Genesis 22 (Abraham, Isaac and the toughest chapter in the Old Testasment)

There's an old joke that Abraham was fussing with his pc when Isaac wandered past.

Whatcha doing pop?" he asked.

I'm trying to load Windows 7 on my old laptop," Abraham said.

It'll never work," Isaac replied. "You don't have enough memory on that thing."

"Don't worry, my son," Abraham said. "God will provide the RAM."

I think I've heard more jokes about this story than any other in the Bible. That may be because we have to laugh at it to keep from crying. It's a wrenching story and probably much more for us than for the people who first told it.

The chapter opens with the statement that "God tested Abraham." God speaks to Abraham and tells him to take his son Isaac to a certain place and there to kill him and offer his body as a burnt offering to God.

What kind of a God makes a demand like this? What kind of a father would even consider doing such a thing? And yet, Abraham doesn't even seem to hesitate. Of course, the story has a happy ending; God tells Abraham not to kill his son and gives him a ram as a sacrifice. Nobody dies (except the ram) and father and son live happily ever after. That should be enough.

I've heard a lot of explanations for this. Fundamentalist friends have told me that we're not supposed to question the Bible. If God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, God must have had a good reason for doing it and we should just accept that.

I don't buy that. For one thing, it's not honest. For another, questioning God is something that people of great faith do pretty often, both in the Bible and throughout history. When God does something that seems so far out of character, the faithful thing to do is to question and even to challenge. Failing to do so can lead us to some very dark places and twisted ideas.

So what's going on here? I don't think I can give a simple answer for that, but here are some of my thoughts.

- One of my professors in seminary said that, as horrible as the story is, it says something important about human commitment. Being committed to God means doing the right thing, no matter the sacrifice involved. That means standing up for justice for all people, even when that is an unpopular cause. However, when we are confronted with the need to stand up to racism, sexism, homophobia, and other things that marginalize people, we find it easy to make excuses. We are afraid of losing a job, or of being rejected in our social circle, or even afraid that the people doing the persecuting will do something to harm us. In the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (for example) people who stood up for racial equality often ran the risk of being harassed, arrested, assaulted or even killed.

The professor pointed out that children were the most compelling excuse people had for remaining on the sidelines. "I'd do something, but I have my children to think about."

The professor's point was that, as long as we do that, injustice will prevail. To follow God, we have to give up our excuses; even when the excuse is our children. Only when we're able to make that sacrifice are we truly following God. It's a challenging idea and a little intimidating, but important to keep in mind.

- On a more historical note, we know that child sacrifice was a reality in the ancient Middle East. While the information is limited, and biased, it seems that the sacrifice of children to gain favor with the gods was practiced by Israel's neighbors. There is a law, repeated several times in the Hebrew Scriptures (Lev 18:21, Lev 20:3, Deut 12:30-31, Deut 18:10) specifically forbidding the practice. Since you don't normally make a law forbidding something unless people are actually doing it, this strongly suggests that this was practiced by the people of Israel as well. This story may have been used as a way to end the practice by showing that God rejected the sacrifice of Isaac.

- As I said, there isn't an easy answer to understanding this story. The one answer I can give with perfect confidence is that we are supposed to do terrible things without questioning them if God says so. The scriptures are filled with examples of people of great faith questioning and arguing with God. Job argued about the justice of his situation, Jesus bitterly questioned God at Gethsemane, and even Abraham argued with God about the destruction of Sodom. Questioning and arguing are not signs of a lack of faith. Someone with integrity will always question and even argue when the message that seems to be coming from God is ungodly. When you think about it, the name "Israel" even means, the one(s) who struggle with God.

If you are ever called on to do something that goes against the character of God, question it. If you are told that God wants you to do something that is not just, or compassionate, or merciful, argue with it. Don’t accept it easily; not even if it comes from your preacher, or your church's doctrine, or even if it comes from the Bible. There's a difference between true faith and blind obedience, and I believe that the people who struggle with all their passion and integrity to do the right thing are closer to God than those who unthinkingly do what they're told.

Genesis 21 (Promises to Isaac and Ishmael)

Genesis 21 concludes the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Islamic tradition picks up on this and names Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabic peoples. This story reveals something about the grim conditions for women in the ancient Near East and how common it was for even the people we think of as the good guys to use and discard them. It's another story of God's faithfulness contrasted with human selfishness and cruelty.

Previously, God had promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child and this would lead to a huge number of descendants. Actually, God had promised it several times, though the elderly couple had their doubts. Sarah had doubted it so much that she'd come up with a plan B, just in case God's plan didn't work out. She'd sent her Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, to Abraham with instructions to get her pregnant.

Abraham had gone along with the plan and the result had been a son named Ishmael. That had seemed to solve things, until Hagar realized that producing an heir made her more important to Abraham than Sarah was. Sarah realized it too and a deep hatred grew up between the women.

Then God's promise came true. Against all possibility, Sarah became pregnant. The idea was so absurd that it made her laugh and so, when the child was born, they named him Isaac, which means "laughter." But what was joyful for Sarah was bad news for Hagar and her son. Sarah realized that they didn't need this uppity slave and her son around any longer. She told Abraham to abandon the two of them in the desert and he didn't object to that any more than he had to getting the girl pregnant.

Abraham and Sarah don't come across very well in this story. They aren't just, or even kind, in their dealings with Hagar and her son. As far as they're concerned, she is just a means to an end, someone to be used and discarded. She's just a slave as far as they're concerned, a foreign woman, who can be treated as less than human. Abraham and Sarah aren't role models in this story, they aren't even decent human beings.

Fortunately, Abraham and Sarah aren't the heroes of the story, God is. While Hagar is our in the desert, waiting to die, God speaks to her and tells her that she and her son will live. God reveals a water well, which saves their lives, and makes then a promise that Ishmael will survive and will also become the ancestor of a great nation.

The contrast between God's character and that of the human characters is the heart of the story. In God's eyes, Hagar is much more than a foreigner or a slave. She is someone who has been oppressed by her culture and its people. As we will see over and over throughout scripture, God has a special concern for people like Hagar and Ishmael. While it would have been nice to see God give Abraham and Sarah a real dressing down, the story does reveal something about God's character that we'll see over and over. God acts to protect the helpless, comfort the afflicted, and embrace the despised and rejected. God cares about the down and out and that's the moral lesson I take away from this story.

God cares for the people who are ignored and stepped on. If we want to be followers of God, we should do the same.