The Faith Journey of Abraham, Father of the Faithful

Don: Much of the Book of Genesis is taken up with the extraordinary story of the faith journey of Abram, who later became Abraham. The Apostle Paul, in his letters to the Romans, emphasized the contrast between Abraham’s works and beliefs. And the “faith hall of fame” given in Hebrews 11 made a place for Abraham.

The faith journeys of all the hall-of-famers were marked by ups and downs, highs and lows, victories and defeats. Abraham’s story in particular makes salient the zeniths and nadirs of faith and gives us, I think, hope with regards to our own faith journey. His journey began with a call to leave behind his identity and start a new journey:

…. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran;… Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai;… Sarai was barren; she had no child.
Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran [in what is now southern Turkey], and settled there…. (Genesis 11:26-31)

From there, Abram was told by God

“Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;…” (Genesis 12:1)

Forging a new identity is evidently not easy. It involves leaving home and family, though in stages, not abruptly, not all at once. But it is also not as simple as leaving one’s family and tribe: It requires a new way of thinking, a new perspective; perhaps emptying ourselves of all our prejudices—the very causes of the identity we are called to abandon. In other words, a faith journey seems to require the more or less gradual adoption of a new identity, and that new identity involves the abandonment of the old one.

Abraham was somewhat reluctant to do this, hence his staging of it—first leaving his homeland but taking his entire family with him, and only later leaving some of them, too, after his father died. His route to Canaan, too, was circuitous, via the fertile crescent. He did not take the direct route.

Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan. (Genesis 12:5)

Clearly, despite God’s call to assume a new identity, Abraham remained reluctant to abandon his old identity—his family—completely. Several events then unfolded that underscored Abraham’s faith journey. First:

Now there was a famine in the land; so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. (Genesis 12:10)

Canaan turned out to have a problem when Abraham got there. It was in famine—metaphorically, a spiritual famine. We seek an easy faith journey, with fertile roads on our way, but the lesson from Abraham is that famine and privation must be expected. Sarai was part of the problem. She was possessed of great beauty, and Abraham did not trust God enough to protect him when, inevitably, the Pharaoh decided to take her for himself; so he concocted a story that she was his sister, and the Pharaoh let him go free while taking Sarai. But when he discovered the deception, the Pharaoh let them both go after all:

Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her and go.” Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they escorted him away, with his wife and all that belonged to him. (Genesis 12:18-20)

Abraham’s faith was strong enough to leave his homeland on God’s command but not enough to trust God to protect him and his wife from the Pharaoh. After finally settling and growing wealthy, Abraham took a small army to rescue his nephew Lot, who had been captured by an enemy. Upon his return from a successful mission, he was blessed by the high priest:

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; now he was a priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” (Genesis 14:18-20)

This is a reminder that along the journey of faith, we are in need of spiritual mentors to bless and encourage us. Sometimes we ourselves can serve as spiritual mentors to others on their journey.

Although God promised Abraham the legacy of a great nation, his age and his wife’s age and infertility made it seem unlikely the promise could be fulfilled. So Sarah came up with the idea that Abraham could father a child by a maidservant, Hagar, in order to be able to leave the legacy. But it ended with Hagar and the child being banished from the house. The point is that Abraham—the father of the faithful, no less—resorted to very human means to advance his journey of faith, and they did not turn out well.

When God told them that He would transform them physically and give them new identities and names (Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah) they fell about laughing:

Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before You!” (Genesis 17:15-18 )

Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; Sarah was past childbearing. Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?’ Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah denied it however, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. And He said, “No, but you did laugh.” (Genesis 1:18:11-15)

That this transformation was possible evoked more than reasonable doubt on the part of Abraham and Sarah: They thought it was just laughable nonsense, though Sarah became afraid and denied having laughed. It is interesting to note that the name of the child that was born of their transformation—Isaac—means “laughter.”

If it is preposterous to conceived of centenarians having a child, how much more preposterous to conceive of God instructing the father to kill the child just at the age when he was about to be ready to assume the legacy promised by God:

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. (Genesis 22:1-3)

The key to this story is in the meaning of the name of the mountain. Moriah means teacher—the mountain has some education to offer. What are the teaching points? They are that the journey of faith never ends, that there is always something new to be learned; that everyone has a such a mountain that needs to be climbed, where everything one holds dear, every dream, every certainty learned in life, will be tested in the crucible of faith; that God has a plan for every individual; and, above all, that while God’s ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts, by faith and submission to His will we will reach the Promised Land, despite the ups and downs along the way.

