Essay about Paradox of Faith

Faith in Christ has given me a unique life filled with optimism and purpose. From a young age, I have been raised in a home where I was taught about the love of Christ. Not only at home did I learn about Christ, but at school and at church. Thus, my life has been filled with experiences that have amplified my faith. For example, when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I found that my relationship with Christ grew. Through all of the difficult circumstances that I have faced, faith in Christ has given me the encouragement that I need to persevere through any situation. Additionally, faith has influenced my decision making, which is why I strive to make all my decisions and live my life according to faith-based principles. This means

When they got on the top of the mountain, God saw that Abraham truly had faith in him, thus he sent a ram instead so that Abraham did not have to sacrifice his son. Abraham never had a doubt in God’s will and was offering even to sacrifice his own flesh and blood to prove his undoubting faith. Moses on the other hand, questioned God. When he first encounters God in the form of a fiery bush, Moses questions God’s will by asking, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Although he meets God in a physical form, he still questioned him with doubts of his own abilities. Unlike Abraham who had unquestioning faith, Moses started out his relationship with God with a lack of faith. Eventually, Moses does develop the same undoubting faith that Abraham processed. Only initially did he have doubts about his relationship with God.

The story of Abraham and the binding of his son Isaac displays one of the ways God tested man in those days. Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his only son in the land of Moriah. Not letting his love for his son withhold him from God’s wishes he goes to the mountain and right before he readies himself to kill Isaac an angel calls out to him. He is told that his faith in God has been demonstrated and he doesn 't have to sacrifice his son after all.

The consequences of accepting that the goodness of actions consists simply in the fact that God favours them are obviously disagreeable. However, the consequences of accepting the alternative also appear unfortunate. If it is maintained that God favours certain actions because they are objectively good, it seems that their goodness is independent of His will. But such a view appears to be inconsistent with the conception of God as the omnipotent creator and sustainer of all that is. It means that there is a realm of moral values which exist quite apart from God's creative will and to which His will must conform. Such a view must inevitably appear blasphemous to all those who believe in God, for it makes God out to be less than He is.

Abraham was able to get god to comply with finding 10 and not destroying Sodom

lives would have been saved and blood need not have been shed in the name

The first question that Lamb raises is if God’s anger in the Old Testament is justifiable. In other words, can God be concerned with Love and still kill people in his anger? Lamb argues that God 's anger, although sometimes extreme is justified and necessary. To prove his point, Lamb uses the story of Uzzah (2 Sam. 6:1-8). In this story, King David recovered the Ark of The Covenant and paraded it throughout Israel in the back of an ox cart. In front of a large crowd of Israelites the Ark became unstable and Uzzah reached out to steady it, because of this God killed Uzzah instantly. At first this seems completely unjustified, it looks as though Uzzah was just protecting the Ark. But, the more we look into God’s motives, the more it makes sense. First, God commanded the Israelites to carry the Ark by two long poles that attach to the side of the Ark, and he was very clear about this. Second, by killing Uzzah in front of all of these people, God sent a message that said his laws shall not be disobeyed. It

For, the point of the beginning lies in the result (Kierkegaard, 91). This means that no point or choice exists at the beginning of any obstacle. In the eyes of Kierkegaard, one should judge according to the result. Abraham relies on and trusts in God's love and his love for God (Kierkegaard, 88). This is not absurd. It is only absurd from the point of view that it might be calculated (Kierkegaard, 65). But, faith is beyond calculation, for Abraham "believed on the strength of the absurd, for there could be no question of human calculation… (Kierkegaard, 65)"

So now, not only is Abraham faced with killing his own son, he is also supposed to still be considered in a religious context to be sacrificing his son. The Knight of infinite resignation sees this contradiction, this logical impossibility, and is aware of how this command defies rationality. This knight accepts that, in this life, his beloved son is going to die and that his hand will be the one to deliver this task. The main point Kierkegaard makes is when he goes on to say that to have faith, one must have experienced both of these stages. One must experience the stage of infinite resignation before being able to attain faith. “Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith” (Kierkegaard 75).

In his famous work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard declares that “no person has a right to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things.” The difficulty of faith lies in the requirement of sacrifice. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, is what Kierkegaard utilizes to demonstrate how costly faith in God is. Here is a man, who after seventy years of waiting for God’s promise of offspring finally received his son, is commanded by God to slay his promised son with no stated reason for doing so. Kierkegaard, in attempting to experience what Abraham might have experienced in those moments, cries, “Now all is lost, God demands Isaac, I shall sacrifice him, and with him all my joy – but for all that, God is love and will remain so for me.” What bold words! The cost

This section provides us with two selections from the essays of William K. Clifford (1845-1879) and William James (1842-1910). Clifford's essay, The Ethics of Belief, is based on the concept of evidentialism. This concept 'holds that we should not accept any statement as true unless we have good evidence to support its truth'; (Voices of Wisdom, 346). James wrote his essay, The Will to Believe, as a response to Clifford's essay where he endorsed a philosophy called pragmatism.

Throughout the history of the world, people have been concerned with what it is to live a moral life. Many answers have been put forth for this question, but the best by far is found in the Christian Bible. This is because the Bible is a revelation from the Creator. While people can grope in the dark to find answers to moral questions by looking at natural law, they are always frustrated because the real nature of the world we live in is fallen and corrupt. We have an adversary who tries to deceive us and minds that are easily deceived. Even at our most rational, we make mistakes in logical inference, and need to be corrected. In this paper, we will look at biblical ethics in terms of meta-ethics, deontology, virtue theory, and

He strongly believes that no one be vindicated by the laws of work. He talks about the Abraham and his strong faith. He put his only child as a sacrifice believing that god has only done well for him. Even this might a beginning of good plan. If Abraham was justified by his works, then he will say he did everything without help of anyone. God doesn't want that at all. From the bible passage we can understand that his strength and his obedience came from his powerful faith. (Romans 3:28) He proves the point by comparing with passage in Genesis faith can help a person to become good and honest. (Genesis

Abram leaves his home and family, and departs into the "strange land" of Canaan, showing an extreme obedience to God and understanding of his duty to father this great race. Throughout Genesis, Abraham builds altars to God and sacrifices animals. In Genesis 22:2, God tells Abraham, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains". The next day, Abraham sets off for Moriah "and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." After God stops the sacrifice, he tells Abraham, "Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me."

Faith and reason were two modes of belief that dominated the history of Western Civilization. Both faith and reason were popularized as tools to understand the universe in Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian eras. By conflicting with each other, these two modes of belief sparked a lot of controversy. Reason or rationality is belief based on concrete evidence and logic. The development of one’s reason relies heavily on observation and questioning. Greco-Roman philosophers believed in the power of the human mind to understand the world. So in order to find ultimate truth, Greco-Roman philosophers dedicated their lives to perfecting their reasoning skills and encouraged those around them to do the same. Contradictory to reason, faith is the