Normal

I like normal every once in a while. Granted, there’s such thing as too much normal. It can become rote and bland and meaningless

And I like abnormal too. Without “abnormal psychology” I wouldn’t have a job [1]. It’s not a coincidence that I feel right at home in the city that prides itself on being weird. I wear long hair and a beard when my Mormon Restored Church community generally frowns upon it [2].

But sometimes a little normal is what I need.

Like today. Today my daughter Rosaleen was born. And it was normal. Camille (my wife, and also one of the toughest, most resilient people I know) didn’t spend days in the delivery room, nor did she pop out a kid in under five minutes. She didn’t have any life threatening (or even seriously life-altering) complications, and it wasn’t completely painless. And Rosaleen wasn’t speaking in full sentences, but neither was she struggling to breathe or circulate blood. As far as I could tell, everything was normal.

Sleepy is normal on the first day.  Posing would not be normal.

The look on Lily's face is new, not normal for her, but it might become normal soon

And after my family’s last two experiences in hospital maternity units, we needed some normal. Lily, our older daughter, was born two months early after a very short labor. She had some scary but easily treated problems (that I have since learned are also fairly normal... go figure). Then we lost our Michael a few months into the pregnancy.

It all makes me glad that I live in a place and time when it’s normal for babies and their moms to survive being born. And that I got to experience that bit of normalcy.

[1] Abnormal psych was one of my favorite college classes, and one of the most influential in my decision to become a therapist. However, to paraphrase Michael Bluth, these days “we just say psychology.” I mean is anyone really normal enough to set the standard for comparison?

[2] “In the minds of most people at this time, the beard and long hair are associated with protest, revolution, and rebellion against authority. They are also symbols of the hippie and drug culture. Persons who wear beards or long hair, whether they desire it or not, may identify themselves with or emulate and honor the drug culture or the extreme practices of those who have made a slovenly appearance a badge of protest and dissent. In addition, unkemptness—which is often (though not always) associated with beards and long hair—is a mark of indifference towards the best in life (New Era, December 1971 p. 46).

Stay Positive—Stay Adding

Lately I’ve seen two things that made me think about one of my pet peeves. One was a TED talk about “emotional courage,” and the other was a little sign nailed to a lamppost in central Portland. It said Stay Positive.

The talk addresses the observation that positivity or positive thinking is like a new form of political correctness. When someone is not happy, relaxed, or hopeful, we act like there’s something wrong, and we try to fix it. Overall, I really enjoyed this talk. It resonated with me.

Because sometimes life just hurts.

And sometimes it doesn’t.

The way people use that word positive bugs me. In the words of one of my heroes, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I'm okay with the way we use that word.

Feeling happy, confident, excited, peaceful, loved, in love, is a part of living as a human. These “positive” emotions happen to everyone at some time. If you find it difficult to access those emotions, I recommend changing something about the way you live. A therapist may be useful, though some people can find ways to make that kind of change without therapy.

Feeling sad, scared, anxious, conflicted, lonely, angry, disgusted, is also a part of living as a human. These “negative” feelings happen to everyone at some time. If you find that these feelings dominate your experience, I recommend you change something. Therapy could be useful as you make that change, and it’s not the only way.

In psychiatry/psychology, we use the words positive and negative more mathematically. Positive means adding something, and negative means taking something away.

For example, schizophrenia has positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are new things that have been added to the person’s experience, like hallucinations and paranoid thoughts that they didn’t have before. Negative symptoms are things the person used to experience, but doesn’t now, like the decrease in range of expression or decrease in social interaction (note: not all of these are diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, but they are all common changes for people with schizophrenia).

Behaviorists talk about positive and negative in context of both rewards AND punishments. Say you give your kid a special dessert when they get an A on a test at school. That’s a positive reward—you add something that they like or want. Alternatively, you could remove their responsibility for their least favorite chore. It’s still a reward (a consequence they like), but it’s a reward by subtraction—a negative reward.

Now imagine that you’re convicted of some kind of minor crime, something non-violent and not very destructive. You could receive a positive punishment, like community service (something unpleasant that’s added to your routine), or a negative punishment like fines (taking away money) or jail time (taking away freedom).

