Hebrews 11 and Faith as Living in the Dark (II)

Once we have a definition of faith, the author moves to several Biblical examples of people who demonstrated it. Abraham demonstrated faith in three ways in this passage (8-16): (1) He obeyed God by setting out on a journey; (2) He continued to act in faith even when things looked bleak; and (3) He died in faith. A word about each might be helpful.

(1) For the author of Hebrews faith is always an action or an active concept. If you read Heb. 11 and notice the appearance of "faith," you will also see that it invariably appears next to a verb. "By faith," someone did something. So it was with Abraham. By faith he obeyed by setting out to a strange and distant land. The author makes the point that he set out "not knowing where he was going" (v. 8). That, it seems to me, is the essence of Abraham's faith, the "hypostasis" if you will, of Abraham's understanding of God. He began on a journey before he even knew the contours of the journey. He heard the voice of God (the author never tells us how he knew it was the voice of God), and he obeyed by going. This is the first way that biblical faith differs from scientific proof. Faith acts before it has all the information, before it has all it really "needs" in order to know if its decision is "rational." But Abraham's decision could never have been based on scientific proof, since no amount of "advance planning" could have assured a safe or meaningful journey for him. He just decided he had to go along with the divine word to him.

(2) But faith does more than this. It continues to act even as the darkness doesn't lift in life. The author makes reference to other times in Abraham's life when he lived by faith. He received the "power of procreation" by faith when he was "past the age." Or, more accurately, when Sarah was past the age of child-bearing. By making his case, the author has to gloss over some of the "failings" of Abraham, recorded in Genesis, precisely on this point. He makes it sound as if Abraham's faith was an unbroken confidence, but the story in Genesis tells us otherwise. There he tried to "force the hand" of God by thinking that Hagar, his slave-woman, might be the instrument of promise for him. But the point shouldn't be missed. Not only does faith start in the dark, with a word of command and not much more than that, but it continues in the dark, as decisions are made and "great things" just don't follow as a matter of course. One of the reasons that I had trouble with Evangelical Protestant faith (though I identified with it for about two decades) is that there wasn't enough emphasis on the silences, darkness and emptiness of the life of faith. It was not as if I was depressed or necessarily wanted to feel depressed. I just felt that too sunny a picture of the Christian life was being painted for me. All I needed to do was to pray, hope, have faith and I would see the dawning of something positive in the near future. But it never seemed to happen that way. Then, after re-reading Heb. 11, for example, I saw that "the promise" on which many were basing their hopes was not something immediately received or recognized.

I think that any person of ambition and vision in life has to work in faith. You just don't see the results of what you would like to see; you always are striving for more; the battle is seemingly so much bigger than you. I know that one of the things I have set my heart to do these days is to spend a lot of time acquiring knowledge and wisdom--not for their own sakes but for the sake of reorienting what we understand to be knowledge in our day (see these essays "Why I Write" for an explanation). I take on huge tasks and know that I can never complete them. They are daunting, awe-inspiring, and even discouraging at times. But that is the essence of faith--you are always working with discouraging information even as you hope for things that reach beyond the possibilities of the present.

(3) But what is often missed from this passage is the point that Abraham (and others) died in faith or, to use other words, died without seeing the promise that was give to him. Someday we want it all to "come together." We want a satisfying explanation which will lay to rest all our doubts. We want a revelation of God or a sense of "fit" or "harmony" in the world that will justify the expression of faith that we have demonstrated. But the text says that

"All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them" (v. 13).

It is like Moses who stood atop Nebo, seeing the Promised Land but not being able to guide his people into the land. It is like Martin Luther King, Jr., who used that same kind of imagery in a speech just days before he was gunned down, who could see equality for his people but was denied the privilege of seeing it happen. The hard thing about faith is that we just have to "keep the faith," even when we arrive at old age or death. We don't realize or experience the thing for which we have labored long in life; we might, like Abraham, be able to greet it from afar, but we don't actually embrace it.

Conclusion

That, it seems to me, is Biblical faith. It is as real as a "hypostasis" is real, even though such a hypostasis isn't visible. It is a special kind of proof, just as valid as scientific or mathematical proof, but just done with different "numbers" or methods. It is something which led Abraham, and leads us, on journeys even before we know the shape of the journey. It is something that continues to lead us, even as we face darkness and uncertainty along the way. And, at the end, we may still die before we see what we longed so significantly for in life. We might die "not knowing where we are going." All of this, it seems to me, is a helpful antidote to the prevalent assumption in our society that you have to "know" where you are going, that you have to be able to articulate where you will be in "three to five" years, that you have to have goals that you can "check off" as you live. Faith may not be aimless wandering, but it isn't a planned life. It is real, but it is a different kind of reality. Let this reality be yours this week.

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