ARE WE TO ADMIRE ABRAHAM FOR HIS FAITH OR BE HORRIFIED BY HIS ACTION?
God the Father, reproduced from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_the_Father
Question
Genesis 22 tells the story of the Binding of Isaac: God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. As we know from the narrative, Abraham duly complies -- his obedience to God's will sets him on course to commit a truly barbaric act that violates all notions of parental love and basic human decency.
Just as he is about to kill his son however God intervenes: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” (Genesis 22:12)
What can we learn about Abraham from this story, Sigung? Are we to admire him for his faith or be horrified by his actions? Or maybe both?
Are there any circumstances in our lives when our duties to our family and loved ones should be set aside to serve a higher need or some higher power?
What can we learn about God and what it is to be human from this story, Sigung?
Sifu Kevin Barry
Answer
In this context, there are two types of wisdom – God’s wisdom and human wisdom. From the context of God’s wisdom, Abraham was right, and God intervened in time to save Abraham’s son and commented on Abraham’s faith. From the perspective of human wisdom, many people would be horrified by Abraham’s intended action.
From the story, we can learn that Abraham had absolute faith in God. Whether we admire Abraham for his faith, or be horrified by his actions, depends on how religious and intelligent we are. Those who do not believe in God, irrespective of whether they are intelligent, will not admire him. Amongst those who do not admire him, those who value parental love, will be horrified, and those who do not value parental love, will be indifferent. Others who are cynical, may regard Abraham as a fool.
The intelligent may question whether it was really God’s will. They may question whether it was the Devil acting like God.
One may also comment that Abraham’s actions demonstrate blind faith. Blind faith can be good, as it saves people, even when they are intelligent, from the troubles of much intellectualization and speculation. But blind faith can be exploited by others who have evil intentions, like using God’s name to kill or terrorize.
Yes, there are circumstances in people’s lives when their duties to their family and loved ones could be set aside to serve a higher need or some higher power. But whether they would do so would depend on a few factors, especially on how strongly they value their family and loved ones compared to their faith, blind or otherwise, in a higher need or some higher power.
For example, in wars some patriots sacrificed their family and loved ones or themselves for their country. I knew of a devotee whose faith in his religion was so strong that when his girlfriend was sick, he forbade her from seeing a doctor. His girlfriend eventually died. Although he made a grave mistake, one cannot be sure whether it was good for the girl’s spirit. She was released from the phenomenal world full of suffering.
Different people at different stages of spiritual development will have different concepts of God. To most people who believe in God it is God the Father in heaven, or by any name God the Father is called in their language. For those who believe in a polytheistic religion, like the ancient Roman and many modern Chinese, the belief in gods, who are more powerful than humans but may have human weaknesses, like they can be jealous of other gods. For those who do not believe in God or gods, their physical life is all that is.
For those who are of a very high spiritual stage, beyond God the Father is God the Holy Spirit, or by whatever terms God the Holy Spirit is called. He may be called the Spiritual Body of the Buddha, the Tao or the Supreme Reality. Scientists may call Him the universal spread of energy where there is no differentiation.
Hence, different people at different spiritual stage may learn different things from the story. The religious will regard Abraham as a model to be followed. The skeptical will regard Abraham as foolish. The highly spiritual will regard that there is no difference whether Abraham killed his son. Eventually, there is nothing but God, or an undifferentiated spread of energy
Similarly, different people may learn different things from this story. The intelligent will learn that one should find out whether that was God’s will before Abraham took action, i.e to kill his son according to God’s will or to ignore God’s will. The not so intelligent but religious will learn that they must follow God’s will or the proxies of God. The not so intelligent and not religious will learn that Abraham was silly.
Intelligence is needed to make good decision. We are very lucky that in Shaolin Wahnam, we do not just learn kungfu and chi kung, but also cultivate our intelligence, like in Zen, which is not religious.
The questions and answers are reproduced from the thread 10 Questions on Happy Family Life in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
Abraham -- Genesis22, reproduced from http://www.biblestudyresources.org/genesis-22-god-tested-abraham.html
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