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.
A brand-new idea
Abram's movement west enables him to hear a call to become part of the counter-cultural things God is up to in this world. We see this in how God's call reignites Abram's dreams of children and of Canaan, and then expands them into something larger. I will make you into a great tribe, God promises him (see Gen. 12:2), and I will bless all tribes through you (see Gen. 12:3).
Tribes don't seek to bless others! In the ancient world, tribes existed for the benefit and protection of their own members. Allegiance to a specific tribe would give you special privileges and obligations. People outside of your tribe would be excluded from these benefits and were seen as either a threat or as someone inferior.
A tribe that exists for the blessing and benefit of those outside of it has never existed before. This is a brand-new idea! Again, we're seeing a progression in human thinking within Scripture.
The narrow land of Canaan seems unremarkable until you factor in how its location within the Fertile Crescent of the ancient Middle East meant it connected north and south, east and west. Canaan was the crossroads of ancient civilisation. People of every nation would flow through this land while empires would later fight to own it. It's not a random choice!
In order for Abram to fully embrace this new tribal mentality, he must leave behind his old us and them way of thinking and behaving. No wonder God tells him to leave his national tribe, his cultural tribe, and his family tribe.
Leaving our existing tribes
God's call to reawaken our dreams isn't dependent upon physically leaving our nations, cultures, or families (though some of our dreams may require this), rather it's about acknowledging and rejecting the negative influences that hinder us from sharing God's love. These influences will look different for each of us, depending on our own homelands, cultures, and families.
Leaving our national tribes
As a UK-based Christian, my awareness is growing of the ongoing global devastation caused by centuries of British colonial rule. I think we like to believe this is in the past, but a national sense of entitlement and supremacy is being seen in the increasingly racist attitudes that are being openly expressed since we left the European Union.
I also recognise this way of thinking in the UK's recent response to the climate crisis. During 2010 and 2024, the Conservative Party ruling the UK voted "anti" climate in every single parliamentary vote while in power. [Sources: The Guardian and Vote Climate]. This is a prime example of ignoring the well-being of others to focus on the immediate benefit to our own nation.
British people are realising something needs to change, but the rise of the right-wing nationalist party, Reform UK, is pointing us in the wrong direction. Blame is being put on "outsiders." First, the right-wing agenda targeted our participation in the European Union by saying we shouldn't be giving them so much money or accepting laws that didn't directly benefit us. Now, it's the influx of immigrants supposedly putting a strain on our economy, the NHS (National Health Service), and on unemployment figures.
I can't help but notice how right-wing politics is being propped up by super-rich, white men. The focus on "outsiders" deflects from the wealth inequality and economic dominance of the West that is at the root of many of our world's issues.
Leaving our cultural tribes
Several -isms that rarely communicate God’s love characterise our Western culture.
Rationalism is a philosophy that places reason as the primary way we understand our world. This promotes the intellect above everything else, downplaying the role of faith and mystery, story and experience, emotion and spirit. It's why we've lost the ability to recognise the "seemed good" of God's call, and why so many Christians read the Bible literally.
Individualism promotes the needs of the individual above the needs of the community. This is the opposite idea to a tribe that seeks to bless others. We're trying to be self-reliant and independent, while God desires to build a tribe—a large group of people—to bless every other tribe in the world.
Industrialism is a social and economic movement from an agrarian society to one dominated by mass manufacturing (and mass polluting). We often link this idea with country development, not realising that the so-called Industrial Revolution would be better thought of as an Energy Revolution where all countries are still under-developed, because none have transitioned fully to renewable energy yet (read How the energy revolution stalled).
Capitalism is an economic system that emphasises private ownership and profit for individuals or corporations. A small group of people benefit from this profit, while a large group of workers produces the product or service being sold for a set wage.
Consumerism is about the constant need to acquire stuff beyond our basic needs. It's also related to our desire to consume media, from doom-scrolling social media to binge-watching streaming TV to always listening to something.
When God awakens dreams that seek to bless others, it's not surprising if people immersed in our Western culture don't get what we're doing and why.
Leaving our family tribes
While it's relatively easy to understand why God would call Abram to leave his national and cultural tribes, we're likely to find the idea of leaving our families behind to pursue a dream the most jarring.
Abram was 75 years old when he set out west from Haran (Gen. 12:4). This means his father Terah was 145 years old when Abram left him behind (see Gen. 11:26). Terah then lived for another 60 years with no family around him (see Gen. 11:32).
How many of us would be willing to permanently leave an ageing relative like this to pursue a dream, even if we felt God had called us to do so?
Let's explore Abram's story in more detail to see under what circumstances this leaving occurred.
