A Reason to Believe

My friend Vinnie told me he didn’t believe in God.

Unbelief is always sad news, but I wasn’t surprised to hear him say it. Vinnie’s wife attended our church every Sunday, but he stayed home—except on Christmas and Easter when he sat quietly next to her. He didn’t sing the hymns, but he listened carefully when I preached.

Despite our different beliefs, Vinnie and I enjoyed our conversations. He and his wife came to our home once in a while, and they invited my family to dinner as well. At one of those meals Vinnie looked at me with characteristic forthrightness and said, “You know why I don’t believe in God? Because of that story in the Bible about Abraham and Isaac. How could God ever do that? I can’t believe in a God who would tell a father to sacrifice his son.”

Over the years I have learned that behind most intellectual arguments there is emotional pain. Many struggle to believe, not because faith is illogical but because they have experienced hurt or disappointment that creates emotional barriers to belief. A church-going family member proved to be a hypocrite. A trusted minister let them down. God didn’t answer a prayer the way they hoped. Others choose to dwell in the shadows of doubt because they don’t want to be accountable to God and his authority. They love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil (John 3:19).

Skeptics accuse Christians of believing in God because we are weak and need a crutch to lean on; but the truth is, all of us need crutches because all of us are crippled. All of us eventually find ourselves bruised and broken by life, needing someone to help us. Christians lean on God; non-Christians lean on something else or someone else.

Vinnie leaned on beer, and lots of it. Behind his skepticism about the Bible lay a particular source of pain: He and his wife had never been able to bear children. I suppose that’s why the story about Abraham and Isaac seemed especially painful to him.

Can you think of a greater sacrifice than the one God asked of Abraham? The command to kill his son Isaac appeared to contradict God’s earlier kindness, for Isaac was born miraculously in Abraham and Sarah’s old age when they were long past the age of childbearing. The command to kill Isaac appeared to contradict God’s promise. Hadn’t he said that through Abraham’s descendants all nations of the earth would be blessed? How could this happen if the child of promise died before he fathered children? Most confusing of all, killing Isaac would contradict Abraham’s instincts as a loving father who treasured his son. The very wording of God’s strange command underscores Abraham’s fatherly emotion: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. . . . Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2).

Vinnie’s question (“How can I believe in a God who would tell a father to sacrifice his son?”) was quite ironic, because God himself is a father who sacrificed his Son. Abraham and Isaac illustrate the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, but with one key difference: God stopped Abraham from going through with it. He halted the knife that would have taken Isaac’s life, but he didn’t stop the soldiers who pounded nails through the hands and feet of Jesus. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

I can believe in a God like that.