Saying God doesn't want us to sacrifice anything on the altar of religion doesn't mean we won't need to sacrifice to follow our dreams. God's quite upfront about that, though I've only mentioned it in passing up till now. In fact, in some English translations of Genesis 12:1, the sacrifice element comes before God's encouragement to "go."
Now YAHWEH said to Abram, “Leave it all behind—your native land, your people, your father’s household, and go to the land that I will show you.
— Genesis 12:1 TPT
Compared with:
The LORD said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
— Genesis 12:1 CSB
The vast difference between Genesis 12:1 and when Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22:2 is who this sacrifice of leaving is directed towards. Leaving is not something Abram is giving or sacrificing to God. It's therefore not about the anxiety of religion or the appeasement of a jealous deity, but about leaving for his own benefit—“You go for you”—and for the benefit of those he's going to bless.
Going towards God
A repeated idea in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is of people's movement east. God evicts Adam and Eve from the garden to the east, with a "mighty cherubim" stationed on the east side of the garden to prevent them from re-entering (see Gen. 3:24). Their son Cain, too, settles "east of Eden" (Gen. 4:16). While people migrate eastward en masse towards the plains where Babylon will one day stand between the two great rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris (see Gen. 11:2).
I assure you, the authors of Scripture don't have any issue with people moving east, or with those who live on the east side of cities or in eastern places. They merely use it in Genesis and elsewhere as an analogy for humans moving away from God.
Indeed, when Abram first camps in the land of Canaan—which, if you remember, is a movement west—he sees God!
Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "I will give this land to your descendants." And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
— Genesis 12:7 NLT (emphasis mine)
Because of this, Bob Ekblad suggests Abram's ultimate destination is God himself.
The Lord causes Abram to see God's very self, calling Abram to a spiritual journey that leads to seeing God.
— Bob Ekblad
Reading the Bible with the Damned, p.69
When we first meet Abram, he's living in Ur, to the East. Alongside his father, wife, and nephew, he leaves Ur to pursue a dream of a better life. But they don't do this by continuing to migrate east. Instead, they are the first people in the Bible to set out westwards!
Their migration west is countercultural.
And God loves that, because even though they don't worship him yet, they are heading towards him already.
