I'm surprised you cited Genesis 22. :-)

Some people, when confronted with Gen22, simply say "wow, I want nothing to do with this religion", and walk away.

Other's see the story and say "wow... how do Christian's get around this one?". And so volumes have been written on this story. There's a ton of rich theology there for folks who were wiling to look past the initial hurdle.

I.e. the argument that "look at this horrific story" only really works for a small subset of people who aren't willing to look into the theology of it.

Now, one could argue that people who find the theology of the story satisfying are somehow demented, but that's a different argument.