God Asked Abraham to do WHAT?!?!?!???

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chansen said:
You're a better read person than myself. That's great. But you will move on from The Orenda. I maintain that the fascination with the bible, or with any one book, is unhealthy. When that one book is the bible, that's worse, because the bible is the basis for the sort of cult thinking that people can obsess over, and start letting it control their lives and decisions.
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Inukshuk said:
Interesting ~ while Islamic militants weren't in my mind when I asked you the question - your inner default setting immediately takes you to the extreme - almost like you are verging on fundamentalist atheism.
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You asked if I would be "comfortable" saying these things in a mosque. I said that first, I don't know as much about Islam, and second, there are Muslims living in western countries who are saying some pretty scary things. I'm not trying to blow that out of proportion, but based on things like Everybody Draw Mohammad Day, mocking Islam comes with inherent risks that mocking Christianity doesn't pose. Any more. Congrats on reigning in the more murderous side of Christianity, by the way.

And what is "fundamentalist atheism"? What crimes is it guilty of? We can both come up with examples for fundamentalist religions. I think the term "fundamentalist atheism" is an attempt to marginalize the sin of rational observations that others don't want to hear.

Inukshuk said:
I get that, for you, the how of science is enough.
Some of us know that there is more than the here and now. We need to weave the science and theology ~ the mythology and traditions, to understand the why.
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Religion doesn't answer the why. Religion makes wild guesses at the why. Every religion has different answers for the why, and almost every religion insists its answers are the correct ones.

If you don't care about the quality of the answers you accept, religion is a perfect solution. You get to walk around like you know why we're here and why everything happens, or at least who is pulling the strings. But you have no reason to believe that.

And then there's the point that religion conditions you to accept bad explanations. If you'll believe that woman was made from the rib of a man and that God had a son who was God and had him executed to save us from something God did, what else will you accept?

The best Christians are able to compartmentalize their religious beliefs away from their skeptical faculties, and it works for them. I get that. I don't think it makes them better people, but I get that many Christians are good people who wouldn't dream of listening to a voice in their head who wanted them to kill their son. They wouldn't accept a dumbass answer like, "It's okay! We have a covenant!" if their spouse tried to do it.

Some Christians can not compartmentalize as easily. They are either all in, or all out. They can't wall off their Christian beliefs from the rest of their brains. And I don't know how people think they can introduce others to Christianity, without knowing beforehand if the person is capable of taking religion seriously, without accepting all the collateral bulls**t that goes along with it that most Christians don't accept or just ignore. It sounds like a risky proposition to me.
 
chansen said:
You're a better read person than myself. That's great. But you will move on from The Orenda.
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Chansen - sorry to be so long getting back to you. If you look in The World forum (used to be Global) you will see a brief summary of The Orenda and some of the ideas we explored at book club last evening.

We also took time to choose some books for discussion in the fall - narrowing down a list of suggestions members have made over the past year. We choose:
The Submission by Amy Waldman (aftermath of 9/11 New York)
Indian Horse by David Wagamee (Ojibway, northern Ontario) - kind of a follow-up on The Orenda
Deception of Livvy Higgs by Donna Morrisey (1930's to 2009 Newfoundland & Halifax)
Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (political satire)

For January we are considering: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (South America/Fiction)
 
The Abraham Story is one of great Faith ----Abraham had no worries about God taking his son as God had already told him that his son Isaac would be blessed ----

Genesis 17:19
New King James Version (NKJV)

19 Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant,andwith his descendants after him.

Can't make an everlasting covenant with a dead person ------

Also Abraham said this when he came to the place where he was to kill Isaac

Genesis 22:5
New King James Version (NKJV)

5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad[a]and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

So Abraham was very confident that if God did allow Isaac to be killed He-- God--- would resurrect him and he would return with his son ----

Now that is what you call God kind of Faith ------Trust --belief and confidence in what God says will come to pass -----

Thanks be to God for His word -----

 
unsafe said:
The Abraham Story is one of great Faith ----Abraham had no worries about God taking his son as God had already told him that his son Isaac would be blessed ----

Genesis 17:19
New King James Version (NKJV)

19 Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant,andwith his descendants after him.

Can't make an everlasting covenant with a dead person ------

Also Abraham said this when he came to the place where he was to kill Isaac

Genesis 22:5
New King James Version (NKJV)

5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad[a]and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

So Abraham was very confident that if God did allow Isaac to be killed He-- God--- would resurrect him and he would return with his son ----

Now that is what you call God kind of Faith ------Trust --belief and confidence in what God says will come to pass -----

Thanks be to God for His word -----
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What you just described sounds more like insanity to me but if you want to call it great faith so be it.
 
