\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I start with a quote from Bob Dylan that makes light of a horrible dilemma:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
\nAbe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
\nGod say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
\nGod say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
\nThe next time you see me comin’ you better run”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well may Abe say What?\u00a0 How could God make such a demand?\u00a0 And how should Abraham behave when faced with a choice between his obligation to God and ordinary human decency, a choice that seems to contradict not only God\u2019s explicit and specific promises to Abraham but also God\u2019s nature?\u00a0 When God acts like a monster, are we supposed to act like monsters too?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There seem to be few ways of reading the story in which Abraham and God don\u2019t both turn out to be monsters. And that may be the very reason it has relevance for us today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To be fair, the text may be harder to read because of the way it was obviously assembled. Like other biblical texts from Genesis, the stretch from Chapters 12-25, covering Abraham, appears to be constituted from several different tellings of the tale.\u00a0 If you try to read it as a coherent story, both God and Abraham seem to suffer from repeated amnesia.\u00a0 God keeps promising Abraham limitless descendants who will rule the land of Canaan.\u00a0 This is promised as a reward for different things, first in Chapter 12 as a reward for emigrating from Ur, then as a reward for an animal sacrifice in Chapter 15, then as a reward for entering the covenant of circumcision in Chapter 17, and then again in Chapter 22, apparently as a reward for being willing to sacrifice Isaac.\u00a0 Likewise, in Chapter 18, Abraham has his famous discourse with God, securing God\u2019s consent to save Sodom if Abraham can find a diminishing number of good folks there, and yet in Chapter 19 God goes ahead and wastes the place anyhow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Moreover, the psychological states of the characters are unfathomable.\u00a0 How does Abraham feel subjectively about sacrificing his son?\u00a0 The narrative never says.\u00a0 It does go to considerable lengths to tell us the objective stakes.\u00a0 God promises Abraham limitless progeny, and Isaac is the only legitimate child in sight, and the only one likely to emerge from the union of Abraham and the near-barren Sarah.\u00a0 And only through legitimate progeny can the promise of limitless progeny inhabiting Canaan can be satisfyingly fulfilled.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So it would seem, if only because God keeps bestowing it, that the promise that Abraham will become the father of a nation is an important one, a promise that Abraham the character in the story and the early Hebrews as an audience listening to the story would have held in great value.\u00a0 There is no obvious prospect of the great promise being fulfilled if Isaac is removed from the equation.\u00a0 So God\u2019s directive to do just that, for Abraham to take out Isaac, is a command to destroy someone of huge importance, even if Abraham has no personal feelings for Isaac, and even if we ignore Isaac\u2019s worth and his own personal feelings about being exterminated.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But Abraham at least seems to have some inkling of the value of and respect to be paid to an individual.\u00a0 That\u2019s really the ethical given in Abraham\u2019s debate with God in which he tries to save Sodom: that God should not be mowing down the good men even to get to the bad ones.\u00a0 The good have value, and their lives are to be saved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But taking the tale as a whole, humans per se possess at best inconsistent value, and the same is true with family ties.\u00a0 The Abraham story is full of accounts of strong affection Abraham feels for Lot, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael.\u00a0 So again, if we\u2019re trying to see this as a coherent narrative, which it probably isn\u2019t, Abraham is a man capable of feeling family affection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The bottom line on this question, then, is that, taking the narrative at face value, we have at best only a muddy understanding of the full extent of what it would mean to Abraham personally to sacrifice Isaac.\u00a0 But even setting aside everything questionable, at a bare minimum it would mean that Abraham would be destroying the only apparent means to the fulfillment of a critical promise, to the accomplishment, really of Abraham\u2019s life\u2019s work.\u00a0 So even stripping away all the nonessentials, it would still be a cataclysm for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How then would Abraham and the readers of Genesis have viewed God\u2019s demand that Abraham make this cataclysmic sacrifice?\u00a0 Obviously here we would love to go beyond the mere text to get some context from the civilization from whence it sprang, perhaps 4000 years ago.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that inquiry is a perilous one.\u00a0 The Biblical texts are hopelessly conflicted about whether Yahweh ever accepted human sacrifice, and the archaeology about whether the ancients practiced human sacrifice is likewise hopelessly conflicted.\u00a0 It may have been common, it may have been rare, it may even have been an ancient urban legend \u2013 human sacrifice may have been something that everyone accused others of doing but no one actually saw happening.\u00a0 There are reputable archaeologists who believe each of these hypotheses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And without knowing this elementary fact, we can have no idea what human sacrifice in and of itself would have meant to the first audience of the tale.\u00a0 Would it have been something that helped the crops grow?\u00a0 Would it have been a necessary propitiation for sin?\u00a0 Would it have been a horrifying deviation from the norms of the culture?\u00a0 We don\u2019t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So appeal to the context isn\u2019t going to help.\u00a0 All we know is that God promises something important, and then seems to be ordering Abraham to destroy the only evident path toward fulfillment of that promise.\u00a0 He endows Abraham with a firstborn legitimate son in a culture that placed enormous value on firstborn legitimate sons, and then tells Abraham to kill the son.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What kind of a monster does this make of God?