After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 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.”  (Genesis 22: 1,2). 

O.k.  All of you who skipped over the Bible verses at the beginning of this blog, please go back and read it now.  Yes, I know you do that.  At least I do.  I’m always “I’ll get the gist in the text; I don’t need to read the italicized stuff – it just takes up too much time”.  But this time it is important.  So go back and read it for me. 

And how many of you reread those two verses, and then, just sort of fluffed it off by saying “oh yeah, the Abraham and Isaac story.  No biggie.  We know that God saves Isaac at the last minute.  See, God is good, all the time”. 

So, go and read those two verses again pretending that that you don’t know the end of this story. 

Wait……what?

Did God really ‘test’ Abraham by demanding that he ritually sacrifice his child?  Yup.  That’s totally the story.  Yes, I know that this would’ve been a time when child sacrifice was a thing.  Yes, I know that this story is intended to foreshadow Jesus’ crucifixion.  But, really, what?  Why on earth is that story there and how on earth are we supposed to make sense of a God that would demand from us the sacrifice of children?  That’s just plain, well, evil. 

And you need to know right off the bat that the God I serve doesn’t demand that children are killed in worship.  You must know right off the bat that this story doesn’t fall into my world of acceptable and honorable theology, and yes, I know the ending too. 

And so, I hope you’re seeing that this story is a product of a time and culture and held meaning and purpose to a time and culture that is vastly different from ours.  So, when I speak about the sacredness of scripture, I am also speaking to the truth that we have evolved and changed as a people and as Communities of Faith.  Sometimes, in this evolution, we need to be honest about text that we once considered true and honourable are now, not only problematic but are inherently evil and untrue. 

We have heard in the news in the last five years about the Residential School system and how we as the church and as Canadian citizens have colluded in a system of violence, terror and cultural genocide that has traumatized generations of our Indigenous Communities.  We now have heard the stories of the survivors and have seen unmarked graves of children uncovered at these mostly church-run institutions.  We get that this terrible atrocity has been committed in the name of the God that we serve. 

But I wonder too, if we have seen what has been the necessary cultural and faith shift that has happened as a result, and own that we have changed our core beliefs. 

You see, us Boomers and Gen Xers, all of us raised in the Church, can remember that the United Church was also one of the denominations that ran Residential Schools.  Not only did our beloved church run them, but we also believed that this system was what was ‘best’ for indigenous children and families.  We believed that this system of education and ‘assimilation’ into Colonizing ideals was going to mean they would be ‘elevated’ from their indigenous culture and ways of being.  Culture that we, as Colonizers, assumed was somehow backwards and unenlightened as compared from our Western European heritage. 

And so, we were willing to sacrifice Indigenous children on our altars of Colonization and we truly believed that God had called us to do this; and that this was good and faithful. 

I know that you, my Bethel Friends, have done a ton of work towards Reconciliation.  But I think that its also important that we recognize that as we grow and change culturally, we also need to grow and change faithfully.  Recognizing that things that we once held as ‘truth’ may not be true, and in fact, may be incredibly harmful and well, evil.  We all know that child sacrifice is wrong.  We also see other big-ticket items such as slavery, child marriage, temple prostitution and stoning people to death for adultery as wrong, and its very important that we name that our sacred texts also contain these as social and cultural norms.  And name it out loud as problematic, and as something that we, as Christians can no longer allow within our understand of the Good News of Christ Jesus. 

Not ‘explaining’ the problematic texts away.  Not trying to turn it into metaphor or some hidden ‘deeper truth’.  Just – this is a problem. 

And the God I serve would never require this of you. 

And the God I serve would never oppress you.

And the God I serve would never say that your pain is o.k. because it points to a ‘larger lessons’. 

And our only job as Christians is to love.  That’s it.

So, my dear Bethel Friends, read our sacred texts with your eyes wide open, and test it against the truth of the love that we are called to.  Owning where our Church has caused pain and oppression, calling out the evils that we see, and orienting yourself to that Love that God has called us to.

Blessings today.  You are that Love.

~Rev. Lynne