Tabaski, Abraham and God

Bon Tabaski!  For those of you who may be a little out of the loop, Tabaski was Nov. 17^th and I gotta say it was quite a good day; from the perspective of me as a human that is.  From the perspective of a sheep it was a very very baaaaaad day.  Sorry I had to.  For those of you still out of the loop Tabaski is the celebration of God providing a Ram to be sacrificed so that Abraham didn’t have to murder his son.  There are more euphemistic ways to say that, but why ruin the vivid imagery.  Christianity and Judaism have this same story of Abraham and Isaac but in Islam it’s an especially big holiday.  Every family buys a Ram or two or three, depending on finances, and has a truly grand old feast.  For weeks leading up to today you would be hard pressed to find a single car traveling in Senegal that didn’t have at least one sheep strapped to the roof.  Like I said bad day to be a sheep.  My Tabaski though was awesome.  I’m still stuffed.  It started out with a trip to the mosque in the morning for prayer and ritual.  I don’t really know what was said, but it was nice.  At the end of the prayers everyone got up and shook each others hands while asking for forgiveness for anything they may have done to the other person.  I really liked this part.  We need more things like this in the states.  After the mosque we went into the town and started killin some sheep.  The Imam killed the first two and then everyone proceeded to their respective houses to kill the rest.  I personally watched 7 sheep die today.  It wasn’t pretty.  Anyone who eats meat though, I suggest that you watch an animal be slaughtered at least once so that you can be an informed meat eater.  Too many people are in denial about where their meat comes from.  Let me fill you in.  It comes from cute animals with soft petable fur and adorable faces who have mothers.  There you go.  Now accept that and keep eating.  I did.  The food was truly delicious and my family even invented a new way to torture me with it.  They call it “Advance”.  This lovely bit of maniacal generosity involves feeding me and a few other people our own bowl first since there are lots of people and they want to make sure we get enough.   Of course when the second round of food comes no one knows that I have already eaten, so they still force massive amounts down my throat.  Maniacal generosity indeed.  After lunch we sat around and chatted, drank tea, met relatives who came in from out of town, and generally basked in the glory of the day.  Twas a truly good day.  Summary over.

I should probably leave it there but I’m going to do the stupid thing and add in personal commentary on the subject of religion.  I know I’m stupid for doing this, but I can’t keep my mouth shut.  Disclaimer: this is a commentary on the story of Abraham and Isaac, which belongs to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and thus I am not commenting on any specific faith, just faith in general.  Ok bases covered, here we go.  I do not like the story of Abraham and Isaac one bit.  It strikes me as an example of both man and God at their absolute worst.  What is there to celebrate about this story? Should we be celebrating that a man was so devoted to God that he was willing to murder his own son? Or maybe we’re celebrating that God was merciful and saved his disciple… from a problem that he himself created.  This story is down right scary.  I’m not naive I understand what is being celebrated: God rewarding devotion.  I understand it perfectly well, I just think that it’s completely wrong. 

Devotion in and of itself is not bad.  Deference to something greater than oneself is beautiful and can lead to great things like humility and selflessness.  It seems logical though that one should reserve such reverence and devotion for something that truly deserves it.  Say God for example.  People generally accept that God is worthy of devotion.  People have said of God that he is perfect goodness and love.  Well now that does sound pretty nice.  If God is perfectly good and people out of their own free will decide to worship him because of this, well that’s all well and good.  The problem comes with this story of Abraham and Isaac where God decides to test that devotion.  God commands Abraham to take his only son to the top of a mountain and offer him up as a sacrifice.  Abraham, my dearest most faithful disciple, murder something you love for me.  Murder your own flesh and blood.  In my name, the name of perfect goodness and love, do something of unspeakable evil.  Do you see what I’m getting at? Any God that requires and tests devotion is inherently unworthy of having it in the first place.  Its petty and childish and exactly the kind of behavior that would get you a time out in kindergarten.  In one of my favorite plays “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” (Great job Chico State Theatre Dept!) one of the characters asks if God’s love is conditional, “because if it is then that love is rendered utterly false”.  If God loves unconditionally then there is no reason to require or test devotion.  Some might say that God was teaching, showing the world that complete devotion leads to great rewards.  This may be so, but murder is a rather despicable way to teach a lesson.  Perhaps the ends justify the means.  That too has been said before. Yes in fact, right before some of the worst atrocities in history.  God cannot be an ends justify the means kinda guy.  If he is then he isn’t perfect goodness and love, he’s just someone with a lot of power and that is something to which no one should be devoted.  Am I saying no one should be devoted to God, no of course not.  It is neither my place nor my desire to do so.  I’m simply saying that in my opinion both Abraham and God made some big mistakes here, and I hope they’ve learned from them.  Maybe that’s the true lesson here.