Abraham, Sören, Sufjan and Me

I was listening to Sufjan Stevens’ song “Abraham”, and I realized I hadn’t really thought about that story from the old testament since my sons were born.

In college, I was blown away by Soren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling.” Here was a true punk rock philosopher, self-publishing tracts with little apparent concern for material success. Instead, he simply had something important to say.

And at the time, I got it. He knew that you couldn’t just believe something when it was easy, or when it suited you.

According to Kierkegaard, Abraham wasn’t willing to kill his son Isaac because he was a tragic hero, or because he had hope that god would save his son. He was willing to kill his son Isaac because of his duty to god. He had infinite resignation; an acceptance that the world was as god had created it, and it was good.

But would I kill my son, if so commanded by god? I think it’s difficult to truly consider that action. We do not live in a time in which god presents xerself to us or commands us through clear direction. Instead, we must look through the tea leaves, the subtle messages that come through the world that might be the echo of god’s thoughts or words.

For me, the act of Abraham and Kierkegaard’s obsession with it bears greater thought. For it was this book that made me consider that there could be something radical about a belief in god. That there was more to the bible and to god than what I had seen on the 700 club, or from the moral majority, or any of the dominant denominations of christianity that controlled the perception of faith in America.

The moral of Abraham’s story is not that a belief in god will lead to prosperity on earth. For he will have murdered his only son, and will have to explain his actions to a disbelieving Sarah. It’s that the nature of existence is one filled with pain only when one accepts that there is nothing beyond the nature of existence. If we aren’t willing to consider something larger than us, a world that we are a part of and separate from, then we will have no way to move beyond the sadness that this world is filled with.

For we are forced to kill our own sons each and every day. We must perform actions that we cannot see the good in. And it must be in our faith that there is something greater that ties us all together that allows us to move beyond the simple sadness. To move beyond the tragic.

And we cannot expect god or anyone else to prevent sadness. For Abraham, the knowledge that he would kill his own son was enough for god, but we don’t have that luxury. We will all eventually die, or lives becoming little more than scraps of paper and pictures in old boxes.

The knowledge that god gives can lead to a tragedy in the classic sense, the knowledge that this will all end badly.

But look to Abraham. He marched up the mount, not slowing in step or in conviction, because life and god demanded it.

Would I raise a knife above my son, like Abraham did, if god demanded it? No.

But our stories of the bible are not of the world as it is, but as it could be.