I have always been horrified by the story of the binding of Isaac. Who wouldn't be? How could God demand such a thing? Doesn't this prove that the Judeo-Christian tradition is not only violent and abusive but creepy-to-the-max as well?
The link to the sacrifice of Christ did not help to square it with me, since Christ was a willing adult, not a child. Undoubtedly, I have more to learn about this Isaac-Christ connection.
But this morning it occurred to me that we are all sacrificial beings--ontologically, in some sense, created for our particular priesthoods ("Let us commend ourselves and each other and all our lives to Christ our God"). We are always enacting some sacrifice or another, visibly or invisibly (in the secret altars of our hearts). If it's not to Christ, then it's to some other god.
I think that I have been sacrificing my (adult) children on the interior altar of my own guilt and regret over everything I did not do right as a mother.
Time to abandon that old altar, and move to the only altar from which the sacrifice can walk away whole!
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1 comment:
Ah, there's a lot of that going on among us old parents.
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