God Wills Peace

Abraham ascended Mount Moriah, prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. Let’s focus on the purity of Abraham’s mind at that moment; his willingness to perceive the truth about Almighty God, and submit to that truth.

God wills peace. Not to descend into Kum-baya here, but we Christians take for granted what the incarnate Son has revealed. Christ came as the Prince of Peace. God does not thirst for anyone’s blood.

We Christians take this for granted. As do all the sons and daughters of Christians cultures, who also take it for granted, perhaps without recognizing that mankind learned this from Jesus Christ. The peacefulness of God is not “self-evident” to us. To the contrary, mankind has made a science out of projecting onto God our own bloodthirstiness, our own interior violence. And we have invented countless violent religions to appease our imaginary violent gods.

Also, if we think that’s just a thing of the misty, unenlightened past, we deceive ourselves all the more. Mankind has offered more human sacrifices in the 20^th and 21^st centuries than ever before. The 20^th and 21^st centuries are awash with innocent human blood, spilled to appease the imaginary gods that rule the technocratic oligarchies of modernity. Like the Third Reich. Or the Soviet Socialist Republic, or the Chinese Communist state, all of which offered human sacrifices in the millions to appease the fantastical, violent god of a perfectly structured modern society. And of course the most prolific human-sacrifice religion ever is called, “The Woman’s Right to Choose.”

Serving such a false, violent god is precisely what Abraham did not do. Abraham consecrated Mount Moriah to the truth about the God of peace. Abraham did not allow our violent, fallen human nature to influence his thinking about God. Rather, Abraham simply allowed God to influence his thinking about God. And Isaac lived.

Obeying God means practicing peace. True peace, of course: the peace of good order, governed by truth. But the most-fundamental truth of all is: God wills peace.