Human Sacrifice & "Feelings"

Some days, you can manage to do nothing of seeming significance, and still feel that there is something memorable taking place—that the day is asserting itself as a memory worthy of recall. That’s how my day began yesterday. I hadn’t spent much time with Eric all week because of classes, but Fridays are our day off. And usually we have a plan for the day, but this morning unraveled without much discussion.

We ended up with coffee in our hands, pumpkin bread on our plates, and Bibles and journals on our laps. It felt so good to agree.

As I picked through a few of the things I planned to read for the day, I grew a bit weary. Ever since the writing I did about the flood and regret, I’ve felt spiritually exhausted and the Bible has not let me off the hook. From the flood, to Sodom and Gomorrah, and through various stories about women and their children and jealousy and downright wickedness, I was feeling suffocated by the text. I could see that today would be no exception.

I committed my eyes to the bold words in front of me: “The Sacrifice of Isaac.”

It makes me sick to think of Isaac, walking up the hill alone with his father Abraham, not knowing what was to come. He inventories the things they have carried, and then asks his father where the lamb is for the burnt offering. Abraham responds, “God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” I hate being the knowing audience, and I cringe at his reply, for Isaac seems sweet and trusting, a child with little ambition beyond obtaining the approval of his father. Not too many sentences later, Isaac is tied up on a stack of wood with his father holding a knife over his body, prepared to move forward with the sacrifice—until the Lord intervenes: Do not do anything to him. A ram appears, caught in the bushes by its horns. So, father and son prepare the sacrifice of the ram, instead.

I push everything off of my lap. I close my eyes. I breathe slowly. I am well aware that God intervened. But why was He there in the first place? So involved?

Silence.

Pick up the pen, Amber. Write it down.

But by the time I had picked up my pen, something new was surfacing. I was starting to wonder about Abraham. He must have felt like Jesus did on the night before the crucifixion, when He cried out in desperation, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” He asked God to spare His life. Except. God did not take the cup from Jesus. There was no divine intervention. There was no ram in the bushes that could be sacrificed instead. God, the Father, placed His son on the offering table, and Jesus was sacrificed.

I close my journal, and I look up at Eric, waiting for a moment when I might be able to interrupt because I need him to listen and to walk through this with me. “Eric, what if the story about Abraham and his son Isaac is supposed to be upsetting to us? I’ve heard so many Christians explain the story away with comments about how we should be more like Abraham, willing to sacrifice anything for the Lord, but this does nothing to appease the discomfort I have in knowing that God was so actively involved in the near murder of Isaac, by his own father! And I know that it is ‘unreasonable’, perhaps even defiant, for the creation to question the righteousness of the Creator, and all of that, but can we just admit that this story is screwed up?! And Eric, one more thing, and this is what I am really starting to wonder…

What if the weight in my heart is a glimpse into the heart of God, and how He must have felt when we asked Him—by our actions on this planet—to sacrifice His one and only son on our behalf. Because God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, and we hate Him for it, but by our sins and by our hands, we sacrificed God’s one and only son, and our hypocrisy blinds us— we fail to see that how we feel about Isaac is only a fraction of how God must have felt about Jesus, and about Isaac for that matter. We miss the opportunity to assume His posture, and know His heart.”

We agreed that it was possible. It was quiet, again. I let these thoughts weigh on me.

By the afternoon, we were standing in the bookstore. I’d been waiting for the chance to get my hands on One Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. By the evening, I was five chapters in. But one chapter stood out. Evans was reading about human sacrifice in the Bible as well—a different story, and one that I know is coming up in my reading plan. She was recapping the various interpretations of the scholars, and expressing her disappointment with how these explanations failed to deal wholly with the tension one faces when reading the story. I was twitching with joy at the feeling of being understood, and at the irony of this perfect timing—that I would be reading this book, these words, on this day.

Evans writes, “These are useful insights, I suppose, but sometimes I wish these apologists wouldn’t be in such a hurry to explain these troubling texts away, that they would allow themselves to be bothered by them now and then.”

I wonder, if we took Evans’ advice, if God would start to show up in ways like He did for me yesterday morning. What if we took the sincerity of our raw emotions and allowed that to be the point for revelation, the place for meeting Him, the chance to get a glimpse of who He really is. I wonder if it breaks God’s heart, even, to see us reading these scriptures and stories, refusing to feel out of fear that He might become angry, or worse, that He might not reconcile our reactions to Him. That He might not explain Himself.

What if, instead, to feel as we read—angry and confused and frustrated and bothered—is exactly what it takes to know Him more?