Abraham’s story shows us that the faith journey is incremental, indirect, not immune to famine, benefits from having a mentor, requires identity adjustments, sometimes seems laughable, has its ups and downs, but above all is ultimately educational.

Donald: What causes people to change course during their faith journey? What happens at the intersections?

David: It seems to me that Abraham grew more Daoist along his journey—along the Way, the Dao. At first he has doubts about the Way but in the end he has faith enough to sacrifice his son when that seems to be the Way forward. The Daoist says to accept the Way, not to fight it; and that is what Abraham did.

Don: Very few people encounter a serious disruption in life without seeking meaning in it. It is a natural human tendency. It can cause people of faith to lose it, and people of no faith to find it.

David: The true Daoist response to any disruption is acceptance: It’s just the Way it is. This is quite compatible with the notion that God is beyond our understanding and we should just accept what happens as His will. This seems to me to be the ultimate, true, faith that is called for. But one problem I have with the Abraham story is that he was spoken to directly by God. How many of us hear God giving us directions in English, as he directed Abraham in Akkadian (presumably)? I am prepared to believe that God speaks to us in a way, but not in that way!

Michael: Sometimes our ups and downs reflect an inner struggle, a fight with ourselves.

Aishwarya: One way God speaks to us is through our spiritual mentors. I discovered this when I arrived in the United States only to find that the lab I came to join no longer wanted me. I was depressed enough to want to go back home, but decided on the advice of my mentor and friend to stick it out and find another lab. After some months, my new adviser introduced me to a lab that fit me uncannily well, so my faith, my belief that I could make it if I just stuck it out, was justified—I ended up in the right place.

David: Did Abraham hear a voice telling him exactly what to do, or did he just have a (God-given) feeling he ought to do what he did, almost as Aishwarya did?

Mikiko: The Bible is clear: God spoke directly to Abraham, and Abraham did what he was told despite not really knowing why he was expected to do these things and despite having to exchange his luxury mansion for a desert tent.

David: It is easy to obey a God who reveals Himself and tells one what to do. But that is not what happens to most of us. We can’t be certain that God is even speaking to us, never mind understand what He is saying. Is that urge to kill my son a command from God? What if it’s not, but I act on it?! So many of the faith stories in the Bible seem to rely on direct and unambiguous instruction by God to people who need direct and unambiguous instruction precisely because they have little to no faith! Isn’t that most of us? So where did God go after he made faith easy for these few lucky people?

Donald: Perhaps we only realize long after the fact that God has spoken to us. We recognize in retrospect that God was there for us when we needed Him, when we are an intersection in our journey. But we don’t hear Him at the time. It is just the way it is.

Michael: In Scripture, our choices—our will—don’t/doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is that God gets what He wants. This was Jonah’s experience. So what are we supposed to do?

David: The Daoist says we are supposed to do Nothing. It is an active Nothing whereby one deliberately eschews trying to control the Way to make it go our way. That’s not easy for us—our human tendency is to be proactive, to do Something. Doing Nothing is more than passive acceptance—it is actively to go with the flow, to follow the Way as it presents itself before you. The Way will go where it goes anyway. God’s will will be done anyway. So why do Something to thwart it?

Don: But how do you know God’s will?

David: You know it because it is right in front of you. It was what faced Aishwarya when she found herself miserable and alone in Milwaukee. She did Nothing, and things turned out alright—the Way she was traveling turned out to be the right Way after all!

Aishwarya: I still had to keep trying to find a lab. I couldn’t know if I was going with or against the flow, but I knew that I had to keep the faith and keep trying.

Robin: I identify with the ups and downs of faith. Abraham’s story shows me that they are just part of the human condition.

Chris: Faith clearly requires action. Faith without works is dead. Faith can achieve nothing if it is not active. It requires action. A journey requires action. The questions are: What action, and are we willing to take it?

Mikiko: In Abraham’s time, God spoke directly to people, but He does not do so today. But we know from Scripture that His will is for us to live in peace with one another and to be united in worship.

Donald: Perhaps it’s all a matter of perspective. We’ve talked about the ups and downs of faith as a sinusoidal curve, but if you change perspective and view a sinusoidal curve from above, it will appear as a straight line!

Michael: I think it has to be looked at from a personal perspective rather than from an intellectual perspective. Individual faith stories like Aishwarya’s seem more meaningful than intellectual theories concerning faith.

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