Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Yonadav]

A Good Lesson on How to Traumatize a Child
Genesis 22:1-19

This passage is one of those infamous ones in the Bible. Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham complies and is about to kill the poor kid, until God stops him and makes him realize it was just a test. Isaac is spared, and a ram is sacrificed instead (because God needs some killing after all). Abraham is further blessed for having such a virtuous character.

First time I read this as a kid, while I was really shocked that a supposedly loving God would do this to any parent, I was relieved that he stopped Abraham from going through with killing his own son. It was only later in life that I realized that what Isaac went through must have been really traumatizing and there was no way that him being spared would've eased the psychological trauma in any way. I know this is just a story, but imagine if this really happened, and you were in place of Isaac as a kid in that situation, would you have eventually gotten over the trauma of witnessing your own father trying to sacrifice you just to satisfy a bloodthirsty god? I think not. This is a passage that has disturbed many readers of the Bible, theists and atheists alike. Thankfully, a lot of Christians take this allegorically, and those who do take this literally generally do not believe that their god would ever tell them to go sacrifice their own child.

Here's a nice scene from a Bible series that reasonably depicts the main event in this passage:

According to Jewish theology, it was Sarah who died from the trauma of learning that Abraham was sacrificing Isaac. That would have made Isaac something like 37 years old at the time (subtracting the age she died at from the age when she had Isaac). Isaac knew that he was to be sacrificed and could have refused. He went willingly.

Also, the point of theology is not comfort, despite popular misconceptions. The text is perplexing. The situations are perplexing. We are supposed to be perplexed. Explaining perplexing biblical situations in comforting ways sort of misses the point. In our struggle with perplexity, we encounter ourselves. We raise our children to be strong and brave and possibly even heroic. Mothers and fathers have proudly sent their sons off to war for all of human history. We raise them to answer when the king calls for them.