Journal of April 12, 2005

I am reminded first of all by Abraham, the man who was willing to slay is child in what by our distant eyes certainly seems to be evil and self serving, and must make us wonder. I am thinking now more of the Islamic report which, I am pretty sure, is iconic. It seems that this Abraham actually believed some voices popping up in his were the voice of God. He was thoroughly convinced. And he was absolutely convinced that he would do every thing these voices called upon him to do. Period. This needs to be understood in a way in which Abraham is not at all perturbed by the fact that these voices are telling him to commit a crime, i.e., a forbidden act, for Abraham has gotten into his head that when the voice of God speaks, you don’t hang around and wonder about it, or question it, rather, you just do it. That made perfect sense to Abraham. Obviously you would just do it, knowing that he has called you to do something, and if you are not sure you ought to go ahead and do it anyway on the off chance that it is God’s will and you were just too slow to get the clear picture, i.e., overkill would be the prudent thing to do. Allah is usually in a good mood and conveys forgiveness, although he may trip you up in some real clever way that you have not dreamed up, and so is always a few steps ahead of you.

And so Abraham is such a good slave, much like the Moon and the Stars and the Sun, that he doesn’t ever presume to question God with regard to an absolute order, but merely to immediately carry it out as commanded and not think any more about it, only that it was a command of Allah, and I obey Allah as a slave, that is my claim to him as I seek mercy for myself. I have given him good service, just as he commanded, and now I would not be surprised to see that I am reward in someway, butt if not, it still doesn’t make any difference, for you know always that you are going to do things God’s way anyway, and so why don’t you just get used to that notion.

In general, if God says do it, then you’d better do it and just hopes he gives you a reward for sincerely seeking to do a good job, but I can tell you anyhow, there is at least a good chance that he will give you consideration on the Day of Judgment, where he is going to be dumping people exactly where he had told them in hell, unless he is in a good mood.

And he will gaze upon us with no respect at all and will dump us where he chooses, for Allah knows best. He always does. He always will.

This is the icon of the Slave called Abraham, who always did what he was told and never wondered if perhaps the voice were fake or not, his sincerity in compliance would pull him through, and give him a real hope for something nice on the Day of Judgment, when Allah makes up (or simply shows us?) his mind.

Now this Abraham one day gets the big idea that his voices have told him to kill his own son. And so, this Greatest of the Slaves, did exactly as he thought he understood and went about to kill his son. He loved his son more than life, but still he was a slave to Allah and so of course would have to kill his son. His son was so taken by his obedience that he wanted to serve such an Allah by being the one who was commanded to commit suicide, in order to show the limits of submission and dedication as a slave to the Great Allah of Abraham, one man willing to murder his own son if commanded, and without hesitation. The Great Mercy was that Abraham could inform his beloved son ahead of time and thereby enable him, the son, to become a Submitter and to have a good chance of some reward by Allah. Allah can anything he wants to, but it really makes him angry if you refuse to do something he tells you to do, and that means a horrible hell, but then if you do a good job, and especially if you are eager to be his slave, then you may very well get a reward of something like, say, really exceptional sex, every thing, of course, being of Allah’s own choosing and the constant word is: Allah knows best.

It seems that Abraham was the smartest guy in the world, for he had figured out or somehow come see that his voices where the voices of this guy called Allah, and this guy Allah is God. That’s the difference between him and everyone else, for he is God.

And he figured out that the way of smart conduct was to get in the eager mode of wanting to do immediately anything, once it is determined as a fact, to be the guidance of Allah, to intend with immediacy to implement it as correctly and as timely as possible, all in the hopes of being able to some how be in a good position when this guy begins giving out rewards and punishments, for he can and will do anything. Fortunately, we hear, he is merciful, and forgives very often, and so it is not something that is absolutely rare, but very often, even quite often, some might maintain. Very often indeed.

Lunatic? This man then hears these voices and then believes they are the voices of God and acts on them in the same and utter faith that the “glass man” of Lockean fame had when he sought to avoid physical contact with others, and would draw back even with exaggeration in order to make the point clear.

