As we are presently entering the season of lights, with winter solstice and the great religious holidays all standing out in sharp relief against the often manic reign of retailers in the name of Santa Claus, I am still preoccupied with the issue of faith "stories".  Specifically, I am continually astonished at the easy acceptance of ChristOnes when teachers interpret the story of Abraham's "willingness" to make a human sacrifice of his promised son, the intended heir to his legacy as set forth by God's own testimony.

Most recently, I heard this standard rendering retold by one of my "spiritual fathers", Eugene Peterson.  I waited through the entire reading in "The Jesus Way" for a back thrust of the famous two-edged sword, but I was mildly disappointed, and not unexpectedly.  Even Rev. Peterson tells the story of Abraham's actions as if it delineated a singular sort of heroism.

We ought to be horrified and offended at this perspective.  We should be terrified, as our children are.  But we are not.  We Anglos accept the platitudes offered us by preachers and professors, most of them aging white men who have been taught the same lines and perspectives for centuries.  We think that it is better to believe than to question the print on a page. 

How appalling and feeble!

If God were disturbed by our questions and our resistance, then how did Jacob survive?  Yet Jacob, with all of his wrestling and manipulating, seems highly favored by God and the hosts of heaven.

I honestly believe that there is another way to read this horror story -- and from Isaac's perspective, it is a true and lasting horror.  In searching the Old Testament, it is from this point on that THE NAME begins to be referenced uniquely as "the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac".

Aren't we meant to consider the impact of this action on the young man?  Aren't we meant to understand that our "religious acts" have a direct effect on others, most especially those we love dearly?  Why is it so difficult for we human cousins of Cain to recognize that God is on the side of life and peace, not of bloodshed and death?

Hearing that Cain was spared by God and believing that Christ was raised from the dead, we ought to get it.  It ought to come to us much more obviously than it did to those, like Father Abraham, trapped by time in the primitive and bloody cultures of past millenia.

It's my belief and experience that whatever we fear most stands in the way of our full partnership and worship of the Most High.  Over time, we are brought face to face with our deepest fears and we either overcome them by faith, by turning to God for deliverance OR we succumb to the darkness they cast on our lives. 

Isn't it obvious that Abraham succumbed to darkness by raising the knife against his own son?  We are taught to believe that the old man was acting out a faith in God's promise, and maybe he was.  That's not actually the point in this exploration.  Consider that we must be taught to believe such a thing.  It doesn't reside within our spiritual being.  It doesn't, apparently, reside in God either.  It is simply and utterly abhorrent.