Quote:
Originally posted by coldstart
If your neighbor told you that God has decreed that he sacrifice his infant child with a large knife, what would you do???
That man is the founder of three major religions (Judiasm, Christianity and Islam). Abraham.....
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And now (As Paul Harvey used to say) the rest of the story...
1) Abraham passed the test of dedication and God did not let his son be killed.
2) God Ultimately passed down the rules that people should not be murdered. Unlike many other religions of that time and after, God does not ask that pain and suffering should be inflicted on people to appease any sort of blood thirsty desire on God's part. (But he does warn that his followers will suffer at the hands of others, which as been the case).
3) God rewarded Abraham with many descendants, both geneologically as well as spiritually.
4) And according to the Christian beliefs, God then offered his own son to the earth, and allowed him to be sacrificed -- competely. In spite of this most grevious sin (and many others), God is willing to forgive us if we chose to accept God.
I suppose that if Abraham had actually carried through on the sacrifice, he wouldn't have been any different then the followers of Baal, David Koresh, Charles Manson, James Jones many other religions which have come and gone up to the present day. The sacrifice some people to an imaginary god, they die out themselves and the cycle starts again. But then that's not the story of the Bible.
So you need to be careful to judge the Bible based on a small fraction of it's contents.