Doubting with Abraham

Over the past few weeks I have had the privilege of teaching an adult Sunday School class on the book of Genesis at my home church, Niverville Community Fellowship. While it has been a challenge to fit the entire book of Genesis into five weeks of one hour classes, it has been a wonderful experience meeting with some of the members of our church and learning together about the biblical text. 

Last week in our class we were discussing the story of Abraham (cf. Gen 11:27-25:18). You know, the guy who left everything he had because God promised him something? Yeah, that guy. It occurred to me last week as we were discussing the story of Abraham that most of what we know of him does not actually come from the Genesis text, but rather from the esteemed "Faith Hall of Fame" as found in Hebrews 11. As we find there,

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents . . . By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, 18 of whom he had been told, “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” 19 He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. (Heb 11: 8-9, 17-19)

While I don't want to go as far as to say the writer of Hebrews was wrong, she paints a picture of Abraham that we as modern interpreters would view through the proverbial "rose coloured glasses". Now again, this is not wrong, as we do this of most people who have passed away (how often do you read a negative obituary? Think about that). However, while it is not wrong, Hebrews 11 does not actually tell us the entire story of Abraham.

While Abraham was, on the one hand, a man of great faith, he was also a man of great doubt. Consider the words of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann:

The tradition affirms Abraham as a "knight of faith" who does trust. But the evidence of the individual texts is more than that. To be sure, the moments of faith are profound. he immediately departs to answer the call (12:4). He leaves early with his son (22:3). And between the two obedient departures, he trusts the promise (15:6). The trust of Abraham is the main claim of the narrative. It is stated at the beginning (12:3), in the middle (15:6), and at the end (22:1-13).

 But Abraham's believing does not occur in a vacuum. He must live in history. And so he is not always sure. thus there is his deception to save his skin (12:10-20; 20:1-18). There is his alternative wife, just in case (16:1-16). There is his clinging to Ishmael when God has Isaac in mind (17:18). These texts guard against any inclination to interpret Abraham's faith as having been easy or without anguish. (Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, 111).

In our class last week, I suggested that Abraham doubted the promise of God, citing Gen 15:2-3 as my reference. It states "But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”" 

Upon reading this I was surprised to hear that some people did not agree with my interpretation of the text, for they began to argue (in the philosophical sense of countering my claims, not the squabbling of childhood) that Abraham was gently reminding God of his promise, or that he was simply stating a fact. I can't quite remember the exact claim, but the sentiment of it was done to continue with the "rose-coloured" interpretation of the character of Abraham.

To be fair to the person who suggested this, I can see where they were coming from. As Evangelicals, we have often been guilty as viewing the Bible foremost as a story about humans, so whenever we see humans in the text we immediately look to their actions as some sort of exemplary text where we are supposed to find how to act. While in some instances there may be merit for this method of interpretation, it ultimately finds itself at a dead end when we begin to realize that the characters of the Bible are no more than us in the fact that they remain human. In the end, they always fall short of the mark. We idolize a character like Abraham but cannot come to terms when we realize he doubted God's promise. We look with praise to a character like Samson and gloss over the fact that he engaged regularly in promiscuous sexual activity. We talk about Solomon and all his wisdom but forget that he was the king who sent the kingdom of Israel spiraling into division (never mind all those wives and concubines). We do all of this so that we can view the characters of the Bible as exemplars.

We need to get away from reading the text foremost as what can we learn about the human characters. While in some instances we can look for them to inspiration, that should not be our first reading of the text. Rather, the biblical text is primarily about God and his working among humanity. It is foremost a story about a God who is continually working and reworking his creation in order that one day we would dwell with him once again in the paradisical Eden. Any human response that we find in the story is only possible because God acted first. Everything we do is simply a response to the divine initiative.

So how does this change how we read the story of Abraham? Well, we go from reading it as a story about how great Abraham is to a story about how great God is. The question the text asks over and over is "can this God keep his promise?" And the answer we find over and over, despite humanity's attempts to take the implications into their own hands is that God is faithful. God is capable of acting despite our deepest of doubts. God is capable of acting when the world tells us that something is impossible.

God's promise to Abraham really was quite bizarre. A nomadic old man with no children would be the patriarch of a great nation that would have a land to call their own. Considering the circumstances, I don't blame Abraham for doubting! However, Abraham's doubt does not have the last word, for God has a plan, and God will keep his promise. 

God is faithful to Abraham and God is faithful today, despite our doubts and questions. God is bigger than our doubts and is capable of answering the hard questions. So don't feel like you need to wear a facade and pretend that you have everything figured out. Abraham, a man of great faith, did not have everything figured out, and if he didn't, I don't know who would. So go ahead, ask God the hard questions of life. He can handle it. The answer may not always come in the form which we expect, but we can guarantee that YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is a God who keeps his promises.