The way I see it, no emotion is negative, and no emotion is positive. They’re all just there, all coexisting, taking turns at center stage. None of them gets added or taken away. They’re cued to take their turn by things that happen around us or inside us, but they don’t just stop happening. When it’s time for happiness or excitement to take a turn, we usually welcome it, because we know what to do about it—we hold our heads high, square our shoulders and show the world what’s up.

But when it’s time for sadness, we pretend it’s not there, because we have to stay positive.

It’s really hard to let all of our feelings take their turn, because some of them are really painful. When Camille and I went through the aftermath of a miscarriage, there were days when my sadness and anger made me not want to exist. I never wanted to commit suicide, I just wanted life to not be a thing anymore sometimes

When we let them all take a turn, they all take a turn. That time sadness had a really, really long turn. And then it moved on, and so did I. That turn was and is a real part of my life, just like the kid I didn’t get to welcome into the world is a real part of my life. Thinking about that time still brings up an echo of that feeling, but it’s just an echo. The echo fades, and I’m back in whatever is happening now.

So I say enough positivity. Live life with all its... life-ful... stuff. Let’s make it okay for ourselves and the people around us to experience all of it.

Camille's Letter of Recommendation

We're planning a move across town this summer, so my wife Camille is looking for a new math teaching job over there.  Tonight we were talking about letters of recommendation, including the idea of writing your own and asking someone to sign it.  Then I offered to write it for her. So in honor of the move, the new job, and six years of marriage, here's my letter.

Editor's note: this is from an extremely biased source that plays it fast and loose with things like "history" and "the facts."  Sweeping generalizations about the subject of this piece are presumed true, though supporting evidence may not be.

Revised editor's note: this is from an extremely reliable source that knows everything there is to know about things like "history" and "the facts."  Sweeping generalizations about the subject of this piece are undoubtedly true, while supporting evidence is rock-solid.  You should accept this as fact before you read on.

Once, there were teachers.  They shared information.  They modeled behavior intended to make that information useful.

And then, there was Camille.  And the teachers rejoiced.

Camille is the best teacher in the whole world.  She has been teaching math since before math existed.  In fact, Camille invented most of the maths--two of the three, to be exact.  (I can count them and describe them in terms of fractions because of her.). Her old pal Sir Isaac is to blame for the confusing one.

Camille is better at building rapport with students than anyone who has or will ever build rapport.  She wrote the book on classroom management, and it's one sentence long: "Do what Mrs. Mikkelsen does" (Mikkelsen, 2015).  Legend has it that she travelled back in time and taught Carl Rogers everything he knew about empathy and listening.  Legend also has it that she time travelled back in time to teach the Egyptians how to build their pyramids (or at least the math part of it).

Any school would be lucky to have Camille even walk past, let alone actually agree to work there.  Last time she started at a new school, property values in that school's neighborhood tripled overnight.  So please do not pass up on the opportunity of a lifetime, nay, a millennium. Hire her and watch your students performance and morale improve by miles.

Thank you and congratulations on hiring the best ever,

MC EDM

Open Letter to Trump

Mr. Trump,

It's the morning after you were elected president of the United States.  Just before I started writing this, NPR was reporting that Secretary Clinton had conceded.

I have deep respect for people who exemplify the spirit of uppercase-C Conservatism.  These are people who are deeply rooted in the lessons of the past.  They are very effective at recognizing and continuing (conserving) what worked before.  They also repair or replace practices, policies, and ideas that did not work in the past.  They look outside of their immediate sphere of influence to learn from others' histories.  They look ahead and move towards something, always remembering where they started and how they have progressed so far.

I identify myself as a capital-L Liberal.  That word comes from a Latin word meaning free man.  Over time, Liberal has come to mean giving generously or free from restraint.  I hold all of those definitions as meaningful and true.  True Liberals are free from restraint, free to share money, goods, attention or the benefit of the doubt.  They associate with free people, so they treat everyone as free people who deserve basic human dignity and respect.