Led by Terah
One day Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (his son Abram's wife), and his grandson Lot (his son Haran's child) and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan...
— Genesis 11:31 NLT (emphasis mine)
As we saw in Already heading that way, Terah starts his family's movement West. This tells us more than we think about the person Terah was. Not only is migrating west going against the flow of his society, but so was leaving the place where your ancestors were buried. And despite being the patriarch of the family, he doesn't force his second son Nahor or his granddaughters Milcah (whom Nahor marries) and Iscah (both daughters of his deceased third son Haran) to accompany him.
Terah's a bold and forward-thinking guy.
He offers permission and encouragement to his family to imagine a different future by following his own dream. So often as parents, we do the opposite. We sacrifice our dreams to raise our children, inadvertently communicating to them that creativity and fulfilment should be the first things to be sacrificed when things get tough.
No river to follow
Terah is to be commended for how far he leads his eldest son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai, and his grandson Lot (who chooses not to stay in Ur with his two sisters) into a new future. However, as it sometimes goes within families, Terah accidentally halts Abram’s dream when they decide to settle in Haran.
[Terah] was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.
— Genesis 11:31 NLT
The town of Haran shares the same name as Terah's youngest son who died in Ur. It seems as if either Terah's curiosity or his unresolved grief at the death of his youngest son stops his momentum. But there's something else at play here, too: geography.
Ur of the Chaldeans was near the Persian Gulf, while Canaan was a narrow strip of land next to the Mediterranean Sea. In between them was the 200,000 square mile Syrian Desert. This arid rocky wasteland blocks a direct route between these two lands. Therefore, the easiest way for Terah and his family to reach Canaan simply meant following the path of the Euphrates upstream. This river route would take them almost three-quarters of the way around the eastern and northern edges of the Syrian Desert.
However, for the final 100 miles, there would be no river to follow.
Terah falters as he nears the point of the journey where he and his family will need to walk away from the Euphrates' banks and set out south-west toward the land of Canaan. The lure of Haran and a fear of leaving the river prevent him from fulfilling his dream of reaching Canaan. Instead, he leads his family north following a tributary of the Euphrates to settle in Haran.
Leaving Terah
Abram's life stalls in Haran. The affirming voice of Terah has grown quiet or gone completely. Perhaps his father's fear about leaving the river or Abram's own unresolved grief about his brother's death has somehow tied him to this place. Maybe he feels an obligation to stay with his father, despite falling short of their goal.
And then God's call arrives to inspire Abram to once again set out for Caanan. Leaving our family tribe is about recognising when their influence is stopping you from taking risks.
I wonder, did God also called Terah at this time? Terah was once bold and forward-thinking. Now, though, does he not recognise God's call to continue? Or is he too consumed by delayed grief to hear it?
Dreams are inherently impractical
Abram wasn't yet a father, he and Sarai were struggling with infertility, and she was closing in on the end of her childbearing years. To believe he was going to become the father of a new kind of tribe meant believing in the impossible.
Dreams don’t come with guarantees and can often appear improbable. The path we walk in pursuit of them is rarely straightforward and often fraught with risk. There’s often a making-it-up-as-you-go-along feel to chasing our dreams. Rarely will someone else have travelled the exact same way before, because dreams tend to take us in the opposite direction to the conventional wisdom, expectations, and assumptions of the cultures we live in.
As parents, our desire to protect our children can often translate into a desire that they forgo struggle and risk. We therefore become more likely to affirm risk-averse life choices and view pursuing dreams as reckless behaviour. Practical concerns about money, employment, comfort, and safety—all of which can be good things in the right context—can trample our children's dreams and rob them of the courage to take a chance.
Sometimes our dreams can only become real surrounded by new people in a new church, or in a new city, or even in a new country.
Moving away from the river
The original river path we walk towards our dreams never ends up taking us the full distance. Yet, how many times have we stayed in our comfort zones by following the river wherever it twists and turns, instead of taking a risk to forge a fresh path out into the desert?
When we remain river-followers our stories stagnate and, if we are honest, become boring from our lack of purpose or vision or challenge. This is why identifying our calling is vitally important to our health and well-being. We die a little inside each time we get stuck in the quicksand of indecision or choose not to take the risk to pursue our dreams.
God’s call is the catalyst, the inciting incident, the disruption, the courage, the pull or push that kick-starts our story again. He draws us back to that point of risk we shied away from previously and re-invites us to step away from both the river and the other influences holding us back.
Abram hears God’s call, and he immediately heads south along the tributary with Sarai and Lot, crosses the Euphrates, and heads away from the river and into the desert toward the land of Canaan.
What is stopping us from doing similar?