will help him to achieve blessedness in trust and collaboration.
Moreover he knows that special Divine blessings can only truly bless in a way that earthly things cannot. The faith in God that we are called upon to have is a faith transcendent of normative faith - it is a faith which begins with an initial ‘unattainable’ - the real reward and thus the real blessing is in both the faith itself and in the thing being desired. And I suspect that this is the type of faith that we could have more of if we stated our petitions and our praises with this ‘certainty’ in mind – I think it is our inability to realise our potential in faith that stops us moving mountains.
Abraham’s faith was an affirmation that he was in some way tapped into something very special - the universal plan was being compressed into one moment of extraordinary faith from him, and processed through the one man whom God had chosen for this blessing. The test of Abraham was, I presume, not a test which was commensurate with other moral predicaments. There could seemingly be no normative right and wrong attached to such an action, only obedience through faith and trust or disobedience through denial and stepping outside of this extraordinary state. There could be no duty to obey which was not already a part of the Heavenly plan in which Abraham had stepped (figuratively speaking) - through this extraordinary cognitive transformation. The decision to obey involved transforming ordinary thoughts into devotional thoughts - this would be an experience beyond words - sheer feeling and emotion, and in a sense, pure unadulterated worshipful faith and trust. Isaac’s part in this was not to be a victim, but to be blessed through the Divine plan - it was not, I presume, intelligible in normal psychological terms, nor was it an experience from which he would be ‘emotionally scarred’.
 Any moment that Abraham’s faith seemed to him intelligible would have been a moment that he stepped out of the Divine plan and thus, back into the domain of the moral law; the suspension of the ethical would have ceased, and he would have been susceptible to doubt, guilt and fear - all of which belong outside the orbit of this extraordinary faith. And this faith by certainty brings us to a remarkable conclusion (particularly given its rarity) - to partake in the universal plan was, for Abraham, to temporally supersede the moral domain - and that must be a state beyond the cognisance and, I dare say, imaginations of most men.
The sacrifice reflects the sacrifice God made with His own Son, the one who was to be the victim and the one who was to be the sacrifice can be seen in both the story of Abraham and the story of God Himself (Isaiah 53:7,10). On a different kind of level the sacrifice reflects our own sacrifice in having the faith to come to Christ - our strength in ‘losing’ our own life for the sake of Him. Nothing that is perceived as a loss will be a loss, in fact, all losses will be glorious blessings in the end; the sacrifice of Isaac and the sacrifice of Christ were both blessings for everyone.
The story of Abraham and Isaac shows that the relationship between God and man was to be something far greater than mere ‘belief in God’. It shows that men are called to be human and yet at the same time called to absorb the Divine in ways which transform the cognition into states beyond immediate rationale. The emotions are so often associated negatively – certainly the negative emotions are discussed and analysed more than the positive emotions. But I wonder if many of us have even begun to explore the potential states that positive emotions can elicit by drawing near to God as Abraham did; by finding the emotional key to the locked door in our minds that stops us exploring our full potential.
If we are to have the full life that Christ offered us we must learn how to unlock that emotional door; for what we are called to be in human terms must be the standards that God has set for us and the potential he has for us. What Abraham experienced through the suspended realities may be a state beyond the design of most men – but in Abraham, as in Christ Himself, we have a blueprint for a stronger emotional framework that will get us closer to God. With Abraham the already established human qualities were suspended by the transforming faith of a man who gave everything at one moment to God. This is a little bit like when we pray in tongues; the work inside us which we call the Spirit to do is itself a suspended reality in the sense that it is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral, it is an inter-working - a renewal of spiritual things – the Holy Spirit takes over where we cannot. If we are to locate this emotional key then naturally it involves inviting God to take over more, and us less – the more of Him the better.
