After living his whole life by God’s side and knowing what He is capable of and absolutely sure that God is almighty and our creator it only seems logical that Abraham would obey God’s orders without second guessing. It is strange that knowing what we do (at least about the Catholic religion) that Abraham did in fact deceived his son and his men by not being honest about God’s request. After many years of close relationship, many gifts from God to Abraham and making Abraham so many promises of being the father of kingdoms to come, God decided to test his follower’s loyalty by asking of him the sacrifice of his only son.
These chapters of Genesis explain the vision of God as a mighty creator to be feared. Especially when placed alongside many of Jesus’s teachings, it is hard to find this God worthy of praising. God gives humanity free will, but when they decide not to follow Him, He sets on fire. Abraham too is complicit to many of God’s mischiefs. He went to Egypt and to Abim’elech and introduced his wife, Sarah, as his sister, knowing that they would be punished for wedding her. Straight out lying and dropping his enemies to a state of fear does not seem like the loving father version of God that we have. Merciless and punishing is a more accurate description of God in these chapters.
I definitely understand the points you’re making about the God in these chapters being a hard God to praise. I also thought the demand He made of Abraham, if not wrong, was hard to see as praiseworthy. However, I disagree with your assertion that God, in these chapters of Genesis, is merciless and punishing. He, after all, spared Isaac in the end. He also made three extremely grand promises to Abraham, promising him a great nation, land, and many descendants. To me, this seems like an extremely generous God. These are things that Abraham would not have gotten on his own and we aren’t given a reason as to why he deserves them, but God promises them to him anyway. Fulfilling these promises, especially giving him the miracle of Isaac, does not seem to me like something a merciless and punishing God would do.
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God’s actions towards Abraham here are surprising considering that He wanted him to sacrifice his only son whom he worked so hard to conceive. It seems wrong, but I agree that God’s actions here can be seen as less than merciful – as merciless and punishing would be the correct words to describe these actions. Overall God did save his son and Abraham’s actions are those which all Christians should follow as an example of following God’s plan for us!
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