An open mind is not suitable if it leads you to assume honesty in all of the texts. Instead, realize that these texts were written by men and many of them. For example one story in the OT has GOD commanding Abraham to kill Isaac, but how could anyone make sense of GOD commanding the torture of a child? Strangely, this story is used to suggest an analogy to the alleged sacrifice of Jesus, but I believe there is no reason to think that Jesus did not resist his capture! In any case I am not going to follow the fake apostle Paul because his teaching is not the one that Jesus gave. In my opinion, the explanation of these events in Phoenix Journal #2 seems far more plausible than any account of blood sacrifice demanded by GOD.
http://www.phoenixsourcedistributors.com/html/j002/
http://www.phoenixsourcedistributors.com/html/j002/
Genesis 22:12, God speaking to Abraham:
Quote
Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.
Notice the immediate reason why God told Abraham to sacrifice his son? It was a test of Abraham's faith.
God knows everything. Yet there is an aspect of a person's faith that He has hidden from Himself. Part of the reason He has done this is for the joy that He gets when people like Abraham make it through the test with flying colors.
