WILD FAITH vs PROPER PRUDENCE The Sacrifice of Isaac in Gen 22 What has faith to do with reason? We keep running into biblical characters who do very imprudent things and draw the accolades of our narrator, and even of God. o Noah walked to the lumber yard to get boat parts when the sky was clear with no rain in the forecast – all because of a voice he thought he heard in his head. o Abram quit his job in Haran and he and Sarai moved, without knowing exactly what they were putting next on the family C.V. The voice assured them that things would work out. o This doesn’t even touch stories that lie ahead in the Bible, about fishermen, for example, who leave their steady job on the Sea of Galilee to follow an upstart itinerant teacher. In each of these scenes, prudence would have dictated otherwise. Noah would have looked stupid and lost credibility; Abram and Sarai risked financial collapse and even death in a strange land; and the fisherman had no idea where their next meals would come from. Would you have built the boat, moved across the world, or left your nets because of an unfamiliar voice? And there are more: Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego stand up when everyone else bows down to worship their ruler, despite the threat of fiery death; Daniel prays when praying is illegal and stares down lions for it; prophets tell hard truths that risk their life and limbs; and a pregnant teenage girl says yes to an angel with an outlandish story of virgin birth. On the other hand, there’s Solomon, whose “a stitch in time saves nine” kind of wisdom puts his picture in the dictionary under prudence. The wisdom tradition gives us people whose common- sense etiquette and rules of conduct guide a good and noble life. The sage tells us, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” (Proverbs 27:2 - ESV) That’s good advice. And “A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.” (Proverbs 11:13 – NIV) Makes sense. These are excellent rules to live by, and in some cases they are difficult to do; but they are hardly risky and it doesn’t take a rush of spiritual adrenaline to carry them off. The prudent path is, in the words of our brother of blessed memory, Eugene Peterson, “a long obedience in the same direction.” The PRUDENCE – PASSION continuum offers a grid for tracking the movements of the faithful in the Bible. Where would you put yourself on it? And what does that have to do with how good a person or Christian you are? THESAURUS.COM certainly has an opinion on this. I defy you to find a word in their list of Genesis Session 4 1 ©Allen Hilton antonyms for prudence that has even a vaguely positive connotation. Antonyms for prudence Look at this list of words and ask yourself whether you would like anyone, ever to describe you that way. “I love carelessness Jenna. She’s careless, ignorant, and indiscrete…” or “Bob’s ignorance such a good guy! He’s so stupid and negligent. And no one indiscretion squanders like Bob squanders.” It’s hard to find an opposite stupidity that has even a slightly positive connotation. thoughtlessness disregard And yet, the Bible has space for a positive opposite. When I inattention look for a proper word to describe the good opposite that neglect biblical people embody, I come up empty. I’ve landed on the negligence word passion, because it captures this biblical wildness of spending characters who override reason in the name of faith. The squandering question is whether passion can go too far. Can fanaticism imprudence turn faithfulness into a damaging, unhealthy thing? We run headlong into this question in Genesis 22, where God commands Abraham to kill his son. Can Obedience Go Too Far?! This tension between prudence and passion comes to an early biblical climax in one of the most difficult passages in all of scripture. In Genesis 22, God commands Abraham to sacrifice the son he has waited years and years to welcome into the world – the child God himself promised. Here’s how the excruciating drama goes: After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” It’s one of the most challenging passages in the Bible. It’s going to take our A game to enter the mind of the Spirit. So, with all humility and some of hope of divine wisdom, let’s read! Surely Abraham should refuse. He has heard (and obeyed) the voice of God before, and God has been faithful thus far, but surely this is a bridge to far. Abraham should chalk this up to static on the divine hotline and take Isaac out for a breakfast falafel instead. But, of course, he does not. Genesis Session 4 2 ©Allen Hilton 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. In language parallel to Abraham’s response to God’s call in Genesis 12.4 (“So Abraham went…”), Isaac’s daddy loads him on a donkey and heads for the altar. It reads like a bad movie, in which one of the characters has been bewitched or programmed to destroy and continues on that course relentlessly. But imagine the thoughts of Abraham on the three-day journey. I picture long silences, much pondering, the occasional pause and look back toward home. But whatever his inner state, Abraham moves on. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. God commands, Abraham packs supplies and goes, Isaac asks, Abraham persists and a sacrifice scene is set. As you and I read this nightmare in slow motion, we may be tempted to rush into the scene and “rescue” – not only Isaac (from death at the hand of his own father), but also Abraham (from such a mortal stain), and even God (from the blight this command seems to put on the divine character). We search desperately for clues that what we’re reading has a code to it. We see that o Abraham assures curious Isaac, who’s baffled that Dad hasn’t brought along a lamb, “God will provide…”, and we hope that he hopes so. o Then Abraham informs his young men “we will worship, and then we will come back to you”, (22.5) and we clutch to the hope that Abraham knew how this would end from the beginning; But suddenly, against our hopes, Abraham raises his hand, and there’s a knife in it. When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. Genesis Session 4 3 ©Allen Hilton The God who made humans in the divine image (Gen 1), who molded Adam out of a lump of clay (Gen 2), who called Abram and Sarai away from their homeland and family (Gen 12) in order to bless all the nations of the world – that creating and blessing God here commands one of his favorites to kill his son. The demand seems outlandish and obscene. As one prominent contemporary atheist has put it, A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such a psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: 'I was only obeying orders.' Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion) When you first heard the story – maybe as you have heard it now – you may have felt Dawkins’ recoil along with him and asked, “How could the good God make this demand?! And why would the Bible even tell this story?!” We come away thinking that either the Bible or Abraham got something wrong here. Why?! Let’s ask our question directly: Why would God demand this? And why would Abraham obey? And, for that matter, why would the Bible tell the story at all? In Richard Dawkins’ words, why has this story become “one of the great foundational myths of all the monotheistic religions?” Extreme Trust Teambuilding gurus often use gadgets to help increase the bond between employees of a firm, members of a small group, or other collections of people who want to join forces well.