The thing that blocks us from benefiting from the stories of Hazrat Ibrahim عليه السلام (of leaving his wife & infant son in a desert on Allah's command and of his sacrificing his son) is the influence of modern intellectual ideas on our ‘aqida, i.e. what we think and believe to be true. The great equalizing push of secular liberalism means that we no longer see the prophets as being on the very top of a grand hierarchy, set up by God as a way to teach us how to be. We see them to be men, “just like us,” due to the liberal idea of the fundamental equality of all men and also because of modern movements in Islam that deemphasize concepts like adab (decorum) and the veneration of godly people.
The more we see ourselves approaching their status, such that the gap between us and the divinely inspired prophets decreases in our eyes, the less we feel compelled to push ourselves to understand what Allah is getting at by telling their example.
When not compelled to move beyond our own realities to higher spiritual ones, we can then only interpret the actions of the prophets through our own inclinations and social understandings.
With the equalizing push of secular liberalism comes a growing emphasis on the right of the human toward self- (and not divine) determination. We feel entitled to our own opinions and our own perceptions in a manner unlike any era of the human past. What this ultimately means is that the human, “rational,” way of understanding what is right and wrong takes precedence over any understanding that comes from God. And in this way, we are left completely unable to comprehend a subtle but critically important theological point: Allah is the One who determines what is Right and what is Wrong, whether you understand the reasoning behind His determinations or not.
This point of ‘aqida is deeply connected to the idea of submission and slavehood to Allah. To restate it: according to the ‘aqida of Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama‘ah (the formal name of those who consider themselves to be “Sunni” Muslims), the meaning, or ultimate consequence, of any given action can only be determined by Allah Himself, the Lord and Master of all creation.[xii] Out of His Generosity to us, He has made it so that we can see the wisdom in many of His rulings. For example, it is not difficult for a human being to understand why murder is unlawful, why charity brings reward, and why slander is a sin. But sometimes religious rulings are not based on any rational sense (e.g. why must we pray five times a day, instead of four, or six?). And sometimes on rare occasions, when dealing directly with his prophets and not as commands to the generality of believers, Allah might even reverse the ruling so that it seems to go against reason in order to bring higher truths to light.
Regarding these particular accounts of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (Allah grant him peace), we learn something great as far as the internal aspect of how we should be. The starkness of the action and the unapologeticness of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (Allah grant him peace) afterwards are signs to us of what our internal state should be with our Lord. As modern people, we have a desire to understand with our minds everything, but this sometimes clashes with the soul’s ability to submit to the divine call. As submitted Muslims, we might not understand the rationale behind every divine command, but we must do them anyway. Some believers manage to still act on the commands they don’t understand because they trust in His Wisdom and in the fact that He has promised that a believer’s good deeds will never go to waste (such deeds always result in even more good, both in this world and in the Next). Others, at an even higher level of iman, act simply because they understand the supreme rank of Allah as Lord, and so their attitude is: “We hear and we obey”[Quran 2:285] without hesitation and without needing an explanation. They are the perfectly submitted slaves of Allah, who see nothing before them except Him.
-extracts from 'Ibrahim عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ: The Father of Supreme Devotion' by DR. FAREEHA KHAN
https://thesilainitiative.org/modern-questions-grounded-answers/ibrahim-the-father-of-supreme-devotion/20201021/by-dr-fareeha-khan/#_edn17
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