God tested Abraham to teach all to treasure children
It was last Sunday morning at Mass and I was sitting in my celebrant’s chair next to the altar, dressed in my modest purple silk and the omnipresent and incredibly annoying face mask. The lector was at the pulpit reading the scriptures and I was scheduled to preach.
The first lesson was from the Book of Genesis, Chapter 22, which is the famous story of God testing Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. The story is well known, and after God gave the command, Abraham took his son to the top of a mountain, built an altar, and tied his son down. At the last moment, when Abraham was about to plunge his knife into the little rascal, God spoke again and redirected the patriarch to substitute a ram for the boy and not kill him after all. Doubtless, my parish congregation was reminded again of Abraham’s deep faith. But unfortunately, my reaction to this was more along the lines of “that kid is going to need years of psychotherapy to recover from this.”
Taken from a modern perspective, this is a horrible story. Can one imagine being told by your father to pack up for an adventure, marching a long way and end up tied to an altar while the old coot pulls a knife on you while talking to an invisible deity? The text says that while they were on the pilgrimage, “Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. ‘Father!’ he said. ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Isaac continued, ‘Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?’ ‘My son,’ Abraham answered, ‘God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.’ ” Imagine being Isaac and finding out that the sheep to be sacrificed is him. As I said, “years of psychotherapy.”
Now of course, your author is aware of the Christian interpretation of the story, that Isaac and the newfound ramp refigure the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Likewise, he is aware that children were regarded somewhat differently in the very ancient near east. But the moral problem of the story is perhaps best thrashed out by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, published in his not very cheerful book “Fear and Trembling” in 1843. Kierkegaard pointed out that the moral problems of the story are that, a) God is telling a lie and deceiving Abraham, b) God is asking Abraham to do something reprehensible and c) it was not ethical for Abraham to conceal the truth of what he was up to from Sarah and others.
Kierkegaard attempts to answer this by focusing on the person of Abraham in that he not merely obeys God but makes a spiritual resignation, leaving all things in the hands of the Almighty. Kierkegaard wrote, “The act of resignation does not require faith, for what I gain is my eternal consciousness. This is a purely philosophical movement that I venture to make when it is demanded and can discipline myself to make, because every time some finitude will take power over me, I starve myself into submission until I make the movement, for my eternal consciousness is my love for God, and for me that is the highest of all.”
Perhaps it is better to take the story in a more symbolic manner. Historians and more secular writers have observed that the Hebrew peoples later lived among people who practiced child sacrifice, such as the devotees of Baal. In this interpretation, the listeners were instructed in the evils of child sacrifice, and shown that their beloved ancestor Abraham had not carried out the evil act.
A number of writers have pointed out that the story should be seen as a moral story, not so much to prove Abraham’s faith but to point out his growth in faith. I once heard a rabbi speak on this issue, saying that God’s actions need to be seen in the light of Genesis 16. In that chapter, Abraham is described as allowing his wife Sarah to drive his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael out of the camp to certain death in the desert. In that story God intervened to save the boy’s life, but in Chapter 20 Abraham is taught a hard lesson, as if to say, “this is what watching the death of a child is like, as you once condemned Ishmael.” Here the focus is not only on Abraham’s faith, but on God as an instructor, obliging Abraham to learn from his mistakes.
But perhaps this passage speaks in another way to the people of our own age along similar lines of seeing God as the instructor. While this author does not wish to denigrate the venerable patriarch, what Abraham prepared to do was, in any modern estimation, still child abuse. We might see Abraham not only as a person of great faith, but also as a reminder that even people of deep faith can still be profoundly misguided. God’s intervention in the story indicates that the Almighty was pointing out the evils of child abuse to His chosen people in a very dynamic way. Children are to be treasured and loved, and not used as pawns in the service of others.
In the year 2018, over 165,000 children between the ages of 2 and 5 were abused or malnourished. The statistics of other years indicate that the problem remains strong and is not diminishing, making the United States the leader in the industrialized world for acts of child abuse. The following year, in 2019, there were at least 1,730 children who died of such abuse. Like an evil twin, instances of sexual abuse of children offer their own statistics. An estimated one in nine girls and one in 53 boys are sexually molested by adults every year. Such statistics make the hideous cult of Baal pale in comparison.
If Isaac did indeed need therapy after the events of Genesis 20, he would not be the last. God’s intervention to save both Ishmael and Isaac is in this case an important reminder. God himself is revolted by what we as a nation allow to happen to our children. Perhaps it is not merely Abraham who needs to be instructed, but ourselves.
Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor emeritus of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at gnyssa@ verizon.net or follow him on Twitter @Fatherelder.