Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Faith Sharing Area => Topic started by: SwordOfTheSpirit on April 06, 2017, 01:21:25 PM
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Thought I'd share this with my Christian brethren...
There is an incident in the Bible that I believe has a lot to say in today’s reasoning age and it is where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac as a burnt offering on a mountain in the land of Moriah, see Genesis chapter 22.
Consider the position that Abraham was in. God had promised him that his heir would be one that will come from his own body (Genesis 15 v 4) and that it would be Issac (Genesis 17 v 19). Now God is telling him to sacrifice this same son Issac as a burnt offering? A secular, reasoning approach to this would treat it this as a Boolean (an either/or) and conclude that either Abraham was mistaken about God’s promises or that he had heard wrongly about God’s command to sacrifice Issac. How often do Christians nowadays find themselves in a similar type of position, facing an alleged either/or?
From the Genesis account, we see that Abraham was obedient to God’s command. Here is where we can apply a couple of properties of truth. It is independent on what we think about it, or believe about it. Abraham would not have known how this scenario was going to play itself out, but he trusted God and obeyed.
Hebrews 11 sheds more light on this incident:
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Issac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
18 of whom it was said, “In Issac your seed shall be called”,
19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
So Abraham obeyed God and reasoned that if he were to sacrifice Issac, God would have to raise him back from the dead in order to fulfill His promises. It can be seen therefore that trusting God, far from being a safe option which requires no thinking leads to the consideration of other options.
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That's good Sword of the Spirit.
It also shows that God put an end to human sacrifice which was common practice in those days. It was the start of a new era.
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The interpretation I like is that Abraham failed the test, he was supposed to say " no" to God, because sacrificing his son was wrong.
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/civil-religion/did-abraham-fail-the-ultimate-test/article_d5ebdeae-1090-11e1-9012-0019bb30f31a.html
https://morethodoxy.org/2010/10/12/did-abraham-fail-his-final-test-by-rabbi-hyim-shafner/
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IMO this concept is very important.
(namely, challenge God to live up to God’s own standards of justice and compassion)
https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/abraham’s-last-test-–-did-he-pass-or-fail-dvar-torah-vayera/
Sometimes it seems this is missing from Christianity, which in a lot of cases seems to interpret the whole Abraham sacrificing his son business as a lesson in blind obedience to God.
Which to my mind is a very scary thing to teach people to do. ( to lay down their sense of right and wrong and obey)
I've been told by quite a few Christians not to lean towards my own understandings, but I'm not one to listen to them.
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How did Jesus know that he would be raised on the third day? I wonder if it was from Genesis 22:4, "On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance"? It was the third day since Abraham received the command to sacrifice Isaac.