ABRAHAM: MEETING GUESTS, MEETING GOD

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From The Old Testament
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Then the LORD appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day.

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 So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw [them], he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground,
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 and said, "My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant.
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 "Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.
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 "And I will bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by, inasmuch as you have come to your servant." They said, "Do as you have said."
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 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, "Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal; knead [it] and make cakes."

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 And Abraham ran to the herd, took a tender and good calf, gave [it] to a young man, and he hastened to prepare it.

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 So he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set [it] before them; and he stood by them under the tree as they ate.

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 Then they said to him, "Where [is] Sarah your wife?" So he said, "Here, in the tent."
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 And He said, "I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son." (Sarah was listening in the tent door which [was] behind him.)
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 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; [and] Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 

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Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, "After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?"
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 And the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'Shall I surely bear [a child], since I am old?'
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 "Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son."

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Genesis 18: 1-14

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The following passage is from the

 Foreword by Karen Armstrong to

THE TENT OF ABRAHAM -

Stories of Hope and Peace for

Jews, Christians, and Muslims
by
Joan Chittister, OSB
Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti
Rabbi Arthur Wasko
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[Even though this book came out five years ago,

its stories, its message, is more important now than

it has ever been.]

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The story of Abraham, explored here by the authors from

the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, is a story of pluralism that is sorely needed in this time of religious hatred.  In the Christian tradition, Abraham is often called the father of those who believe, but he has none of the hard certainties of dogmatic faith.  Instead, the Bible repeatedly shows Abraham in the dark, asking questions of God and getting remarkably unsatisfactory answers.  At a time when we have seen too much certainty, The Tent of Abraham reminds us that the kind of confusion, fear, and dismay that so many of us are experiencing can be the start of a new religious quest.

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Yet Abraham did have one luminous encounter.  Genesis 18 tells us that one day while he was sitting outside his tent at Mamre in the broiling heat of a Middle Eastern afternoon, he saw three strangers on the horizon.  Strangers in the ancient world were potentially lethal people, because they were not bound by the local laws of vendetta and could strike with impunity.  Even today, very few of us would invite three total strangers off the street and into our own house.  But this is what Abraham did.  He ran out eagerly to meet these people, who did not belong to his ethnic or religious group.  The text emphasizes his haste; he is not dragging his feet, approaching these travelers with reluctance, but runs out to greet them, prostrating himself before them as though they were kings.
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  He then tells his wife to prepare an elaborate meal to refresh them after their arduous journey.  And during the ensuing conversation, it transpires quite naturally that one of these strangers is Abraham's God.  The act of practical compassion led directly to a divine encounter.
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This is a strange story to find in a Jewish scripture,
because later Jewish teaching would be wary of seeing the divine in human form.  But it expresses a religious truth found in all the major traditions: it is compassion, not righteousness and doctrinal certainty, that leads us into the presence of what monotheists call God but others have termed Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.  Greek Orthodox Christians have always loved this story, regarding it as an early manifestation of God as Trinity.  A famous icon of the fifteenth-century painter Andrei Rublev depicts the three travelers as angels, representing Father, Word, and Holy Spirit, and has transformed Abraham's meal into the Eucharist.  The message is clear: the mysterious revelation of the Trinity will only make sense in the context of the liturgy and of generous communion with our fellow human beings, all of whom are sacred emissaries.
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It is of the utmost importance that Abraham's three visitors were strangers.  In Hebrew, the word qadosh (holy) means "separate, other."  It is the otherness of the stranger - even perhaps the initial recoil that we may feel when confronted with people who seem alien - that can give us intimations of the holiness of God.  Religion was implicated in the catastrophe of September 11.  Monotheists must reclaim their traditions from murderous sectarianism and return to the compassion that is the core of their faith.
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We are all children of Abraham,
 Abraham We are all children of Abraham 
 Vast as the stars of heaven, Abraham, Abraham
Blessed be ye nations, Abraham
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Cross the burnin' sands, Abraham
O'er to Cananns land, Abraham
He kept the course, Abraham
Faithful to the voice, Abraham
Abraham, we are all children of Abraham
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Blessed are the nations, Abraham, Abraham
Who honor his creations, Abraham
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And then one day, Abraham
He heard God say, Abraham
Leave this land, Abraham
Cross the burnin' sand, Abraham
And you will find, Abraham
Peace of mind, Abraham
That only I, Abraham
Can provide, Abraham
Yes, Abraham, Abraham, Abraham
So he was blessed, Abraham
By the ultimate test, Abraham
Never doubtful of, Abraham
The living God, Abraham
He heard the call, Abraham
To heed the law, Abraham
Of God above, Abraham

The God of love, Abraham
Abraham, Abraham, we are all children of Abraham
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Although it may be an error to speak of "chosen people,"
it is not a mistake to refer to Abraham as
a chosen individual.
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THE URANTIA BOOK
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FREUD AND GOD - PSYCHOBABBLE AND FAITH

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From A HISTORY OF GOD
The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam
by Karen Armstrong
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) certainly regarded belief in God

as an illusion that mature men and women should lay aside.  The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology.  A personal God was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever.  God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness.  Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity.

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  It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society.  Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.  Science, the new logos, could take God's place.  It could provide a new basis for morality, and help us to face our fears.  Freud was emphatic about his faith in science, which seemed almost religious in its intensity:  "No, our science is not an illusion!  An illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give we can get elsewhere."

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Not all psychoanalysts agreed with Freud's view of God.

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Alfred Adler (1870-1937) allowed that God was a projection

but believed that it had been helpful to humanity; it had been a brilliant and effective symbol of excellence. 

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C.G Jung's (1875-1961) God was similar to the God of the mystics, a psychological truth, subjectively experienced by each individual.  When asked by John Freeman in the famous Face to Face interview whether he believed in God, Jung replied emphatically:  "I do not have to believe.  I know!"  Jung's continued faith suggests that a subjective God, mysteriously identified with the ground of being in the depths of the self, can survive psychoanalytic science in a way that a more personal, anthropomorphic deity who can indeed encourage perpetual immaturity may not.

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Like many other Western people, Freud seemed unaware of this internalized, subjective God.  Nevertheless he made a valid and perceptive point when he insisted that it would be dangerous to attempt to abolish religion.  People must outgrow God in their own good time: to force them into atheism or secularism before they were ready could lead to an unhealthy denial and repression.  We have seen that iconoclasm can spring from a buried anxiety and projection of our own fears onto the "other."  Some of the atheists who wanted to abolish God certainly showed signs of strain.  Thus, despite his advocacy of a compassionate ethic, Schopenhauer could not cope with human beings and became a recluse who communicated only with his poodle, Atman.

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Nietzsche was a tender-hearted, lonely man, plagued by ill health, who was very different from his Superman.  Eventually, he went mad.

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He did not abandon God joyously, as the ecstasy of his prose might lead us to imagine.  In a poem delivered "after much trembling, quivering, and self-contortion," he makes Zarathustra plead with God to return:

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No!  come back,

With all your torments!

Oh come back

To the last of all solitaries!

All the streams of my tears

Run their course for you!

And the last flame of my heart -

It burns up to you!

Oh come back

My unknown God!  My pain!  my last - happiness.

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Like Hegel's, Nietzsche's theories were used by a later generation of Germans to justify the polices of National Socialism, a reminder that an atheistic ideology can lead to just as cruel a crusading ethic as the idea of "God."

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