Sacrifice and What’s So Great about the Bible

Military personnel are routinely sacrificed by government leaders to protect the god of national wealth; some say abortion is infant sacrifice to the gods of convenience and materialism.

And in the Bible, Genesis 22 shows Abraham nearly stabbing to death and burning his son as an offering (reportedly until God congratulates him on his fear of God).

(About Abraham: At church not too long ago, when I voiced my skepticism about Abraham’s perceptions about what God intended for him (land grabbery, propagating with his slave, sending his own son into the wilderness to die, willingly nearly murdering his child, etc.), one person’s response was immediate if not overly original: “And God used him anyway to do great things, in spite of his faults. Isn’t it great how God takes messed up people and does great things?” Maybe, but my guess is that although he really was a messed up guy who made a lot of immoral choices, Abraham wasn’t any more likely than the next person when it came to having that sort of direct line to God or special mission designed by the divine.)

Jesus’ crucifixion is also commonly framed as a sacrificial act by God, as in God sending his son to be sacrificed to appease God’s wrath against humanity.

In both of these biblical examples, I have to wonder, What happened to “God is love”? I only see inexplicable cruelty.

1 John 4 reads, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Abraham’s act of “sacrifice” was as deranged as Farquaad’s, and God’s “sacrifice” of Jesus is as counter to love as it gets. Neither shows what Christians consider core: self-sacrificing agape love.

Now, I’m willing to be told I’m wrong in my discounting of these interpretations of events, but on a deeper level I think my supposed challenges to religious tradition are perfectly acceptable within biblical heritage. Indeed, the Bible is a story that considers a particular group’s history and formation–and shines because it is not propaganda. Even as it tells of the group’s “chosen” identity and special purpose, the Bible reveals the people’s failings, at times even with condemnation (see Jeremiah 22, Micah 1, and Mark 13:1-2).

The Bible’s own critiquing of the very people it touts as God’s chosen allows for–encourages?–critical questioning of its own contents. Its oft-gruesome tales, whose even watered-down telling in my daughter’s picture Bible require selective reading (I sure am not going to show her those pictures of Isaac on the pile of sticks or read to her that Jesus’ loving daddy stuck him up there to bleed), are part of a messy heritage whose narrative merits active readership and constant reinterpretation towards redemption and grace.

For that quest there is no high-and-mighty glossy marketing brochure–just a guiding text’s act of selfless sacrifice.