Q

uestion

109

Why would a merciful God allow Job’s family

and fortune to be taken away, and why would

God ask Abraham to kill his own son?

Rebecca Bowman Woods

A.

Want to be blessed? All you have to do is ask. Do all the right

things and you’ll receive everything you desire—health, wealth,

and happiness. Maybe you’ve heard a message like this on televi-

sion or bought a book making similar claims. Maybe you’ve heard it in

church, too.

I’m all for positive thinking. But faith is not a means of getting what we

want from God, and lack of faith is not the cause of the trials and tragedies

that are sometimes part of life. Yet the conventional wisdom, linking faith with

blessings, has persisted in one form or another throughout the ages.

The Old Testament book of Job picks up an ancient Near Eastern folktale

and expands it into a poetic argument between Job, his friends, and God. It

challenges conventional wisdom (see Proverbs) with an unconventional wis-

dom that has always held a place among God’s people.

In the story of the binding of Isaac, the most popular interpretation is that

God was testing Abraham’s faith and never intended to let him kill his only

son. But there are other possible ways of looking at the story. Child sacrifi ce

was practiced by some religions in the ancient world. The story might have

functioned to make it clear, from generation to generation, that the God of

Abraham does not require human sacrifi ce.

Stories such as the binding of Isaac and Job’s reversal of fortune disturb

us, as they should. When we consider these diffi cult stories, we discover

another type of truth—one not grounded in literal facts but in humanity’s

search for answers to timeless questions.