[Dialogue] Iraq and the legacy of Abraham

[walters@alaweb.com]

This appeared in this morning's Boston Globe.
David

Iraq and the legacy of Abraham
By James Carroll | April 10, 2006
JUDAISM, Christianity, and Islam are referred to as Abrahamic religions, a description 
aiming to head off the clash of civilizations by emphasizing a common connection to the 
patriarch whose name means ''father of multitudes." 
Yet Jews, Christians, and Muslims are more than mere cousins. The imaginative 
breakthrough represented in the story of Abraham offers a first measure of the meaning of 
human existence. If his descendants were more fully in touch with that meaning, Iraq would 
be a different place today, and the religions would not be on the cusp of war.
Abraham's story comes to us from Genesis. What makes it important is all that precedes it. 
The Bible begins as a set of creation myths, narratives about Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, 
the Flood, the tower of Babel -- anecdotes that few contemporary readers take in any literal 
sense. They are stories from the era of ''once upon a time," and they define the concern of the 
Creator as extending to the entire scope of creation.
But at the end of the 11th chapter of Genesis, something new happens, a shift from the 
universal to the specific, from timelessness to ''that time then"; from never-never land to a 
particular locale -- a bridge of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. One day on our 
calendar, a specific individual, whom scholars believe actually to have existed, became the 
subject of the biblical text. That was the true beginning of the world-view we take for 
granted.
''Leave your country, your family, and your father's house for the land I will show you," God 
said to this person. ''I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name 
famous, so it will be used as a blessing."
The call of Abraham marks the beginning of human historical consciousness, a direct 
consequence of the revolutionary affirmation that God meets human beings by meeting one 
human being at one time, and at one place. The God who addresses Abraham in effect 
orders him to leave the realm of the purely mythical for ''the land I will show you."
Here is the difference between Abraham's God and the gods of Ur or Egypt: This God acts 
not out of time, but in it; not in the other world, but in this one; not in heaven, but on earth. 
This Creator is invested in creation not in general, but in particular. Therefore history -- what 
happens here and now -- is of ultimate significance. This means that the value of mere 
abstractions must be measured against the real-world consequences of their implementation.
The war in Iraq today was launched without regard for such consequences, and we see the 
result. The genius insight of Genesis is that when God is understood as the God of history, 
then history -- what happens in time among human beings -- takes on absolute value. The 
ideal, therefore, must always be measured against the real.
The death of each man, woman, and child who has died in Iraq across the last three years 
equals, in the eyes of the God who called Abraham by name, the death of all that exists. Each 
person is of infinite worth. If war makers had calculated their decisions on this scale, they 
would have found another way to proceed. War must be a last resort, not a first reaction.
But the story of Abraham makes another point. In addition to being the God of history, this 
God is the God of freedom. Not freedom in the shallow rhetoric of American politics, but 
freedom that defines each human choice as having as much significance as the very acts of 
God.
Abraham's call, with the fate of multitudes at stake, meant nothing until Abraham said yes to 
it. But the possibility of that yes presumed the possibility of its opposite. God, in freedom, 
initiates. Abraham, in freedom, responds. But as subsequent verses of Genesis make clear, 
Abraham's will and God's are not identical, and that is the way this God wants things to be.
A God of freedom invites a response, but does not coerce it. Why? Because in this way the 
God of history makes humans responsible for history.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims bear the weight of this precious legacy, embodied in our 
common ancestor. History matters absolutely. So does each human life. And so does every 
human choice. Absolute responsibility follows. That this wisdom first showed itself in the 
landscape across which war now rages is another reason to end it

 


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