\u00a0 Take your pick. He could be one or more of the following charming things:\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who wants people to give up the things that are most important to them because he hates us\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God prepared to break promises but subject to changing his mind\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who likes being obeyed regardless of whether it helps man or devastates him\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who likes to see people die before he extends benefits like the growth of crops necessary for their livelihood\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who just wants to test Abraham\u2019s obedience because he values that obedience more than Abraham\u2019s humanity\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who wants to test Abraham\u2019s humanity because he values that humanity more than Abraham\u2019s obedience\u00a0<\/p>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a God who is not perfect but merely a work in progress who realizes he can\u2019t go through with breaking his promises or being bloodthirsty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first of these I think we can dismiss out of hand.\u00a0 If we believed that God hated us, we wouldn\u2019t be here.\u00a0 We might all go off and despair but we wouldn\u2019t be in a church, much less a church informed by the teachings of the Jesus who called God abba<\/em>.\u00a0 The same with the God who doesn\u2019t care about his promises to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The notion of a god or gods who must be propitiated in order to make good things happen is a very ancient one, and to the extent any sacrifices, be they human, animal, vegetable or mineral, were engaged in by the ancients, this seems to have been the animating thought most of the time.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t say I like this one either.\u00a0 It makes God into a being we can control. \u00a0If we do x<\/em>, God will do y<\/em>, goes the thinking.\u00a0 But that makes us greater than God, or at least puts us on a par with God.\u00a0 That seems bogus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s a more modern approach to sacrifice, which is not that it makes God more pliable but that it is simply good for us in the abstract, the way worship is good for us.\u00a0 OK, then is the point that slaying your son and all of your hopes is good for you?\u00a0 If so, why does God stop Abraham?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are those who think God values unquestioning obedience, regardless of consequences.\u00a0 But this seems rather unloving, and probably not the kind of God this congregation could bring itself to worship either.\u00a0 We could ameliorate this picture by making up a story in which, if Abraham had gone through with the sacrifice, God would have given Abraham a replacement son, the way Job gets a new family to replace the family members God has killed off to test Job.\u00a0 But the new family material at the end of Job is obviously not part of the original text and added on by what critic Harold Bloom rightly called a pious fool.\u00a0 Family members aren\u2019t fungible.\u00a0 As C.S. Lewis observed while grieving the death of his wife: \u201cIs God a clown who whips away your bowl of soup one moment in order to replace it with another bowl of the same soup?\u00a0 Even nature isn\u2019t such a clown as that.\u00a0 She never plays exactly the same tune twice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What then of a God who merely wants to test?\u00a0 In effect, he would seem to be demanding obedience or at least the readiness to obey, not necessarily a bad thing, but at the expense of family feeling, respect for human life, and reliance upon God\u2019s own promises.\u00a0 Obedience would then would seem to be sacrificing the greater good at a minimum for the lesser.\u00a0 Abraham passes if he disobeys.\u00a0 Well, if so, the biblical Abraham fails the test, and God has to step in and erase the wrong answer and fill in the right one.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, if it\u2019s a test in which the right answer is to obey, then Abraham passes the test but loses my admiration, and I would suspect the admiration of most of us.\u00a0 A God who wants to be obeyed at such a cost also loses our admiration for the same reason that a God who truly wants human sacrifice loses our admiration: because he can\u2019t see the value of human life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What about a God who develops in the course of the story and comes to see in the very nick of time that the sacrifice is wrong?\u00a0 Well, we\u2019re certainly glad to see God come to his senses, but do we really want a God who only wakes up that near to the edge of irretrievable and ruinous folly?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, what about Abraham?\u00a0 What kind of monster does the story make of him?\u00a0 Take your pick:\u00a0<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A man who trusts in God when God tells him to do something monstrous and utterly self-defeating because he\u2019s certain God will somehow prevent the monstrosity from occurring and is therefore willing to follow God up to the brink.\u00a0<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A man who values obedience more than he does his own son or his obligations to his own family.\u00a0<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A man who\u2019s too scared of God to think through to any consequences when God gives him an order.\u00a0<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A man who grows along with God, or grows in his understanding of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now I could run these down the way I ran down the ways the story makes God look, but you get the idea by now.\u00a0 Either they make Abraham look bad or they make God look bad or both.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It would be easy to stop here, draw a line between ourselves and the story, and say that however regrettable it may have been that there were once people who thought this was admirable stuff, we respectfully differ, and conclude that this story has nothing to tell us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then why does the story continue to resonate?\u00a0 Why does that reaction feel so incomplete?\u00a0 I think it\u2019s because, one way or another, we know a little bit about sacrificing our sons and daughters in this society.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course you can\u2019t find \u2013 or at least I hope you can\u2019t find \u2013 altars anywhere where fathers take the knife to their sons in honor of their gods.