I am also conscious of the fact that our prophets have endorsed this as a great event, as a great signal of Abraham’s obedience. So maybe I should recant what I had said earlier. I simply have a lot of trouble feeling enthusiastic about the way Abraham responded to the test and I need to work through it somehow I guess.

So did Isaac just trust and obey his Father or did he have the same devotion to God?

As to your last point, how do you know that your perception of the principles of justice, mercy, and charity is any better than your perception of what God wants of you?

Great post. As anybody can tell from looking at my responses to various posts here at T&S, Abraham’s sacrifice carries deep meaning for me, as I harp on it a lot, and your thoughts here about what his experience tells us about reason and logic versus obedience dovetails nicely with many of my own thoughts, though you are more articulate than I am :).

Now, I’m not sure what to make of your feelings about the “love of madness”, though. I agree that there does seem to be an element of human psychology that is attracted to the “thrill” of total sacricfice in the face of reason. However, normally I can’t say I have ever seen this in anything but a negative light. The most common expression of this seems to be in women, not men, where I’ve seen, over and over and over again, an otherwise decent woman sacrifice everything for husband or boyfriend, despite all logic, and despite the man’s being an unredeemable cad (adulterous, violent, deceitful, etc.). I can’t tell you how much I am sickened and repelled by such madness, which is what it truly is, but it happens more and more often as men get worse in our telestial world, and as more of them figure out that their woman’s need for love is everything to her, and can be exploited. No, no, I don’t think God is encouraging that, or trying to “re-direct it”, at all.

I am one of those who don’t believe Abraham “cheerfully” walked to Moriah, or that Adam “cheerfully” sacrificed animals, etc. My reading of the Scriptures, plus my experience in the presence of truly humble, righteous people, is that the latter tend to be very sensitive not only to others’ needs, but feel emotion in a general sense much more strongly than others. They may not express that, in fact they may take great pains to hide how they really feel (especially if they are angry or are suffering), but they FEEL very strongly nevertheless. (The Savior is the perfect example of this.) In addition, such people tend to actually be more introspective, soul-searching, and rational than most. By rational I mean that, since they tend to be so sensitive to other’s needs, they make every effort to think through their own actions and words before acting or speaking (lest they offend God or Man needlessly).

Now, how do these observations apply to Abraham’s sacrifice? Well, for starters, when Abraham received the command (and I’ll get to Gary Lee’s concern about making sure it is God speaking to us in a minute), I see him agonizing over it. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. However, what *kind* of agony are we talking about here? It wouldn’t have been, “Is it God speaking, or am I deceived?”. Abraham spoke with God, walked with God, was the “friend of God”, and I think he would have known by this time how to distinguish God from Satan, and God from his own emotions. Rather, I think it would have been agony of the “Why are you doing this? What about the promises you made to me, and to Sarah? What about the promises made to my fathers, which must come through Isaac–a *live* Isaac, not a dead one? It was all I could do to forgive my own father for this, why must Isaac suffer what I did then? Why? Why?”

Now, the Scriptures don’t tell us of such a conversation (of course they don’t tell us a lot of things, but when has that stopped us here at T&S?), but they do give us intimations. Abraham rose very early the next day–that would have been easy, as I doubt that he slept any. Likewise, I strongly suspect he felt a need to be gone before Sarah arose (though she suspected sonething—see how she looked for their return a far off). Also, look at the disingenuous way he responded to Isaac’s question, “Father, where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”, with “My son, God Himself will provide a sacrifice.” We do have a clue as to what went through Abraham’s mind, from Paul’s writings, when he says that Abraham reasoned and had faith that God could raise Isaac from the dead.

That brings me to my point. Abraham DID NOT obey “blindly”, if we mean that he obeyed without somehow rationalizing his obedience. No one ever obeyed a truly difficult commandment (notice how I phrased that) without trying to rationalize what the sense of the commandment was. Sure, there are plenty of saints who obey routine commandments, with some discomfort, with the idea, “That’s what the prophet said to do,” but NO ONE who ever lived, followed a truly hard, demanding, and difficult commandment of God, without at least trying to reason as the utility or “silver-lining” of it. (“God will make this up to me in the resurrection,” or “This bishop will eventually be released, then it’ll get better,” etc.) So, when it was all said and done, and Abraham was marching with Isaac to Moriah, he evidently was thinking, among other things, “God knows about those promises. He has the power to raise Isaac from the dead. Surely that’s what he will do…As for the reason for all this…I wish I knew. But I am nothing without my Heavenly Father, the only real “father” I have ever had. He must have a reason for this, He must…”

My admiration of Abraham, then, is not because he obeyed without questioning. Rather, because he obeyed at all. How many of us, faced with far lesser trials, and with just as much ability to “see a silver lining” as Abraham, DON’T OBEY. Brigham Young obeyed the commandment to have plural wives, despite wanting to trade places with a man in a casket rather than do so. William Law had the same commandment, and apostatized. Reed Smoot received the commandment to *not* have plual wives, and obeyed. Richard Lyman received the same commandment, but disobeyed and was excommunicated. All of these men rationalized what they did—but not all obeyed.

In the end, it isn’t that God expects us to *abandon* our reason and logic, but to *sacrifice* it. God never condemned anyone for trying to make since out of a commandment that seemed illogical or wrong. We are human, and we can’t help but reason. However, in the end, we must obey. That’s why I love Abraham…not because he was “superhuman”, but because I perceive that he was “all too human”—that he was truly human, and obeyed. God is NOT saying, “Follow me and lose your mind! Embrace madness!” (That would be Satan; just picture those scenes from Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will”, where Rudolf Hess yells out, to obvious crowd approval, “Hitler has made us free from Freedom!”) Rather, God is saying, “I know you like to think you understand everything, my child, but you have so far to go, and I have to teach you. Rationalize all you want–but in the end you must trust me.” Obedience to God, ultimately, always boils down to TRUST. Abraham trusted God, and is with Him now.

Just a few more bullet observations;

-Doesn’t the passage of time make this story more acceptable? I mean, does there appear to be any moral difference, on the surface, bewteen God’s telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (that is, to cut his throat, disembowel him, fillet him, cook him on the altar, and eat him), and Joseph Smith telling men to give their wives to him to be sealed? Well, is there any difference, other than the passage of time? We’re all so ready to judge poor Joseph—can we direct that judgementalism a little towards God, especially if we find out in the eternities that, just like Abraham being told to lie about Sarah being his sister, or to sacrifice his son, we find out that God *told* Joseph to do what he did, to test *him*, as well as the others involved? God could have “taken” Joseph—he didn’t. (When Joseph says, “You never knew me. You don’t who I am…”, I can guess at least one thing that he was: a suffering servant, tortured with knowledge he could not share, knowledge that might very well justify him a little better in our eyes.)

–Was Isaac’s test in all of this any different than that of the men who were asked to give Joseph their wives, other than the passage of time?

–Finally, to address Gary Lee’s quite sincere question, “How can you be sure that it is God giving you the commandment?” Well, maybe that explains why everybody’s “test” is different. Abraham spoke with God directly; all the men Joseph went to for their wives had seen Joseph perform miracles, and had received revelations at various times for themselves. My point is that God seems to tailor such tests to the time and place in which we live, as well as our individual circumstances. Today, who knows how such tests may come. (For me, it might be President Hinckley telling us to all register as Democrats…:> ) Also, notice the test always seems to involve what we love the best, or what has already involved the most emotion for us. (Notice how the Lord, in commanding Abraham, says, “Take thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest…”)

Whew! That’s enough for now, but thanks again Adam for a grest post.