Why don’t we call them both lunatics? Why do we single out Abraham and don’t think of him as a lunatic? I suppose because the story is plausible and that means that guys like me are hardly likely to catch Allah in a oft forgiving mode, and he may just deprive me all stimulation instead of giving me painful stimulation.

I think by any reasonable assessment this man is a lunatic. Why would any one believe him? but that is the story of Henny Penny. Only there was no fox and they never found the king, but kept looking for him forever.

Now is there another story than this of the helpless Abraham who had figured out the voices of God?

Jewish Element. There is the Jewish story. It is much the same except that it contains an element which I am pretty sure is missing from the Islamic.

[By the way I guess the Jews will be in for something when they meet Allah for they are responsible for the maintenance of a lie to which then the other slaves were infected and confused and forced to go the wrong way. The Christians are equally in error, but their’s is without malice, and they have this idea that they have a right to sit at the table of Allah by virtue of their Jesus and will be rudely awakened from their trance when they finally meet Allah and then we see how they will feel, whether they will be so sure of themselves, and we will see how Allah decides to reward them, good hearted by totally confused slaves, wasting a lot of time and energy that would have been better spend in doing what Allah wants from all.]

The added feature is this fact, according to Moses. Abraham had the experience of Isaac and so had really some pretty good evidence. It is true that he failed when faced with the king of Egypt and King Abimlech. He almost told a lie, but he did not. Now he was totally ashamed of himself, for it would be impossible for harm to come to him for he, Abraham, was promised a grandson, and this had not yet come to pass, but which would come to pass, for Allah always keeps his promises. He would never do that again. And likewise in the present case, even though my voices, or what I have to take as my voices, have told me to commit a crime (and hence the knowledge of which is presupposed), I don’t have to know whether they are the voices of God or fakes, but one thing I do know is that my son cannot be harmed no matter what I do. And so I shall try to kill him knowing that nothing is beyond the capacity of the promising voices and so that no harm will come to him. He is like Balder of the Norse tales.

This hypothesis presents the judgment of a rational man, i.e., able to imagine illusion (for the lunatic cannot make that distinction), who makes a special case due to an evidence which must be demonstrated in a fact, namely that the promises of God can be relied upon. He will never fail.

No more malice is present than with the exploits of Quixote or the poor “glass man” of Locke.

But still this is not a firm basis of certitude, and this is given in the cross of Christ as the only way to convince the people that something like that suggested by Islam or Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mooneys is for then to be aware that someone came to pay the individual punishment, at least to the extend to suffering it along with him and sharing pain.

Moral Icon. 6:55 PM The point was this: the positive icon of the Christians lies in the 5 chapter of John’s Gospel where it is clearly stated that Jesus broke the revealed law of God, conveyed under the auspice of Moses, Great Lawman. He was torn between the immediacy of the law of love in relieving suffering in the here and the now, and of respecting the laws of his listeners in their blindness and holding back, he was the King of Men and thus of all men and so he did not hold back,but gave immediately, trying to convey his great truth of the overpowering love of God.

Jesus then dies along with us, even though there was no reason for his dying any death, in order,, as King of Men, to go through the fire first to show the others how to do it, how to die.

We each will bear the pain of sin in this breathing world (and no breath, I guess, in the next world, with lungs no more useful than a navel.

7:00 PM I’m off again. The point is that we have here an icon which requires that all pronouncement and interpretation of scripture by Christians be promotive of the moral law,

And this is in Jesus and Moses' law and the moral law.

7:10 PM What is the Jewish dimension here with the added detail. I think they essential bring in the moral order (even though, according to Kant, they only had its form). They give a justification to supplement Abraham’s otherwise sheer faith (in his voices) by providing the Son of Promise, Abraham’s excuse which is denied all other men. Namely he had reason to know that his son was safe. The Balder out (of the Norse tales). And it works and Abraham is saved for the moral world.

But, again, this means that the faith has a moral basis, but not that it, the morality, is supreme over all else. This is not given until Jesus in his vicarious death for all people.

