The Reconstructed

There is a passage in the Bible that is at the crux of creation, redemption, salvation, and monotheism and the theme of it is replayed throughout Scripture: fathers giving their son’s over to death. No not God the Father giving over Jesus, no not God giving Adam and Eve over to death when a simple intervention with the fruit would have saved everyone a lot of trouble and pain (you probably weren’t expecting that one, but God could have just plucked that apple out of the hand of Adam and Eve with His big God hand and billions of people throughout history would not have been subject to death).

Anyway I digress to a different traumatic story in which Abraham is going to sacrifice his son Isaac with knife after binding him to an altar. Some commentators will say Isaac is a teenager or pre teen. Either way Isaac is old enough to talk, old enough that he probably won’t be forgetting that his dad was about to stab him.

The story seems awful. What’s more is that Isaac in the book of Genesis is really not the focal point. He is by far the least mentioned of the patriarchs. Abraham, we get a ton, Jacob we get a ton, even with Joseph we get a lot, but Isaac we get hardly anything. He’s pretty passive, marries at 40 after his mom dies, is not really even involved in finding his wife and has a twins and gets tricked by one of them. I think we read nothing about him because he could not function in life due to trauma and just coasted by until he could not identify his own sons because why on earth would you be that in tune with who your sons are by voice, or by touch or by smell when your own father tried to kill you.

I found these audio tapes marked “Father” amidst the museum of my dads basement. I did not know what they were at first, and then a week later I stumbled across them again and then vaguely remembered my dad saying at one point in time he would hide an audio tape recorder in his house and record his father. When his friend Louie came to visit I told him about the tapes and he said I should not listen to them. I have received that advice from a few people because they aren’t pleasant tapes. My grandfather, whom I never met did not have a good reputation.

Yet I find myself wanting to know something more; what I really want is to have my mind and heart healed, to have hope restored, to be able to function. Yet I also have so many why questions, how bad could it have been? Why did things have to be bad at all? Why is it so hard for people to do the loving thing? Why is it seemingly impossible for Christian men to bring healing instead of destruction, apathy and neglect? Why is reconciliation a foreign concept?

The Gospel, I suppose is only good news when comparing it to the trauma we inflict on each other, because there is so much bad news. There is so much weight and death and tearing down. I have been physically ill in my gut since the end of July, it’s probably been longer but the weight on my mind from the words I have heard and the inability for justice and mercy to be meted out has left me sick and stuck. I should have never taught again last year. My mind was in too fragile of a place. I should have never met with the various “church leaders” I met with. They added to my pain. I don’t know what I should have done, but I probably shouldn’t listen to the tapes.

They will just serve more of a reminder of the pain that humans can’t help but unleash on one another. But are we not also capable of healing trauma, providing some soothing balm. There will be leaves that heal the nations in the garden of God. Can we get some of that before sin destroys us? Could mercy triumph? I don’t know. I’m just hoping here.