It's fine saying the Holy Spirit communicates in unexpected moments through feelings of holy dissatisfaction or the desire to give birth to something inside of us, but many of us will struggle to believe it.
Would God really tell us to pursue something we are excited about?
We doubt God is that good and/or suspect he would only call us to something more “spiritual” or “evangelistic” than following our own dreams. We can see this in how Christians rarely—if ever—use "calling" outside of becoming a pastor or a missionary.
By linking calling with a form of "professional Christian ministry," we limit God's call to a small group of Christians instead of opening it up to everyone.
Yet, Abram wasn't even a follower of God when he was called!
Not only do we dismiss the Holy Spirit's promptings as our own voice rather than God's, we also ignore our dreams in fear of polluting God's plan for us.
Notice how guidance is usually about seeking God's plan:
“I’m waiting for confirmation that this is God’s will before I go for it.”
“It’s not about what I want; it’s about what God wants.”
Therefore, it's common to hear Christians convey the idea that God is asking them to surrender or sacrifice their dreams as an act of faith or obedience. But what kind of father asks his kids to prove their love or loyalty by giving up the things that bring them joy?
Oh right, God asks Abram to do that very thing.
Or does he?
This is how religion works
Abram—but renamed by God as Abraham by this point—was not shocked when God requested he sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son and the miracle child of God's promises. This is how religion works. To stay in favour with gods who are angry and demanding, you have to keep proving your commitment to them.
The very nature of early religion is that everything escalated because in your anxiety to please the gods, you kept having to offer more.
— Rob Bell
What is the Bible? p.109
Unchecked, the anxiety of religion eventually leads you to sacrifice the most valuable thing you have: your children.
"Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you."
— Genesis 22:2 NLT
Abraham accepts God's instructions. No fuss. No drama. Considering how their three-day journey to Moriah is over instantly (see Gen. 22:4), the details of Abraham's preparation are brutally slow (see Gen. 22:3). He gets up early. He saddles his donkey. He selects two of his servants to accompany them. He tells Isaac to be ready to leave. He chops wood. He knows exactly what he needs to do.
Abraham lives in a world where fathers know exactly what to do if a god asks you to sacrifice a child.
The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about.
— Genesis 22:3 NLT
It's a barbaric story
But we're privy to an extra piece of information. Immediately before the story begins, the author of Genesis tells us that this is all a test.
Some time later, God tested Abraham's faith.
— Genesis 22:1 NLT
And somehow this being a test is supposed to excuse the whole repellent idea of God asking for a child to be sacrificed. It doesn't matter that God doesn't follow through. God makes the request. Isaac was at risk of dying, all because his daddy happens to love God so very, very much. It's sickening.
And instead of coming across as a gracious provider of an alternate sacrifice, God comes across to modern readers as a violent, jealous lover who wants to test Abraham to see who he loves more. Him or Isaac.
How is that ok?
How can we defend that?
How can we believe the Father of Jesus would ask this?
Question and answer
God testing Abraham's faith is not the point of the story.
Wait! It's not? What do you mean the story isn't about Abraham's obedience? Doesn't the story commend this reading in verse 12?
"...for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son."
— Genesis 22:12 NLT
To figure out whether that's the point of the story, we need to back up slightly. If God asked you to sacrifice one of your children, would you be willing to do it? Would you tie them up and hold a knife over them while you looked into their petrified eyes just to prove to God you love him more than your child?
No way! That's abhorrent and abusive, and I'd deservedly end up in jail.
I'm glad we're on the same page. This highlights how societal thinking has progressed since Abraham's day. It's no longer acceptable to sacrifice a child; or go through the motions of doing so. But if God asked for this once, he could ask for it again. Do you think this is something we need to worry about God asking of us today?
Don't be silly. Our God wouldn't demand the death of a child. He hates child sacrifice, and Scripture confirms this in several places, including Leviticus 20:2-5 and Deuteronomy 12:31.
So, if we believe the Father of Jesus wouldn't ask this of us today, why do we think he once asked this of Abraham?
Because it's written in Scripture.
Exactly. We wouldn't believe it otherwise. But Scripture also gives the name of the god who asks for child sacrifice in those Leviticus verses you mentioned. His name was Molech. So why does Genesis 22 begin with God acting like Molech?
That is disturbing when you phrase it that way. What are you saying?
Maybe the point of the drama is that we're supposed to be disturbed by it in order to encourage us to change what we believe about who God is. Let me show you what I mean.
What Abraham says
When Abraham arrives at the mountain, he says something to his servants that goes completely against the flow of the standard religious story:
"Stay here with the donkey," Abraham told the servants. "The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back."
— Genesis 22:5 NLT (emphasis mine)
If this is a test, why is it that throughout the story Abraham seems to be in on whatever's going on. "We will come right back," he says to his servants, and "God will provide," he tells Isaac as they walk up the mountain (Gen. 22:8, emphasis mine). He even later named the altar The Lord Will Provide (in Gen. 22:14), rather than Here I Passed God's Test.
Abraham goes to sacrifice his son—his dream—knowing that with this god, Isaac is not what’s going to be sacrificed.
It’s like Abraham didn’t get the right script. As readers, we’ve been told by the author that God isn’t planning to let the sacrifice happen. But Abraham's not supposed to know this. It's not a genuine test if he knows the answer in advance. These comments by Abraham suggest he believes God is not actually going to let him go through with it.
