Who is this Abraham?

I want to start my studies of the teachings of Jesus, but I think it's important to look at a little background first. After all, Matthew 1 starts with a genealogy tracing Jesus back to Abraham. Why is this so important, that it's the opener for the New Testament?

What's the deal with Abraham anyway? Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all traced back to him. Why him?

Abraham was a descendant of Noah, and a descendant of Adam...naturally...

In Genesis 12, God promises Abraham (then Abram) that he will make him into a great nation, showered with blessings, but he needs to leave his family and country. God said he'd bless Abraham and his people, and if anyone cursed them, God would curse them back. (Old Testament God seemed to have a different approach than New Testament God.)

There are a series of strange happenings, such as Abraham's wife Sarah (then Sarai) convincing Abraham to lie and say she's his sister, so then when they arrived in Egypt, Sarah wouldn't be (??? killed/kidnapped/raped???) for belonging to him when they would want her since she was apparently that beautiful. Abraham went along with this plan, and apparently the King decided to marry Sarah.

As God promised, the King and his men all fell very ill as a result of unwittingly wronging Abraham. The King approached Abraham and asked him why he hadn't told him he was Sarah's husband? After all, he wouldn't have married her if that were the case. Then he told them to scram.

(It just seems to me like their plan was very flawed from the beginning. First of all, they lied. Second of all, as a result of their lie, God punished the King and his men. Third, when the King found out the real deal, he did the right thing. I'm obviously missing something.)

So then Abraham and Sarah, and good ol' Lot (the nephew) and his wife (and their slaves), traveled on. Abraham and Lot (and their people) ended up getting into some arguments over money, land, animals (the usual), and they decided to part ways. Lot went toward the lush Jordan Valley, and Abraham ended up staying in the land of Canaan.

God promises Abraham all the land he can see, and prosperity that abounds. Abraham builds God a statue.

Soon after, Lot got into some trouble. Abraham rescued him.

Abraham had another vision of God telling him not to be afraid, and that he would be protected. God went on to tell Abraham that he and his family would live a blessed and full life, but that Abraham's people would be persecuted, tortured, put into slavery and basically live a terrible existence for 400 years, but that God would punish the people who put them through all of that. After 4 generations, Abraham's people would return and reclaim the land.

...Okay, so they know that being in slavery is undesirable, but they have their own slaves? I need to understand why that was okay...

So Abraham and Sarah want a child, but Sarah can't conceive. Sarah decides to offer up her slave (Hagar) to Abraham to see if he can have any luck getting her pregnant, and if he does, Sarah will take the child as her own. (Again, I'm not understanding how that isn't completely evil/immoral, and how God was choosing Abraham to lead God's people...)

This is what happened next, and I'll just let the words come straight from the Bible (CEV):

"Genesis 16:4Later, when Hagar knew she was going to have a baby, she became proud and was hateful to Sarai. 5Then Sarai said to Abram, "It's all your fault! [b] I gave you my slave woman, but she has been hateful to me ever since she found out she was pregnant. You have done me wrong, and you will have to answer to the LORD for this." 6Abram said, "All right! She's your slave, and you can do whatever you want with her." But Sarai began treating Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away. "

So Hagar runs away, but has a vision of an angel that tells her to go back to Sarah to be her slave, and that she'll be rewarded with a son who will give her many descendants, but he'll be an outcast, and everyone will hate him and he'll always be fighting with everyone. Somehow, Hagar thinks this is an okay deal, so she returns to Abraham, and they give birth to Ishmael. Abraham was 86.

When Abraham turned 99, he had a vision of God telling him again that he'll have many descendants and nations from his lineage. God tells him to circumcise just about every man he can get his hands on...sons, slaves, men, boys...and Abraham and Sarah's names were then changed from their former Abram/Sarai names to Abraham and Sarah. Sarah was 90 at the time, and God promised her a son...Isaac.

Genesis 18 is really confusing to me. It reads as though God wants to kill the people of Sodom and Gomorrah for being evil, but Abraham talks God off the ledge. Abraham reminds God that their may be people living there who aren't evil, so God backs off a little.

Genesis 19 talks about how Lot, living in Sodom, has some angels visit as guests. The men and boys of the town demand to see Lot's guests so they can have sex with them. Lot is appalled, so he offers up his two virgin daughters instead. (Whaaaa???)

Obviously, the angels could hold their own, so they went out and made the whole crowd blind. The next morning, they forced Lot and his family to leave so that they could destroy the evil town. They told them not to look back.

Lot's wife did, and she was turned into a block of salt. I've always wondered if this is more of a parable. If Sodom was destroyed by fire, did Lot's wife actually go back because she didn't want to leave, and her body was burned and in essence cremated, which made her look like a block of salt?

After all this, Lot and his daughters move into a cave. They decide there's no one there for them to marry, so they come up with a big plan to get their dad drunk so they can have sex with him and get pregnant. They succeeded with their plan, and both had children as a result.

How they were not included with the evil people in Sodom is beyond me.

Finally, Abraham turns 100, and he and Sarah give birth to Isaac. Sarah doesn't want her slave and her step son Ishmael around anymore. She wants Isaac to inherit all that Abraham has, so she banishes them.

Years later, God decides to test Abraham, and tells him he needs to sacrifice his only son, Isaac (except that he has another son, Ishmael). Abraham agrees to sacrifice Isaac, but when he is about to go through with it, and angel stops him, and let's him know it was just a test. Phew.

30 years passes...Sarah dies, Isaac marries Rebekah, Abraham marries Keturah and has six more children...and he finally died at 175.

So, for what it's worth, even though the God depicted in these stories isn't the God I feel as though I know, Abraham certainly did follow what he believed to be God's will for his entire life. By today's standards, Abraham would probably not receive the stamp of approval from the religious right.

He let his wife marry someone else, he took on his wife's slave as a wife while he was still married...he banished his slave wife and their son...all I can say is that I need to know a lot more about those times, and more history of the passages before I can truly understand the whole deal with Abraham and the God who appeared in these stories.

If I've learned anything from the life of Abraham, it's once again that it's so important to understand the big picture. If you take and choose pieces of the Bible to suit your needs or agenda, from Abraham and Lot's story alone you can advocate polygamy, incest, child abandonment, and open marriages.

I think it is absolutely critical to question your beliefs. We cannot blindly accept what we have been told about God or religion or the Bible, just because we have heard it our entire lives. We must think for ourselves, and really give thought and prayer to understanding what it is all about. There are some really important messages and life lessons to uncover and live by, if we can move forward with an open and curious mind and heart.