A man with a vision
(Note: this is the second article on Abraham. The first one was posted March 19)
Exactly how many people do you know of who have willingly emigrated because a god spoke to them? And how many are you aware of who have done so while being ignorant of the destination of their migration? Not many, I bet.
The Genesis account highlights among many other characters that of Abraham of Ur, a man not otherwise known through extra-Biblical sources. As a 75 year old this former polytheist is reported to have experienced a highly unusual call. A divine being Abraham had no previous experience with, revealed himself to this aging figure, disclosing his intention of producing through Abraham a people that would readily respond to him, and eventually - supernaturally guided and monitored - build a thoroughly just society.
A LAND OF PLENTY - FOR ALL
The Bible states that Abraham in effect, throughout his voluntary exile in a land he had been told he and his desecndants would inherit, survived and even thrived because of his conviction that God would at long last establish a model city, a model society, that would be radically at odds with what was known in his own day.
Ur of the Chaldees, his native city, was a prosperous commercial center at the time Abraham departed with his family, but just like any other city state in the third millennium BC it was most likely an urban entity displaying the uglier aspects of the human experience: the rich domineering the pauper, the corrupt civic leader depriving the destitute of justice, the violent cowering the disenfranchised through intimidation, threats and murders. Abraham must most likely also have observed the callousness and cynicism that coexists so unnervingly with the unjust monopolization of wealth: the few hoarding material privileges at the expense of the many.
GOD IS BUILDING .........A CITY!
Abraham looked forward, Genesis says, to the city that has foundations, i.e. the city whose architect and builder is God. He wasn't content with city life in which the rottenness of exploitation and corruption lay seething underneath the smooth facade of a technologically advanced society. Ur had the trappings of civic society, but probably failed in treating the weak and underprivileged with the dignity that that human beings, created in God's image deserve.
Throughout the years of his exile, Abraham fed on his vision of something better: not a community for the recluse or the religious hermit, but a community in which people didn't worship their gods for own their selfish ends, but where love for God and obedience to the divine injunctions would pave the way for fairness, security and compassion for great and small.
Exactly how many people do you know of who have willingly emigrated because a god spoke to them? And how many are you aware of who have done so while being ignorant of the destination of their migration? Not many, I bet.
The Genesis account highlights among many other characters that of Abraham of Ur, a man not otherwise known through extra-Biblical sources. As a 75 year old this former polytheist is reported to have experienced a highly unusual call. A divine being Abraham had no previous experience with, revealed himself to this aging figure, disclosing his intention of producing through Abraham a people that would readily respond to him, and eventually - supernaturally guided and monitored - build a thoroughly just society.
A LAND OF PLENTY - FOR ALL
The Bible states that Abraham in effect, throughout his voluntary exile in a land he had been told he and his desecndants would inherit, survived and even thrived because of his conviction that God would at long last establish a model city, a model society, that would be radically at odds with what was known in his own day.
Ur of the Chaldees, his native city, was a prosperous commercial center at the time Abraham departed with his family, but just like any other city state in the third millennium BC it was most likely an urban entity displaying the uglier aspects of the human experience: the rich domineering the pauper, the corrupt civic leader depriving the destitute of justice, the violent cowering the disenfranchised through intimidation, threats and murders. Abraham must most likely also have observed the callousness and cynicism that coexists so unnervingly with the unjust monopolization of wealth: the few hoarding material privileges at the expense of the many.
GOD IS BUILDING .........A CITY!
Abraham looked forward, Genesis says, to the city that has foundations, i.e. the city whose architect and builder is God. He wasn't content with city life in which the rottenness of exploitation and corruption lay seething underneath the smooth facade of a technologically advanced society. Ur had the trappings of civic society, but probably failed in treating the weak and underprivileged with the dignity that that human beings, created in God's image deserve.
Throughout the years of his exile, Abraham fed on his vision of something better: not a community for the recluse or the religious hermit, but a community in which people didn't worship their gods for own their selfish ends, but where love for God and obedience to the divine injunctions would pave the way for fairness, security and compassion for great and small.
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