Analy­sis

When an­swer­ing any ques­tion, you must con­sid­er the space of rea­son and imag­i­na­tion the ques­tion is invit­ing you to en­ter. This par­tic­u­lar ques­tion is about Gen­e­sis 22:1-19. It in­vites you to imag­ine your self in the place of Abra­ham and asks you to con­sid­er whether you would do as Abra­ham did.

The ques­tion then is dan­ger­ous be­cause: 1 You can­not ap­prox­i­mate Abra­ham by your imag­i­na­tion. You did not walk away from 70 years of idol­a­try among a na­tion of idol wor­shipers to wor­ship The Liv­ing God in a for­eign land. You did not wait till you were al­most dead for the child that God Promised you. You don’t know what that is like.2 If you do de­cide to go ahead and pre­tend to be Abra­ham, then your re­sponse judges Abra­ham as right­eous, un­right­eous or crazy(sep­a­rate from the hu­man race).1 Fur­ther­more, no mat­ter your an­swer, you are also judg­ing God Who Asked Abra­ham to sac­ri­fice his only son. 3 Fi­nal­ly, even in try­ing to imag­ine your­self as Abra­ham, the per­son you are imag­in­ing is nei­ther you nor Abra­ham but a com­bi­na­tion that has nev­er ex­ist­ed.

When you en­counter ques­tions that force you to imag­ine be­ing an­oth­er per­son, 1 be hum­ble. Do not be quick to judge. Do not trust your own imag­i­na­tive ca­pac­i­ties. Do not think you know the per­son so well. 2 In­stead, pa­tient­ly study the life of the per­son in ques­tion James 1:19. As you do so, you will be­gin to see true dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween you and them. The pic­ture you form in your imag­i­na­tion will nev­er be per­fect but as you humbly study the per­son, it be­comes per­fect­ed. 3 Fi­nal­ly, based on these true sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences you will be able to make a rea­son­able and hum­ble state­ment. You might even dis­cov­er some truth.

So based on the above, how would you an­swer this ques­tion?

My An­swer

No one ex­cept for Abra­ham has ever been found wor­thy to an­swer this ques­tion. And he said yes.

In every oth­er an­swer you read, some peo­ple say no, some humbly say they don’t know, some peo­ple are try­ing to tell you what the sto­ry was real­ly about or some say God isn’t real and so on. But con­sid­er that this ques­tion is like ask­ing, “Would you go to the White House if you were asked?” Well we can all imag­ine all we want but how many of us have done any­thing to war­rant be­ing asked. Sim­i­lar­ly, what have you done to war­rant God Ask­ing you to sac­ri­fice your son. We are not close enough to God to even com­pre­hend such a ques­tion. We are so far away from the Lord of hosts that we can’t hear Him al­ready whis­per­ing this com­mand.

But let’s in­tro­spect a lit­tle more: we say we won’t give God our chil­dren. But we don’t give Him time or mon­ey or blood or sweat or tears or any­thing. And yet we feel so big mind­ed, right­eous mind­ed? to say we wouldn’t sac­ri­fice our chil­dren if we were asked by God. If you won the lot­tery, would you give to the poor? Re­al­ly? What are you do­ing with your mon­ey now? Oh, that Iphone X.

And what are we do­ing with our chil­dren now? Oh they’re be­ing sac­ri­ficed to the idol of pro­gres­sive lib­er­al­ism(fas­cism) or pro­gres­sive con­ser­vatism(na­tion­al­ism). Oh we’re teach­ing them to hate by teach­ing them to hate or teach­ing them this lib­er­al fake love which is also hate. In­ter­est­ing. It would seem then that we are sac­ri­fic­ing our chil­dren to idol gods al­ready. And they are dy­ing en masse (look up the sta­tis­tics on sui­cides, de­pres­sion and anorex­ia in chil­dren). But it would seem this ap­par­ent­ly gullible Abra­ham got his twen­ty five year old son back. Yet none of us would sac­ri­fice our chil­dren to God if He Asked. Hmmm. I won­der.

Go read Fear and Trem­bling by Soren Kierkegaard. Just read the in­tro­duc­tion. The rest would break our brain. We in this age are all so so right­eous and all are so ea­ger to go fur­ther than faith. But many of us don’t have even the shad­ow of it. And yet we ba­bel so high to dark­en coun­sel with­out knowl­edge Job 38:2. At least we should get faith first. At least we should have a re­la­tion­ship with God first. Maybe then we’d all learn to shut up and trem­ble. Trem­ble!

Then come an­swer this ques­tion if you are asked. But know that you are al­ways be­ing asked. You will sac­ri­fice your chil­dren to some­thing. Only God will ac­cept your sac­ri­fice, give them back to you alive! and in­stead, sac­ri­fice Him­self to save them. You only get your chil­dren back when you sac­ri­fice them to God. Every oth­er god you give them to (and if you don’t give them to God, you are giv­ing them to oth­er gods) … every oth­er god will de­stroy them as is ev­i­dent in the world right now. And ev­i­dent in your life if you look hard enough. So will you sac­ri­fice your child to God or con­tin­ue giv­ing them to idols?