And when God had me wander from my father’s household, I said to her, ‘This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’ – Genesis 20:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 11, 2018): Genesis 20

Oscar Wilde said that “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” I am allowed to my reality, but what I should not do is force you into that reality. It is one of the areas where I feel Christianity often goes astray sometimes. I believe that Christianity leads me towards making moral choices. On some of those moral choices, there is agreement across the society. Do not murder (maybe not “Do not kill” which can engage some in a situational ethics debate) is something upon which we can agree. We can encode it in our laws. But I also believe that Jesus leads us toward a statement that says “Do not hate.” While I think that that is an excellent practice, it is not a practice that all of us want to follow. I believe that all hate ever does is tear down a society, but others disagree with me, believing that hate is a normal emotion that needs to be expressed. Some even believe, and I do not understand this, that hate is something that God leads us toward and commands us to do. And so they carry placards which carry messages of hate aimed at various minorities. I think that the world would be a much better place if we would just lay our hate aside, but not everyone agrees.

And so the idea “Do not murder” is encoded in various laws of our society. Murder is wrong. But hate, on the other hand, is somewhat protected as free speech unless it incites people to violence. I might believe that hate is wrong, but to force you to believe that is selfishness on my part.

There are a few things that I do not understand about Abraham, and one of them is highlighted in this passage. Abraham is afraid, and so he decides that he is going to say that Sarah is his sister (which she is, but the more important relationship is that she is his wife, and that is something that Abraham knows.) Abraham then multiplies the sin of the lie by coercing Sarah to go along with him using the words “If you love me you will support my version of reality.” Part of the problem, which Sarah may have recognized, but not had the power to resist in her culture, is that Abraham already tried this tactic once, and it failed miserably. But beyond that, the lie places Sarah at significant risk. In the story, Abimelek claims Sarah as his wife, possibly as a way of making a treaty with Abraham who seems to have possessed a level of power in his society. Following the addition of Sarah to his harem, Abimelek could have entered into a sexual relationship with her, and Sarah would have been powerless to resist. Abraham’s fear and his coercion of Sarah to support his version of reality reveals an incredible selfishness in the patriarch. Abraham saved his own life by lacing the life and health of his wife in danger. It was a selfish act that could have resulted in significant harm if God had not intervened in the situation.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 21