It’s like Abraham is winking all the way through the journey, like he knows it's a test, too.
We will come back, and God will provide.
It's a charade
The author keeps ratcheting up the tension. When is God going to step in to stop it? How long is he going to keep this fake test going?
Abraham travels for three days without an alternative sacrifice. He and Isaac trek up the mountain with everything they need for a sacrifice apart from what they're going to kill. They prepare the altar together and still nothing. He ties up his son and, still there’s nothing. He raises the knife... and finally, God stops the nonsense.
An angel of the Lord calls out to Abraham to stop. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Abraham looks up just as a ram runs towards them and gets its horns stuck in a thicket (Gen. 22:13). There’s another creature for them to sacrifice.
Was God ever going to let Abraham sacrifice Isaac? No.
Was Abraham ever going to sacrifice Isaac? Also no. We will come back, he says.
The whole narrative is a charade. It's like both parties are going through the motions. But why?
Primitive but progressive
Nowadays, we find the most shocking part of the story to be God’s demand for a child sacrifice. We find the idea primitive and barbaric. But that's because we no longer live in a world of blood sacrifices. The chances are high that you've never even witnessed an animal die in front of you.
But in ancient times, blood sacrifices were normal. People were used to killing animals and spilling their blood on altars. This was a regular occurrence. Therefore, a god asking for a sacrifice, even that of a child, was not shocking to the original audience.
Instead, it would have been the ending that ancient people found most shocking.
A god stopping a sacrifice. That’s unheard of.
A god providing a replacement sacrifice. That’s even more unlikely.
A god who then says he’s planning to bless everyone in every nation, with no sacrifices and no tests of devotion required (Gen. 22:16-18). Who is making this stuff up?
Sacrifices are about people giving to the gods. And yet this story tells us that the God of Abraham will do the giving and providing.
So yes, it's a primitive story. But it's also a progressive story. That ending is mind-blowing. It introduces a brand-new idea into the history of humankind. And by placing this idea into such a compelling story (rather than simply into a statement of law), it generates discussion. Like the twist in The Sixth Sense or the time travel in Twelve Monkeys, you can't help but talk about the questions it raises.
The point of the story
The point of the story isn't obedience to a test. Because if it were, all it does is promote blind obedience to a violent God instead of obliterating the anxiety of religion. It leaves God as a deity who is never satisfied and who continues to place demands on his people to make sacrifices.
The author of Genesis subtly points to this by echoing the same phrase, lek lěkā, that God used in the original call of Abraham (Gen. 12:1).
"You go for you to the land of Moriah and sacrifice Isaac..."
or
“Go to/towards yourself to the land of Moriah and sacrifice Isaac....”
The meaning behind lek lěkā makes God's command to sacrifice Isaac complete nonsense. It communicates how religious obedience doesn't respect our dreams or our deepest selves.
The point of the story isn't even whether God requested the sacrifice of Isaac in the first place. We can get hooked on the beginning when it's the end we're supposed to be noting!
But you still want to know, don't you?
Did God ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
Or is it just a story?
What I will say is this:
The beginning is what we used to believe.
And now we don't.
By the end of the story we're meant to realise—if we hadn't before—that the start is doesn't accurately reflect who God is. Whatever you want to believe, this is definitely the last time we think God is capable of asking a parent to sacrifice a child. We can leave that idea in the past.
It's in the progression of thought where the point lies. While this new idea isn't communicated in the way we would do it, the drama takes us on a journey from one way of thinking to another.
So which God is it?
Just like in the story of Noah's Ark, the ending subverts ancient people’s expectations. It starts off with God looking awfully similar to Molech and all the other gods in the neighbourhood, but it ends up with him looking the opposite of them.
There’s a progression of thought occurring in the story that we’ve still not figured out.
From that God to this God.
From a violent God to a nonviolent God.
Do we follow the God who tests Abraham's devotion at the beginning of the story?
Or do we follow the one at the end?
The God who provides.
The God who does the giving.
The God who stops the child sacrifice.
The God who encourages us to dream.
The God who reiterates his promises to Abraham.
The God who asks for trust rather than obedience.
Because we can't believe in both. We can't swap in Jesus' name in place of God's at the beginning of the story; it doesn't work. Not even in the context of a test. It's simply an un-Christlike request.
But we could swap Jesus's name in place of God's at the end of the story. The part where it affirms God gives and provides and promises to bless everyone.
But why is this story being told here?
The Bible contains a corporate dream for a new kind of family, tribe, or nation that shares God's love by existing for the benefit of others. The story in Genesis 22 occurs at the beginning of this dream. In fact, things are in a somewhat fragile state, for this new tribe is shrinking, not growing!
Abraham and Lot parted ways in Genesis 13. Abraham then loses one of his sons in chapter 21 when he permanently sends Hagar (his concubine) and their son Ishmael away, and he's now at risk of losing his second son in chapter 22.
Things are not always going to go well when pursuing a dream. And we may become tempted into the anxiety games of religion.
So, throughout this stretch of Genesis, God is constantly revealing his character to Abraham in order to call him, and every parent and child after him in this new tribe, into a better future where they know, without a shadow of doubt, that God will never ask for a child to be sacrificed.
Or demand that we give up our dreams.
Because, as he keeps reminding Abraham, he is that good, and he uses our dreams to bless others.