One of the stories from the Bible that still rings with authenticity in our time is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was instructed by God (or so he thought) to make a human sacrifice of his son, Isaac. We've all seen the famous painting in which Abraham has Isaac pinned against a rock, knife raised over his son's chest, when God suddenly says, "Never mind."
This story has the ring of authenticity because this kind of thing still happens all the time. I recall a story I covered about a woman who drowned her child in a bus station toilet because God told her to.
And even though we now treat this as mental illness, most of us still somehow think that in Abraham's case, it was the real deal, and ascribe all sorts of complex theological meaning to it.
We now sometimes call Judaism, Christianity and Islam the 'Abrahamic' faiths because of their common origin with this hallucinating tribal chieftain, and of course, we all note how famously all his descendants get on.
I personally believe God is 'way more likely to visit me in the form of a hungry stray cat or dog (or even a homeless panhandler, for whom I admittedly show less sympathy) than as a burning bush, pillar of fire, or red-faced cable TV screamer with perfect hair.
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