Football player Marshawn Lynch in an interview, on his independence of judgment:
“If you tell me to do something and I want to know why and you don’t want to tell me why — No.”
Take that, hero-of-the-Old-Testament Abraham, whose blind faith made him willing to kill his son Isaac when commanded.
Sources: American Way, September 2015. Genesis 18-22.
Well said, Marshawn.
While superficially this makes sense, it seems like the strict conclusion of this is some kind of paranoia. It is one thing to say that we ought not to do things that don’t make sense, or that we ought to be guided by reason. It is another thing to say that we ought never to do anything which doesn’t make sense to us as an individual. It seems like there is a role for “faith” in the sense that we may trust the judgment of others even if, in the moment of acting on that trust, we don’t understand them. It is one thing to say, “don’t be naive; some people want to hurt you.” But that ought to be balanced against the need to trust others, trust which is often rooted in our own limitations. Without some ground-level willingness to trust (e.g., “faith”), we cannot cooperate. We can always demand greater levels of transparency from others, demands which become violations of trust and tear at the social fabric. Refusal to satisfy those demands can then be taken as evidence of paranoia, in the same way that refusing to admit that you’re a racist is taken as evidence that you’re a racist by paranoid social justice activists.
The comparison to Abraham is, frankly, silly. The subtext in Lynch’s comment is one of antagonism between parties: the Nazi at the door, the activist in the workplace, the racist cop on the street. Yet I’m sure if Lynch’s wife said, “Come to the bedroom in ten minutes… but I’m not going to tell you why,” he would be there in nine. I’m sure Lynch, like all of us, does not demand an explanation of those who ask something of him when he fully trusts and loves them. If he is convinced of their benevolence toward him, then it is wrong to construe them as making “unjustified demands.” The more you trust another person, the wilder can be the thing they ask for.
The point of the Abraham story, as Paul explains in Romans 4, is that Abraham trusted that God was making such a “wild” ask, and Abraham mentally filled in the gaps as to why it might make sense. This faith is exemplified in Jesus, whose trust in God was so complete that he was willing to obey even to the point of crucifixion. That trust seems foolish (A foolishness Paul discusses in the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians), but the resurrection of Jesus after the fact is supposed to be taken as Jesus being vindicated for his uncompromising faith.
While I understand the comparison, and while I highly respect Dr Hicks and find him to be a superb writer and thinker, I think this comparison gets wrong the basic idea of what religious faith is all about.