HomeSO WHO DOES GOD THINK HE IS?
The story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, when Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son, is part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. What kind of God demands such a sacrifice?
Good evening!
Before I begin my planned sermon, I want to take a moment to speak about the Israeli Nazi’s who were arrested recently.
These young men were arrested for attacking, among others, observant Jews and what were described as “foreigners”.
These young men apparently are at lest loosely “Jewish” in that either a parent or a grandparent is Jewish, and are from the former Soviet Union, having emigrated to Israel when they were children. That is to say, is it not, that they are Jews and foreigners.
Being from the former Soviet Union there is a good possibility that these young men are at least partially of Slavic ancestry, though one commentator hinted without evidence that they might be of Volga German descent. Assuming that they have a mixture of Jewish and Slavic ancestry, they are members of two groups whom the Nazi’s hated. The Nazis wanted to kill the Jews and make slaves of the Slavs. One blogger wrote, “I’m guessing these are not terribly intelligent people”.
Another said: “this is what Dr. Phil would call a target-rich environment” (from a website).
I was reminded of the fact that there were rumors years ago that Hitler had a Jewish grandparent. I always had found that to be unlikely, but now I have to wonder. Even if these young men are not Slavic and are “only” of Jewish ancestry, they would have been among those destined for death in the third Reich. Spiegel, the German newspaper, reports:
Police said the cell's leader was Eli Buanitov, a Jewish-descended Russian immigrant who swore in an e-mail never to have children. "I won't have kids," he wrote, according to detectives. "My grandfather is half Yid, so that this piece of trash won't have ancestors with even the smallest percent of Jewish blood." Spiegel online Sep 10.
How much self-hate can one have? An how undeserved this self hate is.
Grappling with one’s self often turns outwards. May we do the hard work f finding peace within ourselves lest we, too, harm ourselves or others.
The story of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham is a rather uncomfortable one for me. It raises a number of questions. How could God require of Abraham that he commit this act, even if God intended all along to stop him at the last moment? What kind of God could possibly demand such an act of a parent?
I begin, of course, with my views of parenthood and children and the proper relationship between them. For me, the role of parent is to love unconditionally, to guide, to nurture and to protect. To think that a parent could consider killing their own child because someone else said to deeply violates my sense of goodness and justice and morality.
And I begin also with my standards of how a worthy God should behave. The Universalist vision of God was of a loving parent who loves us unconditionally, which is why they claimed there was universal salvation. That is, God as parent, with the same responsibilities towards us that I believe we have towards our own children. That is a vision I can accept and is the standard by which I would judge the worth of a god.
So here is this god demanding the death of a child, already wrong; and the death of that child at the hand of his own father, his own parent. That sounds monstrous. A god who requires that cannot be a god of goodness and love.
I want to mention in passing what I have stated many time before, the view of this story as an etiological explanation for why the ancient Israelites did not sacrifice their first-born children though all of the people living around them did. It was because the God of Israel, unlike the gods of other people, did not demand this sacrifice, and called upon the people of Israel to sacrifice a ram instead.
And yet, that does not explain the manner in which the story is written, with the original command for Isaac’s death.
One explanation of this story by many theologians is that it is “a test of Faith”. God is testing Abraham to see whether he has real faith in God and will prove that through obedience even in the extreme. And Abraham’s response, which proves his faith, is then held up as a good example for all others. If called upon by God, show your faith regardless of what it requires of you.
Well I find that explanation to be completely unsatisfying. My soul cries out that Abraham should have answered God’s command with a loud and resounding “No; this I will not do.”. So the claim that this is a positive story and that we have an affirmative call to emulate Abraham falls flat for me. At first reading, I do not admire Abraham, I despise him. He was going to kill his son. And I do not admire the God who would put Abraham to that test. The Humanist in me, with my own standard of judgment of God, rejects the God who does that. He cannot even measure up to my standard for being human, no less my standard for being divine.
And there is a broader point here: In the story of the Garden of Eden, God brought death into the world in the first place, commanding that all should die. And if you read the Torah and the writings, God has a history of being a very harsh judge; he kills a whole lot of people including the entire population of the world, including all animals, barring either two or seven creatures of each kind depending upon which of the two flood stories one is reading. Now even if the people of the planet were really evil and deserved to die—a proposition I find difficulty accepting—what of all those innocent animals? What did they do to deserve to die?
A claim of Rosh Hashanah is that at this time God decides who will live through the coming year and who will not, and that part of the Days of Awe is to make amends to those we have harmed and to God in an effort to try to tip the scales so that our name will be inscribed in the Book Of Life. Okay, so the theory is that most of us have done things that were wrong, many some truly evil things, but that we can repent and change and therefore change the future, change the decision about us from at least undecided, but even from negative, to favorable. This is kind of a Dickens-like idea. But take a slightly different view of it, read it in the context of all those killings in the Bible stories, and this holiday and atonement process is a kind of blackmail. Do what I want or I’m coming to get you. Do what I tell you to do or you’re in real trouble, brother. That sounds less like a divine message and more like the message of a street thug. I’m not sure I like this God, and I am not sure I care for his ways.
But you know, maybe I am being just a bit too harsh.
I said before that God cannot even measure up to my standard for being human, no less my standard for being divine. Of course, we human beings do not measure up to my standard for being human. We sacrifice our children on a daily basis. Some people literally kill their children. Others merely kill their children emotionally, through abuse or through stifling their natural curiosity or creativity.
But we also sacrifice our children systematically by denying them homes or food or proper medical care. We do that on the global level and we do that here at home. Many of them die; many children worldwide, die of hunger, homelessness or disease. Many others do not die, at least not physically. They merely lose their minds or their souls, having them twisted by the terrible circumstances in which they live. They lose themselves to crime and violence. Some will say, “Oh, but that’s different”. I don’t think so. It is different only in that death by poverty is slower than death by knife sacrifice.
We also sacrifice our children by dropping bombs on them. We do that in other countries, and so these we usually decide are someone else’s children, not ours and so do not count; or are collateral damage, and so do not count. But of course they do because every child counts. How can we challenge and questions God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice one child when we ourselves approve of dropping bombs on thousands of children? How can I be angry at God for destroying humankind when we human beings are destroying large numbers of our own every single day?
Many Americans were upset recently by the revelation that many toys and goods from China were covered with lead based paint. Children who chew on toys—and what child does not—are in danger of ingesting dangerous levels of lead, a genuine concern. But who has expressed concern for the workers in those Chinese factories, many of them still children by our standards, who are putting that lead paint on those toys, and therefore ingesting much larger quantities of lead than the children who play with the toys? Of course, those are not our children or our people and so not our problem. But I believe that all children are our children, and all people are our brothers and sisters.
So maybe I am being a bit rough on God. Or maybe I should be tougher on God and gentler in my judgment of people;, after all, he ought to give us a kinder example to emulate. How can we be any better than he?
And yet, I am not showing much of the spirit of unconditional love towards God when I think that way. I am not showing generosity of spirit or compassion, understanding or forgiveness towards God, or towards whatever the word “God” represents, when I think that way.
And think about the arrogance in that judgment I have shown, and how arrogant it is: “God, you better live up to my standards or you are unworthy; Universe, you had better be as I think you ought to be or I will despise you, you who gave me life and love and the qualities I claim to demand of you.”
Is that living up to my own standard of unconditional love? And is it possible that the universe is so designed that the active principle of love in this world is supposed to be us? Are we, we individually and we the human race, the means by which God or the Cosmos intends to bring compassion, understanding and forgiveness into the world? If so, don’t we have a long way to go; and don’t we have some amends to make?
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