The ram in the thicket
It is not through devastating sacrifice that we serve God.
“I don’t want to see anyone leave,” one synodical delegate said of the motion to suspend dissenting churches and office-bearers, “but as Abraham was asked to offer up Isaac in obedience to faith, I see this as an act of obedience to faith.”
Hearing this analogy reminded me of a college student who was struggling with church because of the harms she saw within Christian culture. Someone she knew well cut a gay child out of her life because, just like Abraham, God was calling her to be willing to give up her child out of faithfulness to him. This comparison provides a straight-forward premise to justify a simple response toward LGBTQ+ people: be like Abraham, patriarch and hero of faith. Be willing to give up anyone you need to, even the people you love most, for the sake of what you believe. The fallout is deep and usually irreparable damage to relationships with people who are already vulnerable. It’s a dangerous comparison as the implications can be far reaching, and it’s an insensitive one given the high rates of suicide and self-harm among LGBTQ+ Christian youth.
God provides
What’s disturbing, in addition to how dismissive and simplistic this justification has become, is that when we talk about sacrificing Isaac on the altar, we forget the most important part – that God provides an out. This story doesn’t work in our history of faith if there is no ram in the thicket. In Leviticus, God lays out strong judgment for anyone who sacrifices children to Molech, and in Jeremiah God condemns this act as an abomination that he never commanded, “nor did it enter into my mind” (Jer. 32:35). The sacrifice of Isaac cannot be referenced, does not make sense in the story of scripture, without God providing a solution – taking the cultural expectations of what it meant to worship God and redefining them. By intervening before Abraham can take the life of his innocent child (and the future of the nation God called Abraham to establish), God establishes a standard: it is not through devastating sacrifice that we serve God. We need to open our ears and eyes to the ram struggling nearby in the bushes, to the alternative that doesn’t cut off the plan of redemption that is greater than we can understand at this moment.
Abraham’s strong faith is lauded in the book of Hebrews. But it is not just his willingness to sacrifice his son that gets mentioned. His faith is marked by his willingness to journey into an unfamiliar wilderness. Abraham was willing to leave the gods of his father and step out into the utter unknown, learning along the way what it meant to follow this God who was taking him into new places and new ways of living.
“Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead,” the author of Hebrews said, “and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death” (Heb. 11:19). Likewise, we need to go forward looking for alternatives, for rams in the thicket. We hope, believe and pray that the churches, staff, families and individuals sacrificed on the altar of dogma will be resurrected into new and beautiful manifestations of God’s kingdom. As they leave the country of their ancestors and step into a place of newness and uncertainty, God will go before them. God will provide.
