Comments on: You Have a Choice

By: BrianJ

BrianJ — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:47:36 +0000

A friend just wrote this to me, in a completely different conversation: ""Our choices [don't] guarantee our future, but rather demonstrate our priorities."

By: kirkcaudle

kirkcaudle — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:04:40 +0000

Great series Brian, but I think I should have read these posts backward (3-1, not 1-3). After every response I thought of something I should add after reading the next in the series!

Robert, your comments on Abr. 3:25 and Ex. 32:32 have me now questionings some of my own ideas.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 06:53:35 +0000

Brian, I think you meant Robert not Matthew. I don’t mind taking credit for Robert’s comments though:)

By: BrianJ

BrianJ — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:12:49 +0000

Matthew: “This verse suggests to me that there is something unique about obedience vis-a-vis other ethical virtues.”

Agreed. And I’m still trying to sort out the tension that that creates. Why insist that only a “slothful servant must be commanded in all things” and then insist upon obedience that comes at the expense of other morally high ground? I realize that’s not exactly the same thing—following a commandment versus always having to be commanded—but I think it’s part of the larger point that we are “agents unto ourselves” to “act and not to be acted upon.”

In another Abraham story—and I realize the problem of comparing two different stories—we see him bartering and haggling with God to save souls in Sodom. Why don’t we see that here when Isaac is offered up? What do the two stories, together, teach us about obedience versus…other virtues?

J Madsen: well said.

By: J. Madson

J. Madson — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:54:53 +0000

enjoyed the posts. I have always felt that the Akedah was more about ending human sacrifice than some Abrahamic model to follow. It seems crucial that God didnt allow Isaac to be killed. He stopped it. What is truly revolutionary, imho, in a world of rampant human sacrifice is that Abraham did not sacrifice his son to the Gods of his time.

If Abraham had killed his son it would be just one more child offered to false gods in my view. His God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seems to differentiate himself from those gods in that he stops the sacrifice and puts and end to it for good.

By: Robert C.

Robert C. — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:41:01 +0000

Brian, thanks for this series of posts. Very interesting to think about. I’d be more willing to follow your disinterest in an actual moral, except I keep hearing Abraham 3:25 ringing in my ears as a kind of commentary on the Akedah:

And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;

This verse suggests to me that there is something unique about obedience vis-a-vis other ethical virtues (emphasis for Joe’s benefit, who wrote a comment about ethics on your previous post…).

On the other hand, I will confess your emphasizing Exodus 32:32 has me rethinking the meaning of the repeated phrase in Mormon scripture, “one like unto Moses”—could it have been Moses’s loyal commitment to the Israelites’ salvation that is being invoked, more than his faith per se? (I still doubt it, but you do have me wondering.)