On Being Terrible with Titles and Following up on Abraham's Dialogue with God

[[ Hi Sister Laurel! I noticed you changed the title on your Abraham post and I was curious why. You also changed a few other things and I wondered if you do that a lot on posts once they are "finished." My pastor also gave a homily on bargaining with God and I think Pope Francis said something about this too one time. Couldn't Abraham be said to be bargaining or negotiating with God because it sounds to me like he is trying to convince God about what justice really means, especially that God shouldn't destroy the innocent with the evil.]]

Hi there yourself! Yes, I changed the title, mainly in an attempt to shorten it. I am not really good with titles (actually, I am awful with them!) and am always happy when I can come up with one I actually like. This is one place where I think of my former pastor a lot. He was great with titles and would ask me what title I would give a reflection I had done, for instance, as a way of summarizing and characterizing the piece. It's something I never managed to learn from him --- unfortunately, I could rarely come up with a good title!! On the Abraham piece I wish I had entitled it something like, [[God we know you love us, but how much?]] or [[Just how merciful is this God of Ours?]] or [[Justice AND mercy, how can God do both?]]

Notice in the lection as we had it for Sunday it is presupposed that God is one that destroys evil (and thus too, the innocent with it). This conception of God is almost hard-wired into religious folks' brains. Thus, floods were signs of God's wrath, as was illness, bad luck, famine and catastrophe of any kind. However, the reading itself does not say God is going to destroy the city, only that he is going to visit it and find out for himself if the hue and cry against it is warranted. Abraham is the one who raises the issue of destruction, not God. In fact, in the text of Genesis a few verses earlier there is no reference to God destroying the city; there is only the question when God muses to himself, [[Should I tell Abraham what I am about to do?]] We assume we know what God will do with evil --- if, of course, God has the power to deal with it at all.

This suggests to me that the lection as we have it, and the dialogue between Abraham and God which stands at its heart is meant to reveal something we believe we already know about God and about how God "does justice" or deals with evil, when in fact, we need to be taught the truth and allow the real God to be revealed to us. In other words, it is meant to correct our presuppositions and assumptions, especially the ones we hold about God and the way God works in our world (i.e., our idols and common blasphemies). I think it is also meant to correct assumptions we have about ourselves too, especially our assumption that we know better than God how to deal with evil or how to define and do justice. 

When I read Sunday's text, Abraham does not come across so much as a clever and just man as he does a bit of a fool in dealing with God as he does. This is another reason I tend to read the text not as Abraham himself bargaining with God or demonstrating a better justice to God, but more as the personification of a long debate going on in humanity and particularly in those who would become God's own people regarding what divine justice really looks like and just how merciful could God possibly be. Those questions are not definitively answered until the Christ Event, but Sunday's reading takes us a long way in preparation for that definitive answer.

So, while you are correct that the dialogue is couched in terms of haggling or bargaining (with bits of wheedling thrown in for good measure), and while Abraham's persistence in pushing the point with God gives another lesson re perseverance in prayer, for instance, I don't think we can say the reading is about bargaining with God (nor do we want to encourage folks to bargain or haggle with God). Instead, it is a literary way of representing perennial questions that occur in the face of suffering, loss, and actual evil, questions about the nature of Divinity and divine justice as well as about divine sovereignty and the existence of good in the midst of evil. I think too that the lection demonstrates how important God is to our ability to ask questions and to push them as far as we need to do without having to worry that that is not appropriate with God. 

Though this takes the reading in a very uncommon direction it is an important one for those who believe faith cuts off questioning in science, theology, etc. Quite the opposite is true and Abraham as the Father of genuine Faith demonstrates this; faith allows questioning. In fact faith in God allows and actually invites us to push our questioning as far as we need to push it as an expression of genuine faith. So, for instance, science and faith belong together, not only because they are compatible and complementary ways of knowing, but because faith, which affirms the existence of the One we know as infinite Mystery, assures us we can push our questions as far as we need to without ever reaching the end of what is knowable. It is the infinite Mystery we call God which makes faith necessary and science possible. 

Regarding Pope Francis, yes, you are correct he spoke about bargaining with God in a homily about this text once. I referenced that in a follow up question to the original post (published several years ago). I will see if I can locate it and put it up here -- perhaps as part of this response, but at least as a link.