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..."

The Incarnation of God as the willful cosmic wave-collapse response to our penchant for creating (not just choosing) evil.  Schrodinger (sans cat), my snoring dogs, the Upanishads, Jesus, warm milk, and melatonin. 

As we move through Genesis 19, familiar patterns are starting to emerge.  We see the patriarchs, matriarchs, and their families recreating trauma in destructive cycles. As noted in the last episode, this tracks with what modern neuroscience knows about the ways in which "the body keeps the score."   Trigger warnings:  incest, rape. 

It's under four minutes long.  You could do a lot worse. 

In this extended episode, we follow the Genesis narrative(s) into Chapter 19, and we take some journeys to later Christian scripture.  This might be a good episode for your next 40-minute commute.  

"...You can believe in that God if you want to, but keep him (always him) far away from me..."