Why did God ask Abraham to do something evil (human sacrifice) to prove his love? Isn't that contrary to His nature?

 

First off you are mistaken a bit. You are telling only part of the story in your question. God asked him to prepare to sacrifice his son, and Abraham was faithful to the point of being stopped short of killing his son by God. There are several things that need to be gleaned from this lesson.

Abraham had waited a long time for the promise God gave him, to include his attempt to speed up the process. God wanted Abraham to remain faithful to Him rather than anything or anyone else. This is the same lesson that Christ taught when he said to hate your family. The point is not that we aren’t supposed to love our families, but rather we love them through our faithfulness to Him alone.

Secondly, He was foreshadowing how He would ultimately bring mankind back into a right relationship with Him. It tells us that He gave His only begotten Son, so whoever believes in Him will have eternal life with Him rather than perishing. He experienced the full brunt of what He asked Abraham to do.

It is important to remember that while we may think we have the whole picture, we actually are just seeing a 1” x 1” square of the picture, but He sees the entire picture which in my example is the Mona Lisa. With this being the case it would seem presumptuous to assert that God is evil because He asked Abraham, as well as all that came after, to remain faithful in all situations, even when we don’t understand it.