Learning to Sit with Sacred Discomfort

What do you do when reading the scriptures makes you uncomfortable? Genesis 18–23 includes narratives that feel foreign to me, sometimes hard to engage. I sense they are heavily loaded with meaning, but I struggle to access it. It’s particularly uncomfortable to read about suffering and not fully understand it.

Often these stories become more approachable when I seek additional context—cultural, historical, literary, etc. As a Visiting Fellow at the Maxwell Institute, I am currently blessed with colleagues just down the hall who can help me gain some of that context. My home department is Philosophy, where I mostly engage analytic texts and arguments that aim for clarity and specificity of meaning. I can approach them like complicated math problems: systematically, step by step, with confidence that all the information needed to understand the argument is there. By contrast, ancient scripture feels at least as dense with meaning between the lines as in the text itself! I appreciate the expertise of my colleagues as I try to learn some of what God offers in the rich scriptural traditions of the Old Testament.

But I also believe that God intends to speak to us through the scriptures whether we have access to expertise or not.  There is one story in this week’s Come Follow Me that I do find fairly straightforward. The thing is, this story also makes me uncomfortable. It is the Akedah, the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

I am grateful for the interpretive tools I’ve been taught to apply to this story. God never intended harm to come to Isaac, rather Abraham needed this test of faith and obedience.[1] Additionally, the Book of Mormon teaches that the story is one of many types of Christ found in the Old Testament. The narrative is “a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son”; like the law of Moses, it builds faith by “pointing our souls to [Christ]” (Jacob 4:5).

Thinking of the event as a test or considering it allegorically helps me extract theological value from the text. But I’ve also noticed that reading through these interpretive lenses allows me to put distance between my heart and the uncomfortable parts of the story. I wonder if I use these interpretive lenses to sidestep reading the story from the perspective that feels most natural to me: that of a parent.

When I think of Abraham placing wood for a burnt offering on Isaac, seeing the trust in his son’s eyes, I think of my own son’s eyes. But then my stomach turns and my chest tightens. I don’t want to stay in that moment, or the moments that follow. Abraham binds his son, lays him on the altar, takes the knife in his hand. I want a reason to look away from that experience, replace it with some grander purpose. I want meaning to soften the edges of the story of a parent accepting the necessity of killing his own child.

Do I miss something when I rush past that discomfort?

When Mary came to Jesus mourning her brother’s death, Jesus knew that he would raise Lazarus. He had understanding that could have allowed him to avoid discomfort. But Jesus did not rush past the feelings of that moment. He wept with Mary and the other mourners.[2]

I think of the moment in Moses 7, when Enoch sees God weep over the pain his children cause one another. Enoch is initially surprised, asking God three times, “How canst thou weep?”[3] Even though Enoch is in the midst of a vision that lays bare the great tragedies of the human family, he trusts that God can make it all right. He seems to assume that God has too much power and knowledge to be hurt by the suffering they witness together.  

Imagine seeing a friend cry because their children are hurting one another. It would be strange if we responded to their tears with surprise. Even if this friend was very wise and able to see things from an eternal perspective, we would understand their deep sorrow at their children’s suffering. And we would understand that our role as their friend would be to mourn with them—to witness their pain, validate it, and share in it.

As Moses 7 proceeds, Enoch’s surprise is replaced with this kind of shared mourning. He listens to God explain the reasons for his emotional response.[4] Through the remainder of the vision, we see Enoch emotionally in tune with God, mirroring his feelings. Remarkably, God invites and empowers Enoch to empathize with him.

Is it possible that Genesis 22 is another instance of God inviting one of his children to empathize with him? James 2:23 teaches us that “Abraham believed God… and he was called the Friend of God.”[5] True friendship surely involves reciprocal empathy. Abraham’s ability to reciprocate God’s love for him increased when he better understood what it was like for his friend to choose to sacrifice a child.

I want to be a friend to God. How does he invite me to reciprocate the empathic love he has for me? Abraham’s story offers insight into part of God’s felt experience. I think all of scripture can function that way. God wants us to look at one another as he looks at us. His children, in every time and circumstance, are his work and his glory (Moses 1:39). I want my efforts to engage scripture to show God that I am striving to understand him and share in his love for his children.

God has always used feeling to teach us.[6] Perhaps this is why Jospeh Smith warned against the “contraction of feeling.”[7] As I continue to study the Old Testament, I will still ask questions about context and meaning. I will seek the eternal perspective that we all need to make sense of the suffering in the world. But I hope I will resist any impulse to avoid discomfort by “contracting” my feelings as I read. Opening my heart to feeling, both comfort and discomfort, makes room for the Spirit to teach me about God and his children. And possibly, like Abraham, how to be a better friend.