Abraham found the real nature of father-son love by being prepared to lose his own son, and it is with this in mind that we can find the real nature of Christ’s love by giving Himself for us, and our response in being prepared to lose our life for Him (Matthew 16:25). If the faith that Abraham had shown was only for the here and now; if it had been intrinsically about having his son or losing him, then the sacrifice would have had finite consequences and it would have been intelligible in the context of Abraham’s’ life and, thus, his emotional awareness. But Abraham’s faith was not of this kind; the possibility of an alternative action which could have credited him was not there – he had a ‘certainty’ and an ‘assurance’ that leaves no alternative. No sacrifice can be bigger than that which comes directly from God, unless it is God Himself that is being sacrificed – our sacrifices in living for God are our best blessings, and it is through this sacrifice that Christ said we would gain a life from losing our own.
The glorious certainty behind deep faith
You can find in the devotional poets like Donne and Herbert traces of the ineffable, but in the Bible that ineffability becomes coloured, it resonates deep in the soul and almost comes to life as its meaning is captured by our hearts. One could be forgiven for believing that Abraham, or Solomon, or St Paul had been privy to the inner-secrets of your soul; for in a way, they have. They recognise the real needs of the self and speak truths that are saturated with the Divine and choreographed by His Spirit. To go beyond Donne, or Herbert might be considered grand, but to go beyond Abraham, Solomon, or St Paul is miraculous, for in doing so one goes beyond the self into the Divine realm - a place where the self is understood in relation to the universal plan, and where such saturation seeps into the soul and percolates into the intellect.
Any man can think himself great until the inner-illusion of greatness appears; but a man can no more become rich by thinking himself rich than a man can become warm on a cold day by thinking himself warm. In the same way, no man can think himself blessed without knowing God, for any thoughts of blessedness without God always have attached to them that inescapable frustration at the self’s real vacancy; just as the impoverished man who imagines himself rich knows deep down that he is poor.
Faith can make the smallest things become the biggest and the biggest things become the smallest; that is, the unobtainables become the true realties of inspiration. God does not just want what we are prepared to give Him, He wants those parts of the self that we try to cling on to as well; He knows that our keeping them will bring us far smaller returns than what our investing them in Him will bring. It is not arrogant or greedy to demand everything we can from God because our demanding everything is really a demand to become more like Christ; and the more we can be like His Son and the more He can give us according to His will. When we do not know Him we can no more receive things reserved for His Son than a chimpanzee can receive the ineffable qualities of Donne or Herbert. Both blessedness and a full life belong to a proper understanding of the object of our affection and our devotion – God Himself.
Many scientists tell us that faith comes in where reason should be employed, but this is not true. Faith acts in places where reason cannot tread by itself. To trust what you know is trustworthy is not faith but reason; to trust what you know to be unsupported or unknown can be, and often is, silly; but to hand the situation over to God and trust with the desire to see that His will is done is the personification of the type of blessedness that Abraham enjoyed.
Abraham’s act of faith was so powerful that if God had stopped him before he left his servants he would have continued to love God but in a way less-powerful than when God showed him the sacrifice and the gain combined into one. To love God without the deep experience of God is to be preoccupied with the self, for without God the self is the only means by which love can cultivate the relationship. It is like a woman loving her imaginary perfect man - she can love only the concept of him; there is no way of making the love real. The same is true of those who think they can love God without acknowledging His Son - it cannot be so; to love God is to love Him through His Son.
It is true that delusion can convince a man that he has a relationship with God. I do not doubt that almost all of the millions of Muslims in the world believe that they too know God. But just as a child can think he is riding a bike by choosing to ignore the stabilisers, he too can know very soon that he would fall if unsupported. It is grace which supports other men and women in their faith in other religions, but grace can never hope to reconcile them to God while they are still unaware of His real nature. I am sure Christ is active in the life of the Hindu and the Muslim, maybe even more so than the lives of some Christians. But the real relationship between man and God is one in which both parties have made a covenant; both have transcended the same nature of the self. Were Abraham to profess a faith in God without believing that this faith could move him into the realms of the deepest trust and action, he would have missed out on a vital element of his understanding of God, and His ability to confound expectations by offering certainty through faith.
