I woke to a strange light coming from my closet. I got up to investigate and found an unnatural fire burning in my dirty clothes hamper. Just before I reached to grab a damp towel lying on the floor to throw over the hamper, the fire spoke. “I am the Lord, thy God, and I command you to sacrifice your eldest child or humanity will suffer a great plague.” I stood in disbelief for a moment, waiting to wake up from the dream, but that didn’t happen. Then I got my brain working and started to process what was going on and what was said. I quickly deduced this was the “Abraham” scenario.

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and when Abraham went to do this, an angel stopped him at the last moment. There are two ways to interpret this event. The first is to see God as a psychologist trying to determine where Abraham, and thus humanity, was developmentally before deciding His next course of action. The second way is to see God as a brutal and blood thirsty crime boss who only wanted to be certain of, and reinforce, Abraham’s fealty. It is not surprising that our civilization chose the latter, probably as a reaction, and how that choice influenced our evolution.

So, I decided that the best thing I could do for myself and humanity is to not react out of fear and to be perfectly honest. I replied, “Hamper Fire, if you indeed have all the power and foresight of God then you can kill my eldest child and or cause a plague in humanity yourself, as you see fit. I, nor anyone else, can stop you. I will not do your dirty work and accept your punishment. Otherwise, you are welcome to hang out here in my closet, but I am going back to bed. I have work tomorrow.”

It has been a year since that night. My children are alright and nothing has happened in the world that resembles a plague. I am guessing that God made a note in his little book that mankind has developed a more mature understanding of responsibility.