What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The rules

    Here’s how we are going to get along.

    1. Black shoes in the sanctuary
    2. Play nicely
    3. Don’t copy the provost/pope/prime minister into emails that are addressed to anyone else
    4. No boring worship
    5. Obey the moratorium on unnecessary exclamation marks!
    6. No communion for dogs, not even on St Francis’s Day
    7. Communion for all humans any day
    8. Black ink. Only black ink.
    9. No rotas on noticeboards
    10. Clerical honorifics take the definite article

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

    Reply

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