A man who believed in God but who never came close to the vital element of deep faith would be a man saddled with self-deception, believing (as almost all followers of false religions do) that his own efforts alone are enough to win him favour. Real knowledge of God is knowledge that the gift of faith is a gift of realisation that can bring certainty if we lock ourselves in to deep faith; for this realisation is not just awareness of God’s awesomeness but of the self’s limitations without him – an awareness which by definition must increase our faith in Him and our dependence on Him. A man who thinks that his own efforts can bring him closer to God is not a man acting on faith but self-delusion.
It is said that a man can move a mountain by faith; therefore it must be possible to step into the Divine realm purely by believing that by the grace of God one can do so. The determination to break free from the chains of trepidation and run past the transitory pleasures into eternal pleasures means that the self will be rewarded with certainty of what is to come. The faith required to step past transitory things in favour of seemingly impossible things is its own reward; it is the certainty that constitutes the arrival. I am certain that I am going to be with Him in Heaven not simply because of what His word says, but because of what He does in me. It is not the word that offers us certainty it is the relationship with His Son; our accepting Him on the cross and in doing so, taking up our own cross and following him.
The world has no hold on a man who wants to give himself freely to God - the man who is prepared to make earthly pleasures secondary to Heavenly pleasures will begin to see the real nature of both kinds of pleasure. He will be prepared to give up everything in the whole world for one moment of the Divine; just as the boy who no longer requires the stabilisers will find that if they are not detached they will interfere in his efforts to ride the bike properly. To live as though the real nature of living is to be opposed and supplanted for transitory things is to deny the self real knowledge of its own essence.
A deluded man who received the first hint of the real nature of the self would despise instantly what he had become; he would wish instantly to be transported out of this delusion. To carry on in this delusion would be to believe that other like-minded men could also find blessedness through such delusion; thus he could no longer hope to have any real understanding either of himself or of others around him. He could see a real soul saved and have no idea what caused such a glorious transformation. If every time you had wished that the impossible came true you had acted on that wish by wishing an impossible thing about the self were true, you would have immediately stepped into the province in which the soul feels most comfortable. Anyone who has been awe-struck at the impossibility of universal plans in accordance with the small part that the self can play, has seen a little bit of what God is doing within him.
I remember as a child reading this famous story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in an Illustrated Bible Stories book. As a child it perturbed me how a loving God could sanction such a seemingly wicked act. But as an adult, much more, as a man who knows our Heavenly Father, I can see more clearly the real nature of the act. As outsiders we are in no position to question the morality nor the psychology of such an action, we make ourselves unwise to impugn another man’s willingness to please God - a man who was under God’s instruction to act in a way that seems at first glance morally untenable, but who was trusting God in ways that few of us have ever trusted Him. What more there could be for us with greater levels of trust.
Of course, there will be much resistance to this point of view. There will be those who have chosen darkness over light; those who have chosen comfort over originality; and those who have never pressed the boundaries further than the self. Most lost souls know not what is required of them just that something is required of them. They know of the change but they can scarcely recognise the key to unlock their emotional. Comfort, when it is not magnetising, often leads to impressionability, and before long even the most torpid souls have little chance of escape - they can always find someone else more torpid, and they can always find one who makes their real state seem spirited and dynamic.
By casting our own aspersions, as I did when I was a child, we make faith out to be something wholly different to what it is. We cannot do this any more than we can claim that a man loves his wife because of his greater reasoning powers, or has greater feeling of jealously because he is a great chess player. Critics with a scientific bent often scorn the faithful, saying it is the easiest and most expedient action at hand. But the truth is very different; faith is the most difficult of all concepts when understood properly, because the deeper a man goes with his faith the greater his ‘certainty’ that it is God and not him. Anything that can turn a murderous act into an act that pleases the Lord must be more powerful than we can ever realise. To become raised above individual status into the Divine plan is to uncover the real paradoxical nature of faith. As we saw with Abraham, deep faith leads to a certainty that is powerful enough to transform the individual, yet at the same time transform the universal. He provides the ideal template for us to try and emulate the depth of his faith, in the hope that we too may find more of the power of ‘certainty’ that was written about in the book of Hebrews.
Part three next week.
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James is a Norwich local government officer, author and Proclaimers church member in Norwich. You can access his current collections of columns here
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