Abraham, the Bible says, came from a family of moon worshippers in Ur of the Chaldees (which is in modern day Iraq). Abraham then was ethnically an Iraqi; an Arab.
Abraham might have sought after God with great passion, but he wasn't known for any great ability to maintain good relations with those closest to him in the family. When he began to seek after God, Abraham left his father's household in search of a city whose builder and maker was God.
Abraham surely had commendable passion for God and trust in Him. Yet it would also be right to observe that Abraham lost sight of the value of his relations at home.
My early life training was in evangelical Bible study groups in India. They do lay a solid foundation, much of which is good. But as in all micro as well as macro cultures, not everything is perfect. I still vividly remember admonitions to leave and to cleave - leave the world including one’s elderly parents and siblings and cleave to God and to one's wife. In the energetic burst of youth that sounded profound and radical, requiring spiritual courage and commitment. Not anymore. An aging and mature mind considers that approach to life detrimental to the promotion of humane values and to the building of a good society.
Abraham obviously did not know how to love God and at the same time love his family. Other than God, Abraham clung on only to Sarah; a love motivated by self-interest. Nothing is known of Abraham’s love for his parents, his firstborn Ishmael, and his nephew Lot. Very little is known of his love for his favourite son Isaac.
Abraham is regarded as the father of faith by three world religions. But ironically he wasn't a good biological father. His first son, Ishmael, he cruelly drove out of his house along with the boy's mother, Hagar. Both would have died under the hot sun in the arid conditions of Arabian weather had God's merciful hand not saved their lives. His second son, Isaac, Abraham himself had intentions to kill in cold blood in order to strangely please God. Once again it was God who rescued Isaac from a reckless maniac of a father. The Biblical Hagar's is a sad story of a marginalized woman abused against her own will and then thrown out of the house to die in the desert when she and her son are no more of any use to their exploiters, Abraham and Sarah.
Hagar is now the butt of ridicule, slur, judgment, and condemnation by pastors and preachers who moralize against her behaviour and that of her son Ishmael. We certainly live in a world of twisted mindsets and morals!
Like the sad episode with Hagar and Ishmael, when Abraham had a similar conflict with his nephew Lot that was instigated by servants on both sides, rather than resolve the conflict Abraham had a private meeting with Lot and sought to part ways. Breaking up family is the only solution Abraham could foresee for all his domestic troubles. The Bible spiritualizes that decision of Abraham. But that decision wrecked Lot's life and his family.
Abraham is no great model for the maintenance of peace between humans. His descendants like him are great seekers of God, but are also great troublemakers in the world, constantly fighting with one another and all the time threatening to destabilize global peace.
SARAH THE BANDIT QUEEN!
As long as Ishmael was the only son there was no problem, especially for Sarah. And that's because in her mind she was satisfied that Abraham at least had an heir.
But the coming of Isaac darkened Sarah's heart.
The one once perceived as the heir had suddenly become an obstacle to her own son's rise, because Ishmael was older (and possibly stronger).
A reason had to be manufactured to evict Ishmael out of the house along with his mother who too would have been at least in Sarah's mind a threat.
The Bible doesn't record this very human struggle. It was Sarah who had devised a plan to bring Ishmael into the world to rescue her family. The means Sarah used was a blot on woman hood. It signalled the exploitation of a weaker woman by a powerful woman. It made one helpless woman to be forced into unwelcome behaviour by another woman with her man. And yet the Bible pins the blame on Hagar and Ishmael to manufacture a heilsgeschichte (salvation history) that would put identity ahead of morality.
Sarah's life shows that those who plan good for others out of self-interest can also plan evil for them again out of self-interest. It also reveals some other very dark truths about humanity: that the powerful do evil against the weak and get away with it; that they often construct narratives to blame the victim; that victims are often shunned and walk quietly away into the darkness of history; that the rich have no shame and the poor sometimes die from it; that women can sometimes be the worst enemies of other women; and that a woman's exploitation can very likely begin from within the four walls of the home she lives in.
ABRAHAM AND SARAH WERE SLAVE OWNERS
Disturbing scenes on television in the past few days (June 17, 2020) of mobs of young men and women from all backgrounds going around cities and towns bringing down statues of slave owners was alarming and disturbing. They sought equality and justice, security and peace.
My thoughts immediately shifted to Abraham and Sarah and their own dealings with Hagar. Hagar was more than a domestic help in the family. She was useable and dispensable. She was a slave.
That seemed disgusting and nauseating to me. That slaveowners would be extolled as archetypes of faith, even my own faith.
In the early years of my life I have quietly observed how families I knew treated poor relatives and friends given to their care like slaves of the family.
I knew one such family very closely. This widow had many sons and daughters. But besides her own she took care of an orphaned son of a relative. She educated all her children but not him. He was kept to do the family chores.
Luckily for him, he got a job at a government factory in Khadki my native town, and with that a reasonably spacious house which the family desperately needed.
The entire family lived there till he retired from service. To cut a long story short, this man and his wife were never treated as part of the family. They were always meant to be the servants of the household and were the butt of jokes, abused, and humiliated. They were restrained with fear and with the overwhelming might of numbers – about ten in the family juxtaposed with them two, the poor man and his wife. They could do nothing to help themselves.
This is modern day slavery. Ancient slavery was worse; often unimaginable.
I was shocked to realize that two of my faith heroes from the Bible of whom I was taught from my Sunday School days had this despicable background and indulged in this barbaric behavior. Today I have no regard for those faith stalwarts and those like them. I don't teach my children to emulate them. I advice my kids to pick their heroes wisely - people who will inspire them to do good and to live morally.
Comments