There is a question that
is often asked by those skeptical and dismissive of the Christian God. “How can a
loving God ask for the sacrifice of the son of a believer just to
test the strength of his belief?” A tentative answer to that
question can be given by a Christian based on the meta-narrative of
Christianity. This will be acceptable only within that
meta-narrative. Outside of that, any answer to that question merely
subjects the answer giver to the charge of speaking gibberish.
The first part of the
meta-narrative is that while God is loving, he also created
everything that we see and therefore has absolute right over
everything. And the loving God also demands us to give glory to him, he
has absolute distaste for anything being given more value than
himself by any of his creations. A believer attributing allegiance to
anything including his own son is not acceptable to such on
omnipotent God. So there lies the grounds for a test of a believer's
faith.(Why does an omnipotent God have to test to know? Because, there is a matter of free will.)
Secondly, in the
meta-narrative, there is a concept of eternal life. So even if
Abraham's son were to be killed, it is not an eternal death. Our body
and our existence on earth is valuable only from the point of view of
whether it sings glory to God. There is no other reason for our
existence. If the act yields glory to God, that in itself is a
necessary and sufficient justification. In short, in the context of
an eternal life, a father sacrificing a son for the glory of God does
not sound so untenable.
Now, this need not
surprise any of us. We all, at least most of us including non
believers, believe in a variant of this. In matters of public good, we
all believe that the father son relationship is subservient to public
good. For example, when a senior police official in Odisha tried to
protect his son from prosecution in a criminal case (rape), we all
shook our head in disapproval because here was a father who was
shielding his son from the long arm of the law, the enforcer of
public good. Now if we were to replace public good with God's glory,
we will get the same hierarchy.
But all of this makes
sense only in the context of God as the creator and the idea of
eternal life. Else, it looks untenable and perhaps gibberish.
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