From my perspective, it is possible to be a Conservative Liberal--someone who gives liberally to others and assumes the best, while looking to the past to learn the best way to share what they have.  Our president needs to have both characteristics, at least to some degree.  Some may be stricter in their giving and some may be more future-oriented, but without some measure of Conservatism and Liberalism, our elected officials cannot do what is best for their constituents.  I am a little sad that we as a nation have lost sight of that fact.

I am also very worried and more than a little sad about your victory in the presidential race.  Based on your behavior in the campaign season and prior, I see almost no evidence that you are either Conservative or Liberal.  On the contrary, most of the evidence I see shows that you make the same mistakes over and over again, without learning from them, and you do not learn from others' examples or advice.  It shows that your attempts at expressions of charity and human service are ultimately--and often directly--aimed at increasing your own profits, not at improving the quality of human life.

I recognize that Secretary Clinton did some things--okay, a lot of things--that were ethically and morally questionable.  She still needs to answer for those.  But her behavior has shown at least a little of both true Conservatism and true Liberalism.  She has publicly reflected on the past and its lessons.  She has shared plans to give, even if that is just giving consideration and attention without any material gifts.

You accused a whole country--and our neighbors at that--of being drug dealers and rapists.  You continually pandered to the man who seems to want to bring back Soviet imperialism and oppression.  You encouraged violence at your campaign events (double meaning!  At your events you encouraged your supporters to go forth and be violent, and you told them to act violently during the events).  You cheered when your supporters assaulted and literally took the coat from the back of a peaceful dissenter.  You encouraged large-scale religious discrimination because of a handful of terrorists who really haven't done anything to us, and whose main mission does not directly involve us.  You put down the parents of a war hero who died to protect his friends.  You said "coward" of an older man who was a combat veteran, POW, and elected official (whose morals and experiences I respect, even while I strongly disagree with his politics).  You bragged about getting away with sexual assault and relationship infidelity.  When your accusers came forward, your (non-)defense was to insult them based on their looks.  You bragged about cheating on your taxes.  You threatened multiple times to flout our traditions of graceful democratic sportsmanship, either by refusing to accept defeat or by incarcerating your opponent without criminal charges.

That's not to mention the many, many specific policies that you proposed that have great potential to harm our nation's people.

I respect the democratic process that puts you in office.  I will abide by its results.  I respect the voice of the people, and I will honor it.  I respect the office that you will assume in January.  I will try my best to show my respect for it.

POTUS is always one of the most powerful people in the world, and in January you will be especially powerful, even for POTUS.  You have a legislature united, at least in name, behind you and your party.  You also have the power to appoint jurists who share your views to the Supreme Court and other federal courts.  Use that power to bring us back together.  Do right by your people, not just your party--or, worse, your profits.

Please prove me wrong.  Show us, your country, that you have an ounce of Liberalism in you, or even the faintest glimpse of true Conservative perspective.  Please, please walk back the rhetoric of exclusion and fear.  Those messages will not make us great.  Make it easier for everyone to afford healthcare for physical and mental problems.  Make it easier for skilled, intelligent people from all over the world to come to the US legally and share their gifts.  Work on increasing access to high-quality education, whether that is basic skills in grade school, research at a university, or a practical, specialized vocational program in the field.  Help neighbors of all religious traditions, nationalities, and races to be just that--neighbors.

If you do that, then we'll be on the road to greatness.

That's a big if.  For now, I'll have to sit with my fear and wait.

Reluctantly,
Erik

Stay Safe, BYU

It's a new school year, and the kids are off to college. Well, not mine, but somebody's kids somewhere are off to college. Time for them to face new challenges and learn to take care of themselves.

Since January, 2016, there have been a few high-profile cases of sexual assault at LDS-run Brigham Young University (BYU). The Salt Lake Tribune has reported on these cases fairly comprehensively.  (There have been more Tribune articles, though I think these ones are a good representation.  Feel free to look for more.)  The reason these cases have been high-profile is that they have all been mishandled (from my perspective) by local congregational leaders, BYU administrators, and government officials. I won't retell any specific stories here. Instead, I'll point out ways that the process stops protecting the BYU public, starts blaming assault survivors and protects rapists.

