The Rational Bible: Genesis by Dennis Prager

Author:Dennis Prager
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Faith

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When any religious person says, “I am depriving myself of something because of a demand from God”—and that demand conforms with God’s notions of the good and the just—that individual is demonstrating the nature of serious faith.

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Rather, the test was performed to teach the rest of us about the nature of faith—that it requires something of us; and to teach us that God does not want human sacrifice. But short of that, true religion does demand some sacrifice.

When Catholics deprive themselves of some joy during Lent; when Mormons abstain from coffee and alcohol and fast once a month; when Jews make a professional and monetary sacrifice in order to observe the Sabbath; when any religious person says, “I am depriving myself of something because of a demand from God”—and that demand conforms with God’s notions of the good and the just—that individual is demonstrating the nature of serious faith.

In accordance with this requirement of true belief, millions of Jews throughout Jewish history have, in a sense, emulated Abraham. Given the repeated attempts throughout history to annihilate the Jewish people, every Jewish parent who chooses to remain a Jew knows that he or she might be subjecting his or her children or grandchildren to premature death simply by living as Jews.

Many years before writing this commentary, I was walking to my seat on an airplane in Phoenix, Arizona, when a woman in her mid-thirties stopped me. She told me she attended my previous night’s lecture to the Jewish community of Phoenix. She explained she was a non-Jew married to a Jew, and though she attended my lecture, her husband refused to. He was the son of Holocaust survivors, and he was adamant about abandoning his Jewish identity and not raising their children as Jews. He had no desire to risk his children or future grandchildren being killed because they were Jews.

That man did not want to be an Abraham.

22.13 When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.

22.14 And Abraham named that site Adonai-yireh, hence the present saying, “On the mount of the Lord there is vision.”

22.15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven,

22.16 and said, “By Myself I swear, the Lord declares: Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your favored son,

As noted, every parent who has sent a child off to war was also “not withholding” their son (and now daughter). In effect, the child sacrifice test is one, unfortunately, that reoccurs in every age. The question, therefore, is not whether parents—and society as a whole—should ever be prepared to sacrifice a child; the question is whether the sacrifice is morally necessary. God’s behavior at the story’s end makes it clear that not all sacrifices are morally required or morally just.

“Sacrifice” is like “idealism.” In and of itself, it is a morally neutral, not a morally positive, term.

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