Blog-less Weekend

This post is a contradiction, the way this sign is a contradiction. But contradictions can always be renamed paradoxes and suddenly become very profound and sexy.

Like the story of Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac on the mountain. This is the contradiction: If you know that God detests human sacrifices, but yet he also says in a dream to you, "Go and kill your son and sacrifice him to me," which do you follow? Abraham did not tell anyone what God commanded him to do -- it was a personal, divine command to him alone -- how did he know that it was not the devil who planted the thought in his head, or that he was going mad with the demands of bringing up this promised son? But Abraham obeyed this divine voice in his head and he was called righteous because of his faith.

But call this a paradox as Kiekergaard did and suddenly it all becomes very profound. This was the event that was the seed for the formation of Israel and so it means that even in the beginning, even before the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, righteousness came by faith, not by works. It also means that although God is love, love is not God, if you get the drift of my meaning. God is a person. He is not a concept, a way of life, a theory, a principle, or a set of rules. Obedience to God means more than obeying a set of rules, because faith must be in a person, and not a rulebook. And so Abraham's actions, in an extreme, mind-blowing way, set the tone, once and for all, of the type of relationship between God and his people. It was to be based in faith in God.

What does it mean today?