Breaking and Entering - Liz R. Goodman

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could carry around the law, those two tablets of commandments by which a people might live together in peace. No magic, no spectacle, these were simple guidelines as to how love is lived out, how love behaves, so to enable life together and life abundant. The binding these guidelines offered the people—the religion contained and offered therein, so to speak—is a voluntary binding one to another. And it comes with the critique written right into it: “I am the Lord your God, have no other gods before me, and make no idols for worship. Rather, to be my people, honor your elders, remember the sanctity of time, and restrain from violating one another out of misplaced desire.”

      Of course, this box was eventually imagined as having power of the more spectacular sort. When the Philistines had it in their possession after making war with the Israelites, all sorts of bad fortune that befell them was credited to their having this box. And then there’s the portrayal of the powers of this box in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark—it burning the skin off any Nazi who tried to steal it. Yes, it’s true that this box came to be imagined as having great and terrible power—but I wonder if that, as Moses said, was all just God putting on a show to put the fear of God into the people so we would not sin.

      The cost of sin, after all, is quite high. When a people, a nation, falls out of the bounds of a commonly held law and sense of authority, a common acknowledgement of who’s in charge and to be listened to and respected, it’s not an overstatement to say that all hell breaks loose.

      Have you seen the news lately?

      And yet God does have mercy for our need for it, and so does apparently try to fulfill it—though in ways that actually give life rather than take it, and in a way that actually widens the circle of who’s in and who’s out so that it’s indeed a circle that has a center but no outer edge. God has mercy for our religious needs, and through time has met those needs with religious rites increasingly simple, increasingly light. And what we do here on any given Sunday is the most responsible thing we can as regards our need for religion—we hold it in the light of consciousness and good intention.

      Light, indeed!

      But, hey, did you hear the one about this guy who made a statue of the Ten Commandments, those utterances, those ineffable puffs of air by which God meant for the people simply to abide together in peace? The statue weighs five thousands pounds, two and a half tons! He needs a crane to move it around, and move it he does. He goes around the country with it so people can see it. Sometimes the crane buckles under its weight.

      Now do you get the joke? It might even make Bill Maher laugh—and I don’t mean scoff but really laugh. I know it does me, but then I’m always up for a laugh.

      Thanks be to God.

      Obey.

      After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

      So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt-offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.”

      Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.’ So the two of them walked on together.

      When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt-offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (Genesis 22:1–18)

      Much has been made of Abraham’s obedience to God’s command: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him there as a burnt-offering.” Much is made of his obedience to God. A model of faithfulness, people have said, a role model in the life of faith.

      And why not? After all, not only was it a terrible command that he was ready to obey—“ready” being perhaps a better translation of the Hebrew word hinneni than the more common rendering, “Here I am.” Not only was it a violent command that he was ready to obey—violent, yes, toward Isaac but also toward the promise God had been making to Abraham all along, that he and Sarah, in spite of barrenness and old age, would become the parents of a great people, a promise whose fulfillment had been dubious and delayed and laughable even. No, not only was it a terrible and violent command, it was also cruel, worded in such a way as if not merely to test Abraham but to terrorize him. Why else belabor the identity of the one whom Abraham was to take to a mountain that God would show him: “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”? Why else but to bring it closer and closer to home, closer and closer to Abraham’s heart: “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”?

      This overemphasis comes in contrast to the otherwise spare story, which spares no detail. Plodding and suspenseful, it notes that Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young men with him and, of course, his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved. He cut wood for the burnt offering, which Isaac would soon enough carry—bound to him before he was bound to it. Methodical if mean, the story notes every fine act on Abraham’s part, every movement he makes toward Moriah and then, now alone with his son (his only son, Isaac, whom he loved), farther into the place that God had showed him.

      Unswerving obedience, we might hear in it all—Abraham’s building an altar and binding Isaac to it, Abraham’s taking out his knife to kill his son. (And what of Isaac, he who was strong enough to carry his own wood and to hike for three days so was certainly strong enough to fight his old father off? What of him?) Faithful obedience: we marvel at it and we wonder of ourselves, Would we? Could we? I have, anyway. I wrote my senior thesis at divinity school in large part about this very question.

      Would we? Could we?

      Do we have to?

      You know, I’m beginning to suspect that all this time I’ve been marveling at the wrong act of obedience.

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