A father, knife in hand, stands on the hill,
and we call him holy for the twitch in his grip—
for not looking away from the child tied beneath him,
the son who trusted the steady voice saying, "God wills it so."
We are taught to bow to the willingness,
not the hesitation, not the tremor of unlit mornings
when Isaac's face must have floated behind Abraham's eyes.
This is obedience, they say, and a virtue
wrapped in stories we still clutch, even while we frown
at the men today who kill at the command of voices within.
And what was that voice, anyway?
Not some petty mortal whisper—
but the command of One
who already knew the answer before asking the question.
Omniscient, they say, omnipresent.
The one who saw Abraham's heart
before Abraham saw his own hand rise.
The one who, knowing the weight of every leaf and bone,
needed to test the father anyway—
as if infinity needed proof from the finite.
Imagine that.
The groundless, bloodless absurdity of a god who measures faith
by setting it on the altar of a child's life,
waiting until the last second to say,
"Oh no, no—just kidding. But well done, my servant."
And still, we praise this moment.
We praise it, and then we scowl
at the ancient tribes whose hands
offered their children to their gods in fires.
What monsters! we cry,
forgetting that our own holy stories have laid kindling too—
commanded slaughter for the sake of faith,
swords through cities
because someone else's god had claimed too many sons and daughters.
We say it was righteous,
we say they deserved it,
we say the conquest was just,
because—well—those people, you see,
they gave up their children to the flames.
We nod at Abraham's knife and frown at their fires.
We toast the heroes who leveled whole cities,
all because their gods whispered in dreams.
We say there is a difference,
but never pause long enough
to let the silence ask us what that difference really is.
And do not even get me started on the Book of Job.
