there is a moral of this story if one is willing to wait…
the Binding of Isaac is a story in the bible where god “demands” that
Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac as “proof” of Abraham loyalty/love…
so god directs Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac… they take a 3 day
journey to the place that god has directed them to…
Abraham bounds Isaac to a rock and is about to slay him when
somehow a ram gets into the picture and in place of Isaac, the
ram is slewed…
there are of course many different interpretations of this event…
one, out of many, suggest that this was nothing more then a Kabuki theater…
the point was to “play” out an sacrifice of his son when nether one was
interesting in doing so… it was an attempt to delegitimize the act of
human sacrifice… as a set piece in doing so…
one of the other interpretations is that this was really Abraham putting
pressure on god, not the other way around… read the bible, god is very
violent and not above killing anyone… even jesus…
by doing this, this forces god to either go along with violence or to end
the violence of the bible… spoiler alert, it doesn’t…
the interpretation I like speaks to me…
that the bible speaks of Abraham “willingness” to sacrifice Isaac to
demonstrate what should be our “willingness” to sacrifice for the good
of god… but what if, what if this act was something entirely different…
as god isn’t above making demands of the people, perhaps this event was
really about Abraham disobedience to god, his refusal to sacrifice his son in
the name of god…
I see this story as being one that bounces off the original story of
disobedience to god, that of Adam…
man/Adam was punished for his act of disobedience to god…
was Abraham? no, he was in fact rewarded… but in reading the
story closely, one does get a sense that this was more Kabuki theater
then a real actual test of man’s allegiance to god…
and the we have Kierkegaard and his fixation on this event…
tainted/colored by his relationship with his father…
would I have sacrifice my child, my daughter to god in
a bid to show my faith, my allegiance to god?
no, no and a thousand times no… and I think we hit another
aspect of this story…
even though god demands it, we must hew to what is right even
in the face of authority, authority like god… to sacrifice a child
to show loyalty is wrong even to a god…if we hold to a “truth”
and truly believe it, we must hold that truth even in the face of
one, two, a thousand or seven billion people…even if every single
person on earth demanded us to sacrifice our child, we must say no…
we must hold true to our own convictions…
but here comes the rub…
“A very popular error-having the courage of one’s own convictions;
rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s
convictions”
what convictions are really ours and what convictions are really just
slop left over from the indoctrinations from family, friends, the state,
religion, culture, society…
if we are to hold our convictions, we must have truly put them into
the fire of existence and test out those convictions…
we cannot just assume our convictions are strong enough to
hold in the face of trial and troubles…
we must forge our convictions in the face of living our life…
that is why I hold the convictions I do hold… because they
have been forged in the fire of life, of existence…
I believe in the messiah, be it god, jesus or IQ45… they must
pass the test of existence and one of those three listed above
haven’t passed the test of existence…I wonder which one?
to my way of thinking holding beliefs, convictions are
of the same nature be it convictions of religion or of life
or of politics or of economics… I don’t see a difference
between these convictions… I just see different sides of the same
coin…
Kropotkin