To be fair, I am a BYU graduate. For the most part, I enjoyed my experience there. I got a high quality education, and I built relationships with people who are very important to me. I always felt safe, and thought I could get help easily if something was dangerous. That may have something to do with the fact that I was a young white Mormon man, though, as I see now that Privilege was practically my middle name. Those are questions for another time, though... for now I want to focus on breakdowns that left others vulnerable or hurt.

Title IX (I'll call it TIX) is a US federal law establishing a system to prevent discrimination in education based on protected factors like race, religion, and sex, among others. Colleges (including BYU) have TIX offices, with trained investigators who report and resolve cases of discrimination. Student reports to TIX officers are confidential. So it's hardly surprising that there was an uproar when BYU's TIX office was found to have shared info about a case with the school's Honor Code Office (HCO).

Many schools have codes of conduct these days. They're reasonable measures to promote public safety and academic integrity. BYU's honor code is much more strict than most. It covers academic integrity/plagiarism and criminal activity, like most codes. It also enforces behavioral standards embraced by Mormons, meaning no drugs, coffee, alcohol, or tobacco; no sexual activity (including porn consumption) outside of marriage; no acting on romantic, physical, or sexual impulses in gay or lesbian relationships; and a very strict dress code to keep everyone "modest" and "well groomed," which really means covered up and clean shaven. HCO and other BYU staff are often seen as very, very strict in the way they enforce the rules. There's also something of a tattle-tale culture, with students and even visitors shaming or reporting their peers for debatable "violations." If you know someone else who attended BYU, ask for their thoughts on HCO enforcement. There's a decent chance they've been investigated and they knew about it. I have my opinions about the BYU honor code. If they're not obvious yet, I'm willing to share them in a different setting. Regardless, BYU students promise to live by the rules while they're at school, so critiquing the honor code is beside the point right now.

In recently reported cases, sexual assault survivors made TIX claims. After all, sexual assault is a form of discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation. And like I mentioned, TIX officers shared information with Honor Code administrators. In at least one case, the information reached the HCO through a police officer involved in the case who decided the survivor "wants to screw up [the suspect's] life" with "bull crap" accusations (real quotes from the officer involved). In all of the reported cases, the survivors were then punished for violating dress code, drinking, breaking curfew, or sexual activity outside of marriage. Sometimes that extramarital sex refers to a past encounter that comes to light.  Sometimes it's about the assault itself. Yes, you read that right: the HCO historically has referred to being raped as "sexual activity." In some of these cases, it is well-documented that the survivor said no and physically resisted sexual contact during the assault. And they were still punished. This makes it seem that BYU leadership is more concerned about punishing young people for... um... well, whatever reason they can find... than about promoting public safety.

BYU has student congregations, called wards, set up so Mormon students can worship with their neighbors (oh yeah, the Honor Code also requires regular participation in religious services and an endorsement from a religious leader). Each ward has a middle-aged or older adult volunteer pastor, called the bishop, assigned by higher-ups in the church. Student ward bishops are almost always locals--it would be impractical to ask someone who lives in, say, Virginia to leave behind his career and family to get involved in the spiritual life of 100 or so twenty-somethings in Utah.

I believe these bishops are mostly honest people who care deeply about their wards. I also know that they have very little training in the intersection of religion, counseling, and the law. Three of my bishops at BYU were businessmen or salesmen, and one was a professor. I look up to all of them personally as honest, moral people.  And I recognize that their background does not include that kind of preparation.

Some LDS bishops at BYU are amazing. They're warm, genuine people who know when something is outside of their training. They know when to involve experts like law enforcement, therapists, or others. They know how to protect the very sensitive information that their young, vulnerable parishioners share with them.

Despite their best intentions, some LDS bishops sometimes work against the best interests of their ward members.

