In a recent religious forum discussion, one of the participants raised the issue of paradoxes in the Bible. He used the story of Abraham and Isaac as an irrational paradox that invites us to respond with a faith that leaves reason behind in the dust, so to speak. Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son of promise in his old age. So far so good. Often we are asked to obey directives we do not understand. But the claim being made here is that the Christian faith is something that should NOT be given a rational basis at all; that our faith is (and ought to be) a blind leap of faith. The assertion is that Christians should not waste so much energy attempting to ‘prove’ anything about their faith, because faith and reason are antithetical. “If you can prove it, it can’t be faith”, seems to be a prevailing sentiment, particularly among the post modern crowds. Mark Twain apparently said, “Faith is believing something you know ain’t so!”

I am reminded of an incident that I personally heard from Dr. John White, a physician and psychiatrist who spent his early years as a missionary in Bolivia. He was stationed in an isolated region of the country, and had no access to modern medical equipment or help.

One day, his young 2 year old son was playing outside when he tripped and fell on his face, striking his chin on a rock on the ground. His chin was split open, and he required immediate medical attention. But his father the physician had no anesthetic equipment or drugs with him. However, he realized that unless he acted immediately, infection would certainly set in. There was no time to wait for a plane to come and fly him out of the jungle to a modern hospital. That would have taken days to arrange.

With loving care, they laid the screaming child on the table. First they cleaned the wound. That was painful enough, but then came the hard part. The father would now have to stitch up the gaping wound, without benefit of any pain killers. Now imagine the father as he begins to stitch up the child, all the while causing the child more pain than he has ever known in his life. Mother and assistants all hold the child down so the procedure can be done safely. The child’s eyes look up frantically at the face of the father from whom he has only ever known love and acceptance, but now the child’s eyes are full of abject terror as he feels nothing but unbelievable pain from the hands of his ‘loving’ dad. At this very moment, all the reassuring “I love you’s” from father and mother fall on his deaf ears. How can this be love by any definition of the word?

This is a great paradox from the child’s point of view. It is an apparent contradiction in the mind of the child, and no amount of reasoning will satisfy. In reality from an adult point of view, the father’s actions were anything but irrational. The paradox is resolved from the adult point of view. The parent knows that at this point, love demands that the child’s medical condition needs to be looked after in the most expeditious way, even if that way means pain and misunderstanding on the part of the child. Love at this point is NOT caving in to the screaming, superficial demandingness of the child, who is only interested in avoidance of pain and restoration of comfort.

God often allows our faith to be tested in this way. Sometimes things happen to us the likes of which leave us wondering about the rationality of our God and our faith. As we try to figure things out, we need to remember that after all, our God did say, “My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” He did not say his thoughts were irrational. They are simply beyond ours. Otherwise God would merely be one of us.