On Sunday morning I will join a gathered people. One of us will read and excerpt from an old book. The narrative will present a father, a son, a servant, a donkey, a mountain and God. It will establish a crisis and bring into expression a resolution of that crisis.

So I have been pondering. What inference may I draw from the narrative by which those who listen and hear may be encouraged in the way they are called to follow? I will remember my conversation with the grown daughter of parents who suffered the Nazi suppression of Jewish persons. Her words continue to challenge me.

"You Christians!" She said it with no hint of disdain. "You think you have the case of Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac all summed up. We Jews have wrestled with the complexity of the narrative from our earliest days. We wrestle with it still. The very idea that such a text is easily reduced to some moral precept."

I will, perhaps, wonder what the story of Isaac in the power of Abraham might say to a Jewish youth in the days of his Bar Mitzvah (her Bat Mitzvah). It is commonly used as the focal point of this important Jewish rite of passage. So I wonder about the meaning of the experience for the son, Isaac. Was he changed by the surprising turn of events?

Barbara and I were talking about the text two days ago. We reminisced about the manner in which our daughter declared independence at the age of sixteen. The terrible decision to withdraw all material support, as our responsibility before her determination to independence. Now, at thirty-seven, she is a poised, confident, loving person and wholly independent. She is engaged to be married and there is the possibility of a grandchild to follow.

I will continue wrestling with the text as the days move to Sunday. My hope consists in bringing the benefit of such wrestling into the experience of the gathered persons. My experience indicates substantial ground for a fair measure of confidence.

George
 
In a book called "Conversations In Time" by Herbert O'Driscoll, the author encounters the biblical men and women in the kind of setting and circumstances where they may be found as his contemporaries.

In the chapter on Abraham, which was set in the middle East, and Abraham as a tour guide, this question was asked of him "Knowing what you

know now about this part of the world, about all that has happened here- the hatred, the wars, the killing - is there anything you would have done differently?"

Abraham replied," I would have brought Ishmael home from the desert..............Think what a difference it would have made in this part of the

world if Isaac and Ishmael had been brought up as brothers?"

What do you think?

Would the Middle East be different?

Other than the bible, do we know that Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael are real in history?
 
My understanding is that their stories are all included in the Koran, similar to but not exactly the same as the stories we have in the Bible. Of course both the Christian Bible and the Koran used the Hebrew scriptures and all three religious (Jewish, Christian, and Islam) share the same roots.
 
crazyheart said:
In a book called "Conversations In Time" by Herbert O'Driscoll, the author encounters the biblical men and women in the kind of setting and circumstances where they may be found as his contemporaries.

In the chapter on Abraham, which was set in the middle East, and Abraham as a tour guide, this question was asked of him "Knowing what you

know now about this part of the world, about all that has happened here- the hatred, the wars, the killing - is there anything you would have done differently?"

Abraham replied," I would have brought Ishmael home from the desert..............Think what a difference it would have made in this part of the

world if Isaac and Ishmael had been brought up as brothers?"

What do you think?

Would the Middle East be different?

Other than the bible, do we know that Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael are real in history?
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CH,
next week I am working with the Ishmael stories. I'll have to remember this....
 
What do you find in this rather troubling story....[/QUOTE said:
As written, it is a story of terror. It is a story of how God might test us and how a second person could suffer horribly. It is a story that someone in our modern society could easily try to emulate with terrible consequences. It is simply a story of how the ancient Hebrews viewed their god and I find it horrible. It is supposedly an example of trust and faith. But as soon as you introduce terror I would give up on it and look for another topic.
I, for one, would never repeat this story from the pulpit without adding the comments I have just made.
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jamesk said:
As written, it is a story of terror. Is a story of how God might test us and how a second person could suffer horribly. It is a story that someone in our modern society could easily try to emulate with terrible consequences. It is simply a story of how the ancient Hebrews viewed their god and I find it horrible. It is supposedly an example of trust and faith. But as soon as you introduce terror I would give up on it and look for another topic.

I, for one, would never repeat this story from the pulpit without adding the comments I have just made.
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Thank you for recognizing the obvious and stating it for what it is.
 
Pr. Jae said:
Something I've always appreciated in this story is Abraham's faithful obedience to the Lord. I want to be that obedient to God too. When God asks me to do something I want to be able to just do it - no excuses.
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Like some others I find the text very troubling. If it was indeed a test of Abraham then in my estimation he failed it badly. I had never thought of it being Abraham testing God. I need to ponder on that a bit. It might not be literal history at all, but if not, the interpretation is more than a bit ambiguous.

As for your comment above, Kurt Vonnegut has an interesting reply "Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."
 
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