In some of the high profile cases of sexual assault at BYU, the survivors turned to their bishops, focusing on the spiritual aspects of their trauma and recovery. In these cases, the bishops have reported to the honor code office or have demanded that the survivors report. And the results have been just like when Title IX reported--survivors got punished and blamed for being raped. On top of that, some Mormon bishops have been known to look the other way instead of turning abusers in to the police--they say that he (rapists are usually he's) needs forgiveness instead of correction, or that reporting would keep him from participating fully and receiving all of God's blessings but he's really a good man who just had a moment of weakness.

Something else that I find particularly scary about all of this: it gives rapists a weapon that they can use to keep their victims quiet.  They can threaten to give the honor code office an anonymous--not self-incriminating--report that their victim was drinking, or breaking curfew, or wearing clothes that are not approved, if anyone starts asking about the assault.  That kind of anonymous report could well lead to expulsion or other disciplinary action.  It is all but guaranteed to lead to humiliation, shame and trauma experienced all over again. No way it doesn't bring up intense anxiety about the safety of reporting.

As if the rest of the reporting process was safer...

If you survived sexual assault or other abuse, remember that it's not your fault. You are not responsible for someone else's choice to commit a crime. Talk to someone. A counselor could be good for that, or someone else who has earned your trust.

If you are an LDS bishop, remember that sexual assault is a crime. Remember that people don't change unless changing feels better than staying the same. Criminal prosecution and prison time are a great way to motivate change. Also remember that the person who was attacked was not asking for it, no matter what they were wearing, or where they were standing, or who they were spending time with. They are not guilty of their own rape. They may be scared or angry or depressed when they come to you. Your job is not to condemn or punish, even if the church calls you a "judge in Israel." Your job is to comfort, protect, and mourn with the person who trusts you.

Title IX officials, remember the trust that people have before you share information.  Remember your legal and moral obligation to protect people and their information.

And BYU honor code officials, learn when to turn it off. Learn to treat people as people, instead of as potential offenders.  If someone didn't consent to sex, then they didn't have sex--they were assaulted. Is it really worth making someone relive a traumatic experience just to make sure they're keeping up appearances?

Remember the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery? We assume she consented--we call it adultery and not rape--and thus was guilty according to the law. But Jesus says "neither do I condemn you." Where does it say that we should condemn the innocent victim?

So stay safe, BYU.  I'm really sad to say that if you get assaulted there, it's likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Welcome to the Party... No, the Other Kind of Party

A thought occurred to me a while ago. I think it first surfaced while I was taking a class on multicultural competency in counseling. It came up again last fall with the LDS church's policy change. And now it's back with the latest news about whether evangelical Christians want to recognize the religious freedom of Muslims.

All churches are political parties. They are groups of people with shared beliefs and values. Their goals are to support believers and spread their shared beliefs. Members of any group are much more powerful collectively than as scattered individuals.

This is not to trample any church's truth-claims or value in society. Say God somehow revealed to all humanity that God only endorses one religion, and told us exactly which one that is. That church would still be a political party, even if it had God's stamp of approval. Even without hard proof of that approval, there are lots of religious groups and religious people that live their values really consistently. I really admire that and I see a kind of truth in it, even when I don't share the values.

Looking at the Old Testament and modern Mormon history, we can see some really cool examples of churches clearly acting as political parties.

I like the stories in Daniel. In one story, the king commands that any time anyone hears music, they must go and worship an image that the king had commissioned (I think of it as some kind of huge idol, the text says about 90 feet tall). Failing to bow down at the sound of music now carries a penalty of death by burning in a crematorium... so, basically being tortured to death. This is clearly a move to consolidate power--they're saying that the king represents god, not just the government, and has authority to dictate worship practices. Instead of obeying, Daniel's friends keep praying to their God, and they refuse to worship the image. The king knows these conscientious objectors personally from past run-ins, so he calls them in and tells them they have one more chance. Instead, they say something like "Go ahead and try to burn us. Our God can save us from your fire. Even if he doesn't, we would rather die on good terms with our God than live worshiping your gods." The king orders them to the furnace, and he orders it heated to seven times the normal heat.

