Hiking: The Perfect Opportunity for Father-Son Binding

In this story Abraham upon the order of God takes his son to a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. Isaac is Abraham's only legitimate son and he was promised to Abraham by God. Abraham with a heavy heart began the journey to the mountain top with his son. Isaac ever wondering and undoubtedly weighed down by the wood intended to burn his body questioned his father as to what they were going to offer. "God will provide," was Abraham's response. Abraham knew God had provided, but he couldn't understand why God would finally gift him with the blessing of a son and then take it away from him. As they reached the mountain top Abraham prepared the wood for the sacrifice and then Abraham bound his son and placed him on the altar. Most people put themselves in the shoes of Abraham willing to do what God demanded, but it was never a question to the reader what course of action Abraham might take. More likely the reader is Isaac willing to trust the judgement of the father enough to lay down his own life. At the last moment as Abraham raises his dagger to end the life he had waited so long to have, God stopped him. God places a ram conveniently in a nearby thicket and they then have their sacrifice. Some commentaries believe this mountain top, this place of sacrifice, was later called Golgotha which would be the site of the ultimate Christian sacrifice the death of Jesus. Other interpretations of the text believe that Isaac was a man at the time of the story furthering the idea that Isaac was the one of faith because he knowingly went up the mountain without an animal to sacrifice.

True sacrifice is something that society generally portrays either romantically or as something that doesn't exist. Either saints walk among us or everyone is just a bunch of self-serving prods who only help others for the sake of an over-inflated self image. I personally am much more inclined to stand somewhere in the middle. People make extraordinary sacrifices and often they do such things for personal benefit, but that isn't necessarily wrong. In my life I have made small sacrifices to help others. Some of those sacrifices gave me little to no perceived benefit, but others benefited me quite a lot. Traveling to Honduras four times to serve certainly benefited me. Sacrificing time and gas to be with friends benefited me. My largest and most common sacrifices were full of personal motives, but that doesn't diminish their legitimacy. A soldier diving on a grenade is an act of sacrifice, one done selflessly. A single mother of four working three jobs to support her family is an act of sacrifice, one done selfully. It isn't selfish, but she benefits. She gains the benefit of watching her kids eat, play and learn. Both sacrifices are immeasurably valuable.

On a separate note,  I find it interesting how the western mind perceives human sacrifice as perpetrated by civilizations indigenous to the Americas. We are quickly filled with horror when we discover how the Aztecs carved out bleeding heart, but we forget the role human sacrifice plays in Christianity. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son and Isaac was prepared to be sacrificed. Jesus died on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice. Far too often we perceive the "oddness" of other customs simply because they are different.



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