Test of love

I remember the night I asked the question.

It would have been sometime in 2015. My little girl, Grace, was just over two years old and still in nappies.

We were going through one of the usual bible studies at a church connect group meeting.

The topic somehow touched on the story of Abraham and Isaac. The classic tale of obedience and faith. This was a faith we should seek to emulate.

Things had already begun to shift inside me already around this time. I was grappling with the various cognitive dissonances of my faith.

So I posed the question as food for thought.

"God - our heavenly father - is suppose to be the example of the perfect parent. But as a parent myself, I would never, could not ever, even think of putting my child through a test, an ordeal such as this. How are we suppose to consider God in this story to be 'good'?"

After an awkward pause, one of the senior members of the group cleared his throat and spoke.

"Well, I don't believe we are meant to look at the story that way..."

He droned on for a while. But I started to drift off. It was the same old deflection I heard before. God is good. All the time. His response did not at all directly address the issue I had raised. We were just simply meant to push aside the bad parts and just focus on the specific lessons we were suppose to follow. Obedience and faith.

I remember as he was droning on, Grace came up to me with a soiled nappy. So I grabbed my bag, got up and went off to the bathroom to change her.

By the time I returned, the group discussion had already moved to another topic.

___

This is the cognitive dissonance I could no longer push aside.

I know now what it is to be a parent, a mother. Before this, when people tell me what that love would entail, there was no way I could question it. I was not a parent myself then. So how would I know.

But after I became a mother, everything changed. I know now what it truly means to love my child. And I know there are lines I would never cross.

I now know as a parent, I would never test my child and ask them to give up something that means the world to them, or to do something completely against their nature, just to see how far they would go to prove their love for me.

Someone at church once shared this story: they gave their child a box of their favourite chocolate, then afterwards asked them for a piece to see if their child loved them enough to share it back with them. This is also a kind of test, you see. We do it too.

Not. The. Same.

If for some reason, my own child declined to share their snack with me, I would be surprised. I might even feel a little hurt. But I would not conclude that it meant they did not love me. And it certainly would not make me withhold an ounce of my own love for them, much less punish them.

Another person may reason that we might ask our child to throw away their favourite lovey or pacifier into the bin when it's time to wean them off it. After all, it is for their own good.

The difference is. I would not be doing this as a test to see if they truly loved me and had faith in me. As a parent I would explain the reasons why we might need to get rid of their pacifier or lovey and work collaboratively with them if it was necessary to wean them off it.

___

God Himself would state in His ten commandments: Thou Shalt Not Murder.

Yet He is using it as a test with one of his beloved subjects to see if he is willing to commit the very thing He does not condone.

It is sick and abusive.

But this is the Old Testament version of God, someone might say. Jesus will come in the New Testament and change all that old school stuff.

Do you hear yourself?

What lengths and hoops you are willing to jump through, or the mental twists and turns you will juggle, just to make something wrong be right, because it just simply has to be. Otherwise, everything will fall apart.

Well. That's what happened to me. So I decided to stop.

When something is wrong. I had to have the courage to call it so.

No more excuses.

Seems like I am a better parent than the God of the Bible.

Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravagio (c. 1598-1603)

Genesis 22
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”