Open to all-would you sacrifice your child if god told you to?

[Tonus]

But what if there is a god, and it isn't any of the ones we hear about? What if he actually is that brilliant intellect that theists think their god is? What if his explanations for the way things are make pretty good sense? What if what he is asking you to do really does work out for the best for everyone involved? What then?

I would expect that whatever problems would be solved by the murder, could be solved in virtually infinite other ways by a supreme intellect.

That is the main problem with my hypothetical, and I think with any such scenario. It reduces the god in some way. He's indescribably brilliant yet resorts to such crude requests; either he cannot think of anything better, or he is somehow in a fix that requires the actions of a lowly human to resolve. I think what exacerbates this in the case of the abrahamic religions is that god is not to be questioned because he is perfect and so good that he is incapable of wickedness. So the believer must assume that he would never ask a parent to kill his child... oh, right, he did just that.

And while it is true that god rescinds the order and makes it seem that he never intended to allow the sacrifice to occur, he also exalts Abraham for his willingness to go through with it. The lesson here is not whether or not god intended for Abraham to kill Isaac. The lesson is that Abraham's willingness to do so without question was seen as a good thing in the eyes of god, so much so that he bestowed a title on Abraham ("Friend of God") and built a line of descent from him that would lead to the Messiah.

It doesn't matter what you think god would or would not ask of you. It matters that whatever it is, you would do it without questioning god. It matters that whatever it is, you would consider it to be a good and moral act.