Side note: I think the extra heat is an act of mercy for three people he respects--that much hotter probably means a quicker death. It even kills the soldiers who are waiting outside!

Then the king gets confused upon seeing four people walking around unburned instead of three dying. And the fourth, he says, looks like a god. The fire dies, and three men walk out without even smelling of smoke. So the king decides their god is stronger than his, and he changes his law: anyone who blasphemes the god of these three men will be dismembered alive. (King Nebuchadnezzar--history's first psychopath? I'm just saying.)

A little later, a different empire takes over. The new king appoints Daniel as one of three top administrators. Daniel is so good at his job that the king plans to promote him above the other two. Jealous, the other two turn to the church. They convince the king to make a new law: anyone who prays to something other than the king in the next 30 days will be thrown in the lions' den. They know that the king trusts and protects Daniel so much, the only way to get power over Daniel is by criminalizing his spiritual practice. When Daniel survives the lions' den, the king concludes that daniel's god is stronger than his own. So he kills Daniel's accusers and orders that his whole empire "fear and reverence" Daniel's powerful god. 

In both of these stories, we see the church consolidating power and taking political/legal actions. When it becomes clear that the church's power is at risk, the policy changes to mitigate the threat. It just happens that the threat in both stories is a powerful foreign god.

In the late 1970s, the LDS church lifted its long-standing ban keeping black people from participating in certain practices, including being ordained to the priesthood. Remember, Mormons ordain all baptized males who live up to certain standards, and black men were the only ones excluded before the 70s. Church leaders claimed the change was the result of divine revelation. I don't mean to call that part into question--divine revelation could well have been one of the deciding factors. I also think it's worth looking at some other factors.

For example, by the late 1970s, the civil rights movement was well under way. Now it was more politically popular to reach out to racial minorities. The federal government also threatened to revoke the church's tax exemption if they didn't move towards racial equity. So the church did the thing that would help consolidate power and increase popularity. Like I said, even if God inspired the change, the political consequences were favorable.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, when state and federal governments were considering laws that dealt with marriage equality. At that time, conservative Christians had a lot of political power. Think of how many times George W Bush talked about praying for guidance, or about how much power they still have even today. Conservative Christians have long opposed gay marriage, and in the early 2000s, they were very vocal about it. Mormons jumped on the bandwagon. After all, much of Mormon rhetoric lately had focused on The Family (TM), preserving traditional marriage and gender roles against the so-called evils of pornography and divorce ("so-called" because "evil" is a matter of opinion. This post isn't the venue for my opinions on those issues). As public opinion has changed, Mormons' official rhetoric has softened and become more inclusive, at least on the surface. After the policy change in November 2015, church leaders realized they had done something very unpopular, so they immediately softened the official language of the publication with a "clarification." I think these cases are interesting side by side. One shows a slow, barely perceptible slide towards public opinion, and the other is a fast, almost reactive jump.

Again, this does not mean it was necessarily all man-made--it's possible that God directed LDS leaders to oppose marriage equality and to make an unpopular policy. But even then, it's also important to recognize these as political moves.

Why does all of this matter? Churches are still going to preach. They're still going to do things like throw people in lion dens (hopefully less) or say that Muslims don't deserve religious freedom.

And that's the point. These groups exist to get and keep power. If they think someone or something is a threat, they'll try to protect themselves. I'm glad most religious groups in my part of the world don't use fire or lions to get what they want. I'm sad that so many use hate speech and dehumanizations as their weapons still. And recognizing that religions are political parties helps me to roll with their tactics and keep doing what works for me.

And isn't that what we need? To do what works for us?

Abraham, Igor Stravinsky, and Han Solo Walk Into a Blog...

Over the last few months, I've read several well-written pieces on Mormon culture and the Mormon community, mostly by people who identify as Mormons.  There has been a lot of discussion about the Church, its doctrines, and its practices since early November 2015, when a policy change intended to be made quietly was leaked on the internet.

A few of these articles bring up a question that I find difficult, so naturally the thinker/rebel/social scientist (take your pick) in me thinks it would be fun to engage with it.

What if Abraham was wrong?