\u00a0 No one believes any more that God demands human sacrifice.\u00a0 So we are never confronted with Abraham\u2019s dilemma: human decency and family love versus compliance with divine will.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But sometimes we are still asked to sacrifice our children.\u00a0 God knows; God the Father did that very thing.\u00a0 This is of course the stuff of nightmares.\u00a0 Children should bury their parents, not the other way around; that is the way it is supposed to be.\u00a0 But we all know that sometimes there are times when someone must sacrifice not merely himself or herself (which would be comparatively easy), for the good of the rest of us.\u00a0 Instead, one is called upon to sacrifice someone else.\u00a0 And for someone with a proper moral sense, that is far more excruciating; for a parent with family ties, it is almost unimaginable.\u00a0 And yet it happens.\u00a0 These dreadful situations may arise in emergencies \u2013 floods or fires or 9\/11 situations.\u00a0 And typically it is the young who are called upon there.\u00a0 They may be first responders or they may just be the people who can do good at the risk of their own lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bad as this is for the parents, this usually provokes all the grief afterwards<\/em>; Abraham\u2019s dilemma occurred before<\/em> Isaac nearly died.\u00a0 And we do have an analogy to that, too, unfortunately, one which is occurring with greater frequency all the time: when we as a nation and as individual parents contemplate sending our children off to war.\u00a0 This is very much a generational thing.\u00a0 As folksinger Phil Ochs sang back during Vietnam: \u201cIt\u2019s always the old who lead us to the war\/ Always the young to fall.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, nowadays in this country, we sanitize the process by having a volunteer army.\u00a0 That means that every potential Isaac is partly complicit in what happens to him or her \u2013 just what our pastor theorized a few Sundays ago was true in the near-sacrifice of the biblical Isaac.\u00a0 We dress them up in striking uniforms and we make much of their growth and their maturity, and we usher them into the machinery of possible death with respect.\u00a0 And their wishes for themselves and our wishes for them grow too mixed up to say where the one ends and the other begins.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And it provides every Abraham among us with plausible deniability.\u00a0 And it also presents a more reasonable dilemma.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The choice is not between God\u2019s will and the love of our families, it is between national security, justice, the international order, democracy, freedom \u2013 what have you \u2013 and the love of our families.\u00a0 And most of us would agree that sacrifices of that sort are indeed indispensable at times.\u00a0 The fathers and mothers who grieved over their children who fell in the Revolution or World War II, for instance, could at least look back and say that the sacrifice had been worth it, and that the assent they may have given to their children\u2019s decision to put themselves in harm\u2019s way had been justified and remained justified. \u00a0Sometimes it is fitting and proper for Abraham and Sarah to assent to the potential sacrifice of their son.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The agonizing dilemma for today\u2019s Abrahams and Sarahs is that we don\u2019t have assurances going into a war.\u00a0 Mary my wife was at a conference with an acquaintance the very day that woman\u2019s son fell in Iraq.\u00a0 A year later, Tracy, the acquaintance, spoke to Mary of the fog of grief that descended over her.\u00a0 The only time anyone should ever have to face that fog of grief is in a war that is well-justified.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This gets us into the just-war doctrine.\u00a0 The summaries all run like this:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There must be rigorous consideration of the moral legitimacy of the proposed war;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the damage inflicted by the other side upon us must be lasting, grave, and certain;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 there must be serious prospects of success;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And right now, every day, we sacrifice our Isaacs in another land.\u00a0 And the question we Abrahams and Sarahs must ask ourselves is: did we and our leaders satisfy ourselves up front that the war we sent them off to met these criteria?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Was there rigorous consideration of the moral legitimacy of the war?\u00a0 Was there rigorous consideration of anything at all?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Had the other side committed lasting, grave or certain damage upon us?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Were the other means of putting an end to that damage really impractical or ineffective?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How reasonable were our expectations of success?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How likely was it, given our strategies, that the evils and disorders we would produce would not dwarf the evils we sought to suppress?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These are the questions.\u00a0 And they are rendered the more agonizing because they require foresight, and foresight is always blurred.\u00a0 We don\u2019t even have the luxury, the definiteness, of God telling us, \u201ckill me a son.\u201d\u00a0 Which actually intensifies the agony of the choices we as parents make, typically in collaboration with our children, in this regard.\u00a0 We may all be acting like monsters.\u00a0 Or like heroes.\u00a0 We must choose very, very carefully.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I want to end up showing you some photos of some local Isaacs: youngsters from Maryland who have perished in our current war.\u00a0 Whatever we may think of the war in which they fell, we can have nothing but admiration and respect for their sacrifice.\u00a0 But what of us?\u00a0 We are all of us Abraham.\u00a0 In sacrificing them, did we choose aright?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Easter 2006 Abraham and Isaac: Deciding About Sacrifice \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I start with a quote from Bob Dylan that makes light of a horrible dilemma:\u00a0 Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son” Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on” God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?” God say, “You can do what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}