Jamais Vu (Part 3)

Yeah, I know it’s been a good half-year or so since I bothered to post anything.  That’s the surest way to lose any kind of a consistent blog readership and the precise reason why my last attempt at a blog died.  But here’s the thing:

1) I am a professional writer—as in, I have a full-time job writing 40+ hours a week to pay the bills.  I love writing but I also have a hard time transitioning from “work writing” to “personal writing” because at the end of the work day, my word-quota has often been tapped and my brain is ready to clock-out in order to be able to rest before it goes right back to generating more words on the page tomorrow.

2) Often, my ruminations are nothing anyone would find interesting or are much too personal for broadcasting on the interwebs.

3) If I do have a passing funny or interesting thought, I tend to share it on Facebook rather than here because I get instant gratification on Facebook from people casually “liking” my status as they scroll aimlessly through their newsfeed and, for some reason, that makes me feel validated and better about myself.

4) This is my blog and I’ll update it when I feel like it.

That being said, I plan to spend the next few weeks (or months…or however long it takes) re-examining a few of the stories from scripture that I’ve always been taught to interpret one way but which strike me as potentially having a very different message when I strip away the preconceived lenses through which I’ve always read them.

I’m not trying to be intentionally contrary or in any way disparaging or disrespectful towards more traditional interpretations, nor am I implying that I have some kind of grander, deeper view on scripture; I’m simply laying out some questions that have occurred to me and asking for some honest dialogue about other ways that we might consider these passages and what alternate lessons they might (or might not) offer us.

Rad.  Let’s get started.

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Brothers from Another Mother

I have heard every variety of sermon and Sunday School lesson as to the impatient actions of Abram and Sarai regarding the promise of children, which led them to turn to Sarai’s maid Hagar as an alternate means of reproducing, since Sarai was post-menopausal and had been barren even in her younger life.  Through Hagar, Abram produced Ishmael, who became the father of the Canaanite people.  It was not until a decade or two later that Sarai (now Sarah) conceived and born Isaac, as the son of the covenant and the father of the Jewish people.

The most common interpretations I have heard tend to be along the lines of:  And that’s why you should always wait upon the Lord.  Abraham and Sarah instead sought their own way instead of having faith and the result was an illegitimate son whose descendants are STIL L at odds with the people of Israel today.  (Alternately, I have also heard this same story used as a warning against surrogacy and potentially even IVF or other alternative fertility processes for childless couples looking to grow a family, but that is a discussion for another time.)

I understand the message of waiting upon the Lord that is consistently evoked with the reading of this story, but I’m not sure that’s really the message in the text.

First of all, consider the fact that the promise is given only to Abram at first, and not to Sarai (Genesis 15:4-5).  He is told by God that “no one but your very own issue shall be your heir” (NRSV).  Sarai is nowhere mentioned in this conversation; the assurance is simply that the child will be Abram’s biological child.  The first time the promise is extended to include Sarai is in Genesis 17, when God introduces the covenant of circumcision (and with it, the name-change to Abraham and Sarah), and then again in the following chapter when the angelic visitors inform Sarah that she will bear a son.  In other words, the initial promise never said that Sarai would have a child—only that Abram would.

Given that men retain their fertility much later in life than women, and since Sarai was already past the point of being fertile, can we really blame the couple for understanding the promise to imply that Abram’s child would, necessarily, come from someone other than Sarai?  We are so swift to accuse them of not having faith in God when they involved Hagar but, on the contrary, I think they showed tremendous faith because (let’s be honest) it would not have been unreasonable to question whether or not Abram was even…(ahem) capable…of fathering a child given his own tremendous age.

In fact, the text even tells us that God “brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:5-6).  Did you catch that last verse?  “And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” In other words, Abram had faith in the promise of God, and God recognized and honored that faith.

So where do we get off casting Abram as a man of no faith or patience in this story simply because the actions he took next don’t tie up into a neat and happy ending?

Putting aside the method they chose for a moment lest anyonethink I am advocating adultery, why do we have such a problem with the fact that Abram and Sarai took the non-traditional route in order to see God’s promised fulfilled?  Steven Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) called it “Resourcefulness and Initiative.”  My mother called it “creative problem solving.”  Whatever term you use, we celebrate it in every other aspect of life.  In myth, it is how Odysseus frees his men from the Cyclops.  In history, it is Hannibal crossing the Alps by elephant.  In science, it is the story of Apollo 13.  It is the stuff that moves humanity forward.  It is a defining trait of heroes, both fictional and real.

But in this particular story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar, we condemn the characters for looking around themselves, considering the facts of the case and the reality of the world, and seeking out a viable means of achieving the reality they have been promised is theirs.  In fact, some of us even blame tragic current events in the Middle East on that “creative problem solving” from a few millennia ago.

I know, I know.  It makes us uncomfortable to think of one of the fathers of the faith having a sexual relationship with a woman not his wife.  It might even make us uncomfortable to think about whether Hagar had any choice in the matter or if her social position as a female servant granted her no power to object if she did not want to be used in such a way.  (If that doesn’t make us uncomfortable, it should.)  But whether we like those implications or not, the fact is that they were the way of the world in the ancient Near East and nowhere does the text tell us (at least, nowhere that I can think of) that God was displeased or in any way punished the characters for those particular actions.

Of course I understand the dangers of cutting God out of the equation because we do not believe that He is capable of what we desire and acting according to our own timeline rather than trust His, but how many people of faith have been paralyzed by inaction simply because they were afraid of angering God by acting when no obvious solution is apparent?  What is wrong with empowering believers to look for unusual, unconventional, and creative ways to see God’s promises realized in their own lives?

After all, wasn’t Jesus a very different kind of promised messiah than the one everyone anticipated?  Did he not fulfill many of the prophesies about him in ways quite different than anyone expected?

Maybe God intended Ishmael to be brought into the world; after all, we are quick to point out in other contexts that He is the one who opens and closes wombs, is He not?  Maybe God wanted him to grow up and form a nation of his own.  Maybe Hagar’s son is every bit as much of God’s intended story for mankind as is Sarah’s son.  Maybe the people who lack faith in God’s sovereignty are not the characters in the story of Abram and Sarai, but we the readers who are too blinded by our own notions of how the story “should” have gone that fail to see the events as they are actually recorded and refuse to believe that God may have a bigger plan at work than any of us can possibly imagine.