Greg,
While it would be difficult to understand why God might might ask someone to do something “unreasonable”, God is not bound to reason as we understand it. And because He is All Powerful, there is no chance that simply by asking that Abraham sacrifice his son, that the deed could be done before God had the opportunity to intervene, if that was His intent from the beginning (as indeed it was shown to be, as demonstrated by the outcome of the story).
At that time in history, as has been pointed out numerous times already in this thread, human life was not recognized as sacred in the way that God has brought us to understand through the ages. We are slow students and it has taken us generations to get to the point of knowing this truth, and yet even now there are many who call themselves Catholic who don’t understand this basic concept. So, it is a message He has had to teach again and again, as early as with Abraham, when sparing his son.
God has not changed over time, but our understanding of Him has grown as He has revealed Himself to us in ever greater ways as we seek to better know and love Him.
God asks us to do His will, not only because we understand how doing His will makes sense, but sometimes simply because we know that it is His will. (e.g. accepting a teaching of the Church that we don’t understand, first and foremost because the Church teaches it, and then, over time because we have found the answers necessary to help us understand as well as we are able.)
Again, I say this urging caution if what is perceived to be “God’s will” goes directly against reason, the church, obedience to our vocation in life, against the laws of our nation, or against valid authority and there may be additional cases for caution I haven’t considered here.
For example, the sad case of the woman who drowned her children thinking God had asked her to do so. I don’t remember her name. Do I believe God asked her to do this? No, I don’t. Is it Possible that he did? I suppose so, I wasn’t there, with her, as a participant in what she believed to be a communication with God.
Did she fail in terms of the many cautions I’ve suggested? Yes, absolutely. It goes against the teachings of the Church (thou Shalt not kill, Jesus was the one and only sacrifice for the remission of sins) and the current teachings of the Church on this subject are not inconsistant with the known history of what God has given us in this area. It goes against obedience to her husband, the ultimate authority for a wife, according to Paul (one of those more difficult truths in today’s world). There is no evidence that her husband was suggesting she act in ways that were immoral with regards to the raising of their children or that her disobedience to him was in accord with a widely accepted greater moral right. It goes against the laws of the nation in which she lived, and the law to not kill is not against the basic laws given by God. And I would guess it also went against her family, her parents and other extended family members, if she were to have asked them. I’d even hazard a guess that if she’d asked her doctor (although I recall her doctor had dismissed her as not requiring additional care, despite her husband requesting it.)
So, if she had taken the opportunity to check in with any of the other authorities in her life, she would have been spared the pain of loss with which she and her family now live. At this point in history, Authority has come to be a dirty name, something to be disparaged, and yet here is an example of where if we, as a culture, better accepted authority as a concept, this tragedy may have been averted. She doesn’t seem to have had a spiritual advisor, but if she had one, it doesn’t appear that she double checked what she thought God was asking her to do, to get at least some form of feedback before proceeding.
cont …
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Or maybe they do and we get confused again as adults. As a child we say “wow Abraham obeyed.” Then we study for hours as adults and figure it out and say: “wow Abraham obeyed.”