7:14 PM And so we have two people, the Jews and the Arabians, and the Arabians give us the Great Slave (whom God even elevated to friendship) and who is presented in utter immorality of self imposed tutelage and dictate. The Jews doctored the story, it may seem, in order to establish a moral law, at least in absolute adherence to a dictated law of God. The reason Abraham is

The reason he is right is because he trusted the promises. If he did not have the promises we would have only the Great Slave as our model. This lay the necessary groundwork for the Moral Icon itself to be established in the life of the Christians’ Lord.

“God is like a wonderful father who delights when his children love each other and wants to show his delight, but you refuse it and hold back and opt for the deal of your pitiful fathers of antiquity. The point of all that was to give me to you and it has done that and now it is time to move on to the time of the Holy Spirit, when we can dispense with such things as laws, except merely for cooperation among rational people, like driving on the right side of the road.”

If you want to love God, I once heard a Methodist preacher say, then love his children. He suffers while his children are not loved. He suffers in the person of the Son of Man, the God/Man. He suffers so that God might express himself to human eyes. God suffers through Christ with all who suffer.

He wants the suffering to end.

7:26 PM I guess it is clear from the Great Slave model, if it rightly describes the Muslim, we see that it is evil in the following sense, that it denotes a willingness to subjugate the moral law to self interest in trying to get the best possible deal at the expense of others. The notion suggested by “willingness” is the key. the Muslims maintain that the fact that Abraham was stopped proves he was innocent of any crime, but that is sheer legalism and a subterfuge. They should just go ahead and admit that the man intended to kill the child and not, as in the Jewish model, act out the killing in all sincerity, but with the certain knowledge that the child would not be hurt. [This is Palmquist’s example of the assistant to the magician.]

For what it is worth we have in the example of the Gentile Christian (and it is to this that the Arabian youth will fly in giving up Islam without having to give in to Judaism) the very ideal of what Jesus wanted to convey, people who had no law but were following the way of the cross in an effort to reach out to others and to calm them and to assure them that help was at hand as Jesus had done and out of appreciation for what he did. (People need to read more about St. Francis.)

Instead of the law they had Christ, whom to serve and follow each in his own respective condition and without bickering. They were free then to serve him in their condition, e.g., as Greeks and as Romans, but always only incidentally to the service of Christ.

7:39 PM I wonder. The Jewish Christians (not having John’s 5th) joined Paul in making the moral law supreme, but for them it was not obvious on its own and there inn that exalted position solely because Christ had placed it there, and though he might not have. The Gentile Christians then differ only to the extent that they make the moral law solitary, and all else is justified as a means of strengthening the fervor for and love of this moral law.

7:42 PM Good point by BH today, that the Jacob stole the birthright from Essau and the transfer of a property cannot take place by deceit, but only by intention. This means that Essau is entitled to the promised land. And not Jacob.

7:45 PM The Jewish Christians then verge on the brink of evil, but are surely saved from that by the experience of growing in love of the moral law most of all, more than bowing or sacrificing.

8:03 PM What then do we have? The Arabian tale of the perfect slave. And the Jews making him worthy of moral respect for having complied with the letter of the law (murder) but not with the intention of evil. The perfect slave is obviously evil in the willingness to sell out his friends to the highest bidder (Allah).

Everything is a perfect slave, and indeed willingly, except man and he is often a disobedient and insolent slave and often also a willing and obedient slave. The sun and moon and stars follow their respective orbits in perfect clock work, and the animals do exactly as they are told, except they are given more latitude than the sun and moon and stars. There are clear signs for those with eyes to see. Mohammed always followed the clock and did exactly as he was told, for he was like Abraham in being a perfect slave, ready to do as bidden by Allah’s angel. What he was told to repeat, he repeated.

8:48 PM A man kills a Jew at the instigation Mohammed. The Jew was a close friend of an elder brother to the killer. For this reason the brother condemned the murder, accused the perpetrator of ingratitude, and said: ‘much of the fat on your body comes from the gifts of the Jews.’ But the murderer answered: ‘Verily if the man who commanded me to kill that Jew should commend me to kill you I would do so.’ Then the brother replied, ‘A religion which can drive men so far is an extraordinary religion,’ and he was converted on that some day.*

[* From page 149 of Mohammed The Man and His Faith by Tor Andrae