Most of us have been taught for decades that the point of this story is to show us what true faithfulness looks like, that this is the standard of trust in God we should all aspire to: we should be willing to sacrifice up to and including the lives of our own family - by our own hands - if God asks us to. But although this lesson is deeply ingrained in our theological understanding (indeed, it’s the only explanation some of us have ever heard for this story) many of us still struggle with it. We’re unable to reconcile this interpretation of Genesis 22 with the profound sense of unease that it provokes within us.
Believe it or not, that’s actually a good thing. You feel this way because you’re sensing a disconnect between what God seems to be doing here and your understanding of who God is, and you just can’t let that go. It may feel icky, and it may even make you question your own relationship with scripture, but it ultimately speaks more highly of your own faith than this story does of Abraham’s.
In his book, “Abraham’s Silence”,[1] theologian and professor J. Richard Middleton argues that this story isn’t meant to commend Abraham, but to indict him. Middleton claims that God isn’t testing Abraham’s faith here, as so many of us have been taught, but instead is testing his understanding of God’s character. (Middleton’s evidence, drawn from traditional theological thought, examples from other parts of scripture, and even anecdotes from Abraham’s own life, is fascinating and compelling, so I’ll include some links in my blog if you’d like to explore this further for yourself.)
I mean, it makes sense, if you think about it: Abraham was the very first of God’s people, the one responsible for shaping how future generations would come to know God. Before God first approached him, he’d been a polytheist like everyone else, immersed in a culture in which child sacrifice and unquestioning obedience was the norm. Even after being called by God, he wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue. It’s entirely reasonable that God would want to make sure, once and for all, that Abraham understands what God is all about before setting him loose on the world. So, according to Middleton, God tests Abraham by giving him a command that’s entirely uncharacteristic of God in order to see how Abraham would react. By coming within literal inches of plunging a knife through his own son’s heart without a word of protest, Abraham proves that he doesn’t understand who God really is - and he fails the test.
Abraham might have fared better if he’d taken the time to do some “character work” at the very beginning of his relationship with God. In theater, “character work” is the effort an actor makes to understand their role on a deeper level: going beyond the lines and stage directions to figure out their character’s backstory, their personality traits, their motivations, their goals, and so on. It helps create a cohesive, fleshed-out character on stage by helping the actor portraying them understand why they do what they do. That way, if the character is depicted as doing something unexpected or inconsistent over the course of the show, the actor is able to make sense out of it and to communicate that through their performance. This is what makes the character believable to the audience. If character work is so integral in helping others to understand a fictional character, how much more important must it be in helping others to understand the God that you worship?
In order to have any hope of effectively sharing God with the world, you have to do the character work to more fully understand God. Taking each line, each stage direction independently won’t cut it; you HAVE to go deeper to find the overarching themes that tie them all together. On the surface this story seems to paint God as capricious and self-important, but thanks to passages like Micah 6, WE know that God is actually characterized by love, justice, and mercy. It seems to tell us that God values blind obedience, but thanks to the books of Job and Psalms, WE know that God wants a relationship with humanity - complaints, arguments, and all.[2] It seems to say that God condones child sacrifice, but thanks to the writings of the laws and the prophets, WE know that God doesn’t accept human sacrifice at all.[3] WE have been able to do the character work that Abraham wasn’t, and that’s exactly why the traditional interpretation of this story makes us uncomfortable: because we can see[4] that it doesn’t represent who God actually is.
But there’s far more at risk when we don’t do this divine character work than just our own understanding. False gods use our ignorance of God’s character to trick us into idolatry, all the while believing that we’re acting faithfully. Who do you think benefited from Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son? Certainly not God, and not society as a whole. The only ones to benefit from Abraham’s ignorance are the old systems of worship, the old idols, the old status quo. But because Abraham wasn’t able to see the bigger picture about who God is, he almost wound up inadvertently serving those old gods, at the cost of Isaac’s very life. This is why not understanding God fully is so dangerous - because it can lead us into deadly idolatry without even realizing it.
This isn’t some relic of the ancient past; we’re just as easily tricked by false gods today. How often have you heard someone justifying their hate by pointing to a single verse in the Bible? How many women have been criticized for not subverting their will to their husbands’, as instructed in Ephesians 5:22? How many LGBT+ people have been emotionally or even physically abused for their sexuality, as Leviticus 20:13 appears to condone? How many immigrants have been vilified and dehumanized because of verses like Leviticus 25:44? But let me be clear: these perspectives aren’t of God. They may grow out of cultural context, human biases, and even translational errors. But not from the God of loving-kindness. Not from the God of mercy. Not from the God that we worship. An honest reading of scripture as a whole makes that abundantly clear.
Just as Abraham’s understanding of God’s character was tested so many centuries ago, so ours is tested every single day. Voices on every side tell us what’s right and what’s wrong, whom to love and whom to hate, what God supports and what God abhors. Some of these voices even claim to come directly from God. But you should never listen to these voices uncritically - not even mine. Do the character work. Test these assertions against what scripture tells you about God, how others understand God, and what you’ve experienced of God for yourself. Use every tool at your disposal to learn about the Lord, and then live your life the way THAT God - not the god of the Old Testament or the New Testament, not the god of “us” versus the god of “them”, not the god of your own desires and assumptions, but the one true God of all people - the way THAT God is calling you to live.
Because then, and only then, can we be confident that the choices we make honor the God of Paul, of Mary, of David, of Ruth, of Moses, of Jacob, of Sarah, and yes, the God of Abraham. All worshiped the same God, constant and unchanging in character, and through each one of them, the generations that followed came to know God just a little bit better. Let us do the work and pass the test so that we might do the same. Amen.
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[1] J. Richard Middleton, Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021).
Here is a podcast in which he discusses his book: https://onscript.study/podcast/j-richard-middleton-abrahams-silence/
[2] Cf. Genesis 18:16-32; Exodus 32:7-14; Psalms 22, 77, 88
[3] Jeremiah 7:31; Leviticus 20:2–5; Deuteronomy 18:10…
[4] An interesting translation note: whereas most English translations render v. 14 as saying “the Lord will provide” and “On this mountain it [or the Lord] will be provided”, it can just as easily be translated as “the Lord will see” and “The Lord is seen” - a play on words demonstrating that while Abraham believes this to be a lesson about trusting God completely, the test actually revealed Abraham’s nature to God and God’s nature to humanity.
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