Worst Church Ever

Season 2 is here! In this episode:

Isaac mourns the death of his mother...by consummating his marriage to Rebekah in his mother's tent.

Isaac builds a life...in the same place Sarah banished Hagar and Ishmael.

Isaac tries to rewrite the story of lost birthrights and unwanted sons...by picking a favorite son.

These and more motifs repeat because trauma repeats.

What should we make of the mainstreaming of the UAP phenomenon? Insights from Anton Zellinger, quantum physics, and St. Paul.

Picture it.  Youth group. 1997.  What the hell are these people talking about?  

Part look back at how "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" crept into my (mostly) Mainline church, part look back at that weird AF subculture.

Trigger warnings: purity culture, sexual assault. 

We wanted to call this episode "Sarah Dies/Abraham's Thighs," or "More Weird Shit with Abraham" but those aren't the most important parts of the story.  What Isaac does after the death of his mother is one of our first "Holy Shit" (in a good way?) moments thus far. We've read this text many times, but it still caught us completely off guard. 

There's no way around it: the Binding of Isaac is an inescapably terrible story.  Let's get to it.

"A few chapters back, Sarah tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar, and Abraham says “she’s your slave.  She’s your issue.  Do whatever you want.”  In other words, you’ve already trafficked this Egyptian to me, I’ve already raped her, I don’t give a shit.”  But now, oh, but now.  But now there is a son involved, and so now, this jackass seems to care..."

(but not that much...)

"You’d think maybe Father Abraham would at the very least clue Hagar in to the fact that the boy will not only be spared, but greatly blessed.  Even if he didn’t give a shit about Hagar’s trauma (this is her second banishment, after all), he’d at the very least want to reassure her and the boy that every little thing is gonna be alright.  Well, you can invent those conversations if you want to, but they’re not in the text..."