Trying to See Things as Abraham Did

It is a question to ask about the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Despite the message - that one's faith makes even an absurd and cruel act something of greater value - it is an impossible act to comprehend.  It is always hard to stand in another's place, to look through another's eyes. Harder still when so much time has passed, and customs have changed as has the understanding we have of God.  Still, there is a value in trying to see things as Abraham did.

God is not asking for Abraham's life, a life over which Abraham has control and which he might freely return to God.  Instead, it is the life and future of someone else's.  Has Abraham the right to respond?  Is Isaac his to use in this way?  Maybe in their world he was, though it is hard to see how.  And even if he could, should he? Should Abraham be faithful when the act of faith required the forfeit of his son, or ought there be a law beyond even God that says, "No"?

Were it not our God as well, we might say the Lord's request was indication that he was not a true god, not the father he claimed to be; and here again a question is raised, one involving our faith.  It stops being and Old Testament question as we shift the focus from then to now, from Isaac to Jesus and to the question of sacrifice in general.

If we accept the atonement as the function of Jesus, or see his death as sacrificial, then what does it say of the notion of Father which is central to his preaching?  If Jesus tells us a father does not give stones as bread, or offer serpents to his children seeking fish, then should we believe he asks death of the one he loves the most?  Does it mean the pound of flesh must be his own, or even that one is required?

It leads to questions about the meaning and value of atonement, an idea that is familiar but which may no longer say what we mean about God.  Maybe we can acknowledge that focus and move beyond it to an additional interpretation, seeing his death as the cost of Jesus' faith, a consequence imposed not by the Father, but by those who could not believe, who could not accept what he said and did.  If he dies because of, or at the hands of, fearful people, then fear of truth and resort to the violence that follows are the killing factors, the actions he can forgive from the Cross.

Maybe too it means sacrifice was not what God wanted, not what he needs.  Instead, faithfulness to his message as it is understood may be his interest, and in Resurrection God offers ratification of Jesus' belief and confirms his own faithfulness to the believer.  It would then say death, though painful and without value in itself, becomes important by being overcome, that faith surmounts the worst that unbelief might impose.  In this way, we are saying that dying happens, but believing goes on.

If this explains a part of what happens in Jesus' death, as well as our own, it does not explain Abraham.  To think perhaps he misunderstood is unfair.  Maybe we are left to think his belief differed from ours, that his vision of God was tempered by a world not our own, a world where deities might ask such things.  Hopefully, he learned that day that his God was not like others in this way too.  That instead of death and sacrifice his interest was in love and concern, giving not taking.  In that case, the important part of the story is in putting aside the knife rather than the decision to raise it.