Just in case you don't know the story, Abraham was one of the first biblical patriarchs.  The bible says that God promised Abraham a son by his wife, Sarah, who was very, very old--we usually assume she was well past typical child-bearing age.  God said that son would be the father of many nations.  When that son, Isaac, was born, Abraham and Sarah took it as a miracle, a blessing.  A few years later, an angel commanded Abraham to kill Isaac in a ritual religious sacrifice that usually would have involved an animal.  Abraham obeyed, and the angel appeared and stopped him at the last second, often depicted with the knife at Isaac's throat.  Usually, Mormons and other Christians celebrate Abraham's willingness to submit to God's commands.

That reading of the story is certainly valid.  After all, the biblical account says pretty explicitly that it was a test of Abraham's faith and obedience.  If that's what you get from the story, you're not wrong.  I've started to see a different meaning that I believe is just as valid.

A little background: this is coming from the perspective that the Old Testament was the national history of an underdog conqueror.  In other words, when a relatively small group of slaves successfully overthrew their world-superpower masters, they earned the privilege to write their own origin story.  I have no doubt that some of the Genesis account really happened.  I also have no doubt that some of it is an embellishment, a retcon (changing details in an earlier episode so the later ones make more sense), or a fabrication.  I believe this does not detract from the value of the Old Testament--on the contrary, believing that it's not 100% factual allows me to see more layers of meaning in every line on every page.  In this light, I see Abraham's story as a retcon, with the explicitly stated moral added later.

So, like I already mentioned, I've been wondering lately:

What if he missed the point?

What if God wasn't testing Abraham's obedience, but rather his ability to make informed decisions consistent with divinely inspired values and morals?  What if God wanted Abraham to say something like "No, this is my own flesh and blood.  God gave this kid to us when we thought it was impossible.  God told me to raise him, protect him, and get him ready for big things ahead.  That's what I'm going to do"?  If it really was a test of obedience, then Abraham did what I could never do--there are moments when my kid is my reason for living, and then nothing hurts like the thought of losing her, let alone causing her harm myself.  But I think it also could have been a test of conviction and dedication to the job he already had, being Isaac's dad.  If that's the case, then he failed miserably.  And we can learn from his failure.

The God I believe in lets us make our own decisions.  Sometimes our decisions bring our lives into harmony with God's will and plan, and sometimes our decisions bring discord.  Sometimes, it's like listening to Bach or Palestrina, and we can pick up on rhythm, meter, melody, key, and chord even if we haven't studied music.  It just sounds nice, even without knowing why.  Other times, it's like your first listen to Berg's Wozzeck or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  (If you don't know those pieces, go look them up.  I mean right now.  I'll wait.). The first time I heard those pieces, I grimaced and thought something like "they call that noise music!?  I could make better music by dropping my banjo into the blender!"  I was brave enough to come back and listen again, so now I'm beginning to understand the order that exists in each of those pieces.  It's still really hard to find the meter and the key, but now at least I can hear that there's a plan, there's meaning to it.  The loud drumbeat in the soft passage is there on purpose.  Even Berg's unsettling sprechstimme vocals are supposed to be there.  I think anyone who is willing to come back will have a similarly enlightening experience.  Sometimes, living a meaningful life means you're willing to take a risk, say no to an angel, or break with tradition.  Not always.  I can think of other instances when saying no to an angel would have been disastrous, and I'm glad John Williams returned to more traditional harmonies when he scored Star Wars (can you imagine Han Solo's lines all delivered in talk-sing?  I can't).  But still... There's a time to say yes and a time to say no.  My music library needs both Bach and Stravinsky in order to be complete.

So maybe Abraham played in the wrong key, and the angel came back at the end to set him straight and prevent murder.

Or maybe it really was a test of his submission to God's messengers.

And maybe, just maybe it's a chapter in a conquering nation's self-revised origin story.  But that's a discussion for another day.  Feel free to ask me about that privately.  

For now, I'm off to listen to some Chopin, another necessary part of my music library.  Look up his Prelude in C-Sharp Minor.  Do it now.  I'll wait.