Dear curators of children’s story Bibles,

The story of the Binding of Isaac is horrifying. You can’t have a cute sentimental story about a man sacrificing his kid. Not even if he only almost sacrifices him.

You seem to think this is a great illustration of God’s Providence, and Abraham’s commitment, and Isaac’s obedience. But instead you include a frightening story about a capricious and bloodthirsty God, a fanatical and abusive father, and a son who suffers at terrifying ordeal. Can you give this one a pass for once?

Blessings,

Rivikah

---

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

Genesis 22:1-14

---

So yeah. This story. The thing that makes it so much worse is the way it’s usually presented as something to look up to and emulate. “Be like Abraham, ready to do anything God asks you to. Trust that God has a plan no matter how horrible it might seem.”

Back in the real world, that kind of thinking ends with dead or traumatized kids as often as with beautiful stories of God’s Providence.

And this story ends with a traumatized child too. Poor Isaac. Last week, we saw his older brother banished. That can’t be good for a kid’s sense of security. And this week he’s very nearly sacrificed. And you can see that trauma echoing down the generations with Isaac playing favorites with his own sons, and Jacob doing the same, and Joseph turning out to be a sociopath impoverishing and then enslaving an entire nation.

Ugh. This whole family.

The proper Christian thing to say is something about how if God can love and work through people this screwed up then God can love and work through me.

But I’d rather go in a different direction here.

---

---

This is a shared story. Other traditions than mine claim a version for themselves. Not everyone interprets this story the way it usually appears in Christian children’s Bibles.

It seems that in the Muslim version the son being sacrificed is an adult, knows the plan from the start, and agrees to the whole sacrifice bit.

And in at least some strains of Jewish thought, this whole thing is a massive screwup with Abraham misunderstanding the instructions and God jumping in to save both of them from the mistake.

---

Circling back to the beginning of this post: Children’s Bibles are curated. They don’t include everything. You won’t find Lot’s daughters in them. Most of David’s descendants are edited out. And the moral at the end of the story is usually added in to make a tidy package for children.

What do they learn from that? What did I learn as a child reading story Bibles? Is there a way to be conscious of the assumptions that I bring to this weird ancient text with so many layers of context and tradition built up around it?

I can try to find and listen to other perspectives than mine. That doesn’t always clarify anything, but it’s all I’ve got.

Turns out it’s almost always more complicated than the version found in Children’s Bibles.

I’ve got half thoughts in three slightly different directions this week, so here’s a bit of a mishmash.

There’s a lot more revolutionary language this week. Several parts of this are pretty commonly used in modern churches as a reminder to be ready for religious persecution. The whole “Take up your cross…” thing gets turned into a reminder to be self-sacrificing as Jesus was, and the bit about families turned against each other is often used to suggest that a person’s religious convictions will cause their family members to turn against them.

That persecution narrative can be comforting but it’s pretty toxic. It leads to all kinds of “us against the world” attitudes and very odd ideas about how to decide what actions are good. “Everyone hated me for it, so I guess it was God’s plan.” is a philosophy that encourages bullies.

Parts of those narratives might be supported elsewhere, they’re certainly baked into many understandings of what Christianity is all about, but I don’t think they work in the context here.

This bit looks like it’s pretty clearly about he consequences that Jesus immediate followers can expect to see from participating in a rebellion against the colonial oppressors of their time and place.

If we look around in our time and place and identify the colonial oppressors…Let’s just say not all of us appear in this passage as the self-sacrificing revolutionaries.

---

That quote from Micah comes from the middle of a long passage of woes to be visited upon a people who having been running around lying, amassing wealth by cheating, and having a justice system where the wealthy can use bribes to get the outcome they want.

So that’s an interesting bit of context that I don’t really know how to understand with the rest of the Matthew passage. Maybe it’s a creative reinterpretation of Micah by the author of Matthew and the Micah context doesn’t matter. Or maybe the Micah quote as it appears in Matthew is not directed where I always assumed.

---

Speaking of family members turning against each other, the first reading for this week is the Genesis passage where Hagar and Ishmael are cast out.

So hmm.

---

“The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!

“So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
    a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
    a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:25-39 (NIV)

This week, Jesus sends his students off on an internship. They’ll even be paid (at least enough to survive) by the sounds of it.

The instructions given have a lot of echoes of the Great Commission passage from last week, with some very interesting contrasts.

Last week’s passage comes later, directly before the Ascension. This one is comparatively early in Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry.

I find the difference in the instructions to be interesting here. Before his ascension, the command is to make disciples. Here, the task is more practical: Heal. And more political: Proclaim.

Ok so there are some other bits there too. Cleansing leprosy, driving out demons, raising the dead. And probably the ancient concept of those things considered them to be fundamentally different from healing, but from a modern perspective they all seem to be related.

There’s also proclaiming the Kingdom. Church history has defined that phrase to strip it off any association with revolutions. But I suspect that the empire of the day hadn’t done that work. Even if this wasn’t a call to armed rebellion against a colonizing force, I’m not surprised the empire thought it was. The reaction they’re told to expect suggests that Jesus knew it too.

The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Black lives matter.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Trans women are women, trans men are men, and trans rights are human rights.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Defund the police.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
No Justice.  No Peace.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

Matthew 9:35-10:23 (NRSV)