Here is an old, but interesting story. It should be a familiar story to our Christian readers. Deanna Laney was commanded by God to stone her children to death as poof of her devotion to Him. Unlike the Biblical story of Abraham, God didn’t pull any punches at the last minute. He did not stop Laney from hitting her sons, ages 8, 6, and 1, with rocks weighing up to 14 pounds. Maybe He was out of sacrificial goats to use as replacements. She fulfilled God’s will by killing the two eldest, but failed Him by only permanently injuring the one-year-old. Perhaps that is why He abandoned her to the Texas ‘justice’ system.

While this story is not new, I recently had a couple of thoughts regarding this issue. First, how is Laney’s claim that God spoke to her any different from Akiane Kramarik’s claim? Christians cannot claim that God would never command a parent to perform such a horrendous act because He’s done it before. If the two situations are any different, what is the criteria? How are we to determine the validity of future claims of messages from God?

Secondly, since Laney ended using an insanity plea, how do we know that Abraham wasn’t suffering from similar delusions? Maybe, like Laney, Abraham only thought that God told him to kill Isaac. Claiming he was crazy would certainly go a long way to removing this problematic feature of Christian theology. Then again, it would admit that there is an error in the Bible.

–Sidfaiwu

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