(urth) Abraham

[Nathan Spears]

> Another Hyperion fan!  Excellent...
> Simmons answer is rather ingenious, but also still flawed.
> I mean, suppose he had tested Yaweh, and Yaweh turned out to
> naught but another flase god, that apparently abounded at the time
> of the Pentateuch's composition; Abraham would turn out to have
> been not just a sucker, but also a... whatever -cide applies to a guy
> who just killed his son in a rather nasty way.

But you also have to remember that Yaweh had (apparently) given Abraham that son. 
This situation for Abraham (if you buy this story) is radically different from
anything we experience.  Imagine that someone, who is so much more powerful than you
that you believe He might be all-powerful, speaks to you and tells you that He is
going to help you out and that your descendents are going to be His special people. 
You scoff because you are old and your wife is barren, but this being tells you that
your wife is going to bear a child.  She does, and so now you're starting to wonder
if maybe it wasn't just the pizza and beer talking.  Then this same being commands
you to sacrifice your new son, which feels like a gift from him, back to him.  For
Abraham, now he really is tested the nature of the universe.  If this being he's
speaking to really is all-powerful, and He really wants Abraham to kill his own son,
then it seems the universe is actually being run by a demon, and so there's not much
to look forward to anyway.  Even if he's not all-powerful, he's much more powerful
than Abraham, and so the world is a cruel place where capricious spirits give and
take back life according to their own whims.  But if somehow everything works out,
then Abraham has a son and a promise of safeguard from a benevolent divinity.  It's
a rough spot to be in, and pretty uncomparable to most moral dilemmas, I think.  I
mean, just the premise, "a god speaks to you and . . .," kind of throws most of our
moral systems off base, doesn't it?  We don't account for that kind of stuff because
it doesn't happen much.

I don't think the question, "Why did Abraham do as he did?" is as puzzling as the
question, "Why would a benevolent God ask his follower to sacrifice his own son?" 
It seems like a pretty awful place to put someone in, because on the one hand, you
want complete devotion, but on the other, you don't want your follower to be the
kind of person who would kill their own son!  The only answer I can think of from a
Biblical perspective is that God wants his followers to be like Him, and God was
prepared to sacrifice His own Son.


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Make Yahoo! your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs