The Binding of Isaac Story

The question was asked if this story of Abraham binding his son and willing to sacrifice and kill him should be a troubling biblical text for us today.  Here was my reply:

Responses may vary but it should be a troubling text for people of faith. Why? God calls us to do the impossible at times and even calls us to make the most difficult of all choices. I believe Kierkegaard got it right that this text tests all our preconceived ideas about God and orthodoxy. God is not a tame or domesticated God and he calls us to a radical faith. It's not just this text goes against our modern justice sensibilities but it even goes against logic and reason. It makes no sense at all for God to give Abraham and his wife a child of promise and then seem to suggest that He is gong to somehow kill the child of promise while all at the same time bring those promises to fruition. This is faith tested and stretched to its very limits!

Although I highly respect Leonard Sweet and hope he has changed his mind concerning this text, here is someone with postmodern proclivities who turns the biblical text on its head some years ago. Abraham is not the father of faith in this text but doing his own perverse tempting of God. He is going to sacrifice the child of promise and it is only God who comes in at the end of the story and provides the ram and saves the son that shows Abraham's foolishness in all this. This neither follows Jewish or Christian readings of the text. This may save face with people who are offended by the text but I really don't think these kinds of radical revisions is going to "save" the Bible in the end.

I'm currently working through Jesus parables and I was reading Herzog's "Parables as Subversive Speech." Herzog interprets the parable of the talents and the last guy who buried his talent is the hero of the story. He is using a kind of postmodern liberation theology and anti-empire hermeneutic. I am not opposed to using any of these hermeneutical tools but when it turns the bad guy into the hero of the story and flips everything on its head, there is something greatly amiss.

I think we need to ask serious questions about what are we really trying to do with the biblical text since it seems like we may not really be that concerned at all for its original context and original purpose and outcome. It's takes faith to submit to Scripture, even when it does not always make sense. It takes faith to accept the Bible's own portrayal of reality at that time rather than imposing our own modern understanding and preferred reality onto the biblical text.

I find it problematic when people either try to save the biblical text and end up interpreting the text in ways that goes against what the text actually says. I also find it problematic when people read the text in the worst ways where God always comes out on the short end of things and always looks bad. I doubt those same people would want others to view everything they say and do through the same negative and overly critical lenses. I know some Christians who do this to atheists and I think its wrong no matter who is doing it.