I'm a parent of a child.
I, like most other parents I know, would never consciously or deliberately hurt their child and, further, endeavor to do whatever is possible to shield the child from harm. The Hebrew bible would see to support that in a text where Yahweh first demands child sacrifice and who then tells Abraham....leave the boy alone. (Too bad, the ram was stuck and ended up on the table.) The message to a society in which child sacrifice was a practice was to lay off, love your kids and let them live.
Ezekial, through the power of god, restores a widow's son to life from the dead.
Life is important. Life of Jewish people...the chosen is particularly important.
Christian era texts recall....this is my son, my beloved....on a couple of separate occasions.
The Son, the beloved, a proclaimed innocent, now believes he must offer himself in holocaust to expiate sin that he has not committed in order to appease an apparently blood thirsty God, his father, who requires sacrifice and homage, his son's, in order to be placated.
This god then lets his son suffer one of the most heinous deaths in recorded history.
This is where my problem with god as presented to me my entire life truly began.
Some argue about easter and resurrection. That's irrlevant to this observation.
That's another topic for another time.
Let's for now, just think on this one that I have outlined above.
It simply does not make sense either psychologically or even in the context of "salvation history" in which god is described as a lover, nurturer etc. and as one who abhors blood sacrifice to turn around, change the rules and act in such a fashion.
Besides, what kind of an all powerful god is ever going to be placated by a fallible creation endowed with free will that he's fashioned in his own image and likeness in the first place?
No comments:
Post a Comment