Following Abraham is the new short film from Purple Pastures’ director/producer, Jacob Waxler. A shrewd observer of life, Jacob creates a short that looks at two seemingly different groups of people that both have a single historical tie: Abraham.
For those of you who are unaware, Abraham is the cornerstone for an ancient racial feud that later transformed into a religious feud. Abraham was an ancient Sumarian who lived in the town of Ur (in what is now Iraq). He was told to leave his home and family by the God, YHWH. (Although this name was considered holy and never actually pronounced by the culture it came from, it is pronounced by most English speakers: Yah-Way) He was told that he must journey to a new land with his wife, Sarai, where he would become the father of a great nation. After relocating, Abraham grew older and his wife grew impatient when YHWH’s prophecy did not come to pass by the time she was in her 90’s. As such, she and Abraham agreed that he should sleep with her servant girl, Hagar, to force YHWH’s prophecy to come to pass. Hagar gave birth to a child named Ishmael. A few years later, to Sarai’s shock, she became pregnant and gave birth to a boy named Isaac. With Sarai finally having a child, she quickly turned on Hagar and Ishmael, forcing Abraham to send them both into the wilderness, lest her son, Isaac, lose his inheritance to the first-born, albeit bastard, child of her serving girl.
So what’s all this have to do with a short film? To make a very, very long story short, the ancestors of Isaac and Ishmael would wage war between one another for thousands of years, both claiming the exact same ancestor in Abraham. By Abraham trying to make his human interpretation of YHWH’s prophecy come to pass, Abraham started thousands of generations of suffering.
Isaac’s ancestors would eventually become the Jews, with a religion that accompanied their race called Judaism. Ishmael’s ancestors intermarried with many more groups of people, causing their ranks to spread amongst a number of groups of people. However, the religion that they developed was known as Islam, and they referred to their interpretation of YHWH as Allah. About two thousand years ago, a sect of Judaism would arise called Christianity, which stated that it was the completed form of Judaism. (Judaism believes that a Messiah will one day be sent from YHWH to permanently cleanse the sins of the people of earth. Christians believe that this Messiah was already sent in the form of Jesus Christ, whose sacrificial death and resurrection permitted access to YHWH and eventually heaven.)
With a name like Following Abraham, Jacob Waxler actually chose to look at the two groups that were impacted most by Judaism, without actually looking at the Jewish people or the Judaic faith. As such, he looks at two men, one from the militant element of Islam and one from the militant element of Christianity, both of whom believe they are doing God’s will by killing people.
The film follows them both as they prepare for the killings they will undertake. The “Christian” (which is the only title he has in the credits) prepares a rifle and listens to an angry radio personality talk about “faggots” and a corrupt society that would murder unborn children. Meanwhile, the “Muslim” (again, his only title in the credits) says prayers to Allah in Arabic and prepares a bomb.
[Warning: Spoilers are necessarily coming.]
The next day, the “Christian” walks into an abortion clinic, shooting up the place until he is shot and killed by police himself. The “Muslim” gets on a subway car, blowing himself and the passengers up in a flaming jihad. After the killings, both men stand before heaven, waiting for God to welcome them into eternity. Too late they realize that by trying to make their limited interpretations of God’s will come to pass, they have instead unleashed untold misery and torment on countless lives…and, in this sense, they have followed Abraham. Too late, they realized that God’s spiritual truths can not be established by physical violence. With this final understanding, God’s light fades from their faces as they are cut off from Him in final judgement.
