How Far Will You Go?

How Far Will You Go? 

Genesis 22:1-14 

It’s a story we all love to hate. We read that God said to Abraham “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering….” God is telling Abraham to kill Isaac and burn his body as a sacrifice to God. Abraham sets out to do it, and only at the last second before Abraham kills Isaac does God present a ram that Abraham sacrifices instead. The story is a little bit ambivalent about whether or not Abraham would actually do it because Abraham doesn’t actually do it, but surely the story wants us to assume that he would. We’re horrified. God told Abraham to kill his son, and Abraham was willing to do it? That’s horrific in any context, but it’s even worse here. God has promised Abraham that Abraham would become the ancestor of untold numbers of people, and when it calls Isaac Abraham’s only son it assumes that that promise could be fulfilled only through Isaac.[1] Yet of course we don’t need that detail to be horrified by this story. Go commit infanticide? And you’re willing to do it? No way. Never, we say, and we’re perfectly right to say it.

So what’s up with this story? To answer that question we need to start by understanding that it is a story not history. We don’t have to accept that God ever actually told Abraham to kill his son for this story to have meaning, and I don’t. The God I know never did that and never would. Scholars say that the ancient Hebrews may have told this story precisely to say not that God orders child sacrifice but precisely that God rejects it. Many ancient cultures practiced child sacrifice. Ancient Hebrews long before we have any historical record of them may have done so themselves. There are other Hebrew texts that mention and reject child sacrifice. See Leviticus 18:21. If that’ why they told this story that’s nice, but it doesn’t mean much to us. We don’t need this story to tells us that child sacrifice is wrong. We just have to be marginally decent human beings. So does this story have no meaning for us at all? No, I think it does have meaning. To see that meaning let’s turn to the great Danish philosopher/theologian Søren Kierkegaard.[2]

Kierkegaard wrote a whole book about this story that he titled Fear and Trembling. In that book he says that Abraham was justified in his willingness to kill Isaac. We want to say: What?! How could Abraham possibly be justified in his willingness to kill his son? That’s one of the worst kinds of murder! If somebody killed his son today and tried to justify it by saying that God had told him to do it we’d commit him for mental health treatment or sentence him to life in prison—or worse. Justified? You’ve go to be kidding me!

Not so according to Kierkegaard. He insists that Abraham was and has to be justified in his willingness to kill Isaac because that’s how radical faith is. For Kierkegaard if your faith isn’t that complete it isn’t really faith. I don’t think Kierkegaard would ever say that Abraham would be justified in killing Isaac if he did it on his own, but that’s not what happens here. Abraham acts because God tells him to act. That’s why Abraham is justified, at least according to Kierkegaard. His faith is complete. That means that he will do anything God tells him to do, even kill his son as a sacrifice to God.

Now, God’s not really going to tell anyone to kill anyone. That’s not now it is with our nonviolent God of love. I think the story of God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his son is still important for us.[3] It’s important for us because it raises the question: Just how strong is our faith? Strong enough to kill for, not that God ever wants us to do that? Strong enough to die for? That one’s more likely to happen than that God will ask us to kill someone, yet for most of us it isn’t too likely. Is our faith strong enough so that we’ll attempt difficult or seemingly impossible things for God? That one’s a whole lot more likely than our either killing or dying for the faith. Is our faith strong enough to give up an old way of life and adopt a new one? Many of us Christians have done that. Is it strong enough to take stands for justice and peace that get you rejected by family and friends? An awful lot of Christians have done that one too.

I think we all have to consider just how strong our faith is today. There is a new movement afoot among us for an end to racism in our country, a movement some up to and including the president oppose. Is our faith strong enough to enable us to stand up for what’s right when what’s right isn’t popular? I sure hope so. Is our faith strong enough so that we’ll speak and act (nonviolently of course) for justice whenever we see racist acts or hear racist words? I sure hope so.

No, I don’t think God ever actually told Abraham to kill Isaac. That story however comes from a world that used stories rather than essays to make important points and raise important questions. That’s what the story of the sacrifice of Isaac does. Faith in God sometimes makes radical demands on us. We must constantly ask ourselves what we are and aren’t wiling to do for God. Kierkegaard says there must be nothing you won’t do for God up and including killing your son if God tells you to do it. I doubt that any of us is prepared to go that far, and not just because we don’t want to prosecuted for murder. So how far are we willing to go? I hope that both you and I will give that question a good deal of prayerful consideration.

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[1] Isaac isn’t Abraham’s only son. He had another son, Ishmael. We know, although Abraham here may not have, that Ishmael is still alive. Arab people trace their lineage back to Abraham through Ishmael. God’s promise to Abraham was actually fulfilled through both of his sons. It would have been fulfilled through Ishmael even if Abraham had gone through with it and killed Isaac.

[2] Our family name was originally spelled Sørensen, the Danish spelling. It means son of Søren. My father used to say he thought he was the reincarnation of the Danish theologian. I doubt it, but it would be cool.

[3] And not because it foreshadows God’s sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as some Christians have claimed it does. It absolutely doesn’t do that. It doesn’t do it first of all because this story was Jewish long before it became Christian. No Jew would ever have told a story about some problematic theology about a man who wouldn’t live for over one thousand years after this story was first told. It also doesn’t do it because Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice the way so many Christians insist he was, but that’s a matter for another day.