I’ve been wanting to write an essay about Abraham for awhile, and I’m not sure I put the essay below together in quite the way I wanted to, but the story of God demanding sin from us fascinates me. It fascinated Jung too, who said he saw the evidence of this in his patients, and [...]
In the endless self-repeating
Flows for ever more the Same;
Myriad arches, springing, meeting,
Hold at rest the mighty Frame;
Streams from all things love of living,
Grandest star and humblest clod;
All the straining, all the striving,
Is eternal rest in God.
- GOETHE
In any good religion, there should be something utterly unpalatable, something horrifying and blood-chilling; it could not otherwise [...]
I was struck by the diocese of New York removing from the Easter Vigil the reading of Abraham sacrificing Isaac; presumably because the story scandalizes nice good people who want religion to look hunky-dory and sweet. But obviously, if God cannot work through horror and crime and sin and cruelty then He can’t be terribly [...]