In ancient Israel the center of religion was the temple in Jerusalem. Before that it was the tabernacle that they constructed during their time in the wilderness. There was, for hundreds of years, a single place the people went to worship the Lord.
And the central act of religion was sacrifice. Not prayer, not reading from scripture or singing hymns, but sacrifice. The book of Leviticus provides in detail all the written laws about how and why to make sacrifices to God. They were called offerings, and there were several kinds. There was a guilt offering, a sin offering, an offering of well-being, a thank offering. The offering might be the grain from your fields, but more often an animal was required – a bull, a sheep, a goat. And if you could not afford one of these larger animals, you could bring two turtle doves. They would be given to the Priest, who would sacrifice them on the altar. It seems barbaric to us. But it could have been worse. Much worse.
Because in some ancient cultures the appropriate sacrifice might be a human child. Israel had neighbors who did this. In fact, there is archeological evidence from ancient civilizations all around the world that this kind of sacrifice was practiced. Probably in very desperate circumstance. It stemmed from the belief that their gods – gods of rain, fertility, war, whatever it might be sacrifice– required this kind of appeasement. Ancient Greek literature includes narratives of warriors making sacrifices of children, which indicates that, while it might have been uncommon, it was known to have been done.
It is hard to fathom in our day and age, isn’t it? Even among the scholars who study the ancient world, there are some who refuse to believe that the people they have devoted themselves to studying could really have done such a thing. But the evidence is overwhelming.
If we try to understand sacrifice, we know that it involves giving up something good – even something precious – for the sake of something even better, or necessary. So, for example, people who were starving through years of drought, when all their fervent prayers remained unanswered, might come to believe that their gods are waiting for them to offer something really valuable. So they made the sacrifice, and then hoped that it would be enough.
Sometimes it works the other way around – you try to draw a bargain with your gods. You make a promise to the gods that you will do a certain thing if only they will give you what you need.
There is an example of this sort of sacrifice in the book of Judges. A man named Jephthah, a warrior, needed some extra courage for the battle he was about to begin, so he made a bargain with the Lord: bring me victory and I will sacrifice to you the first person or thing that comes out of my door. He triumphed in battle, then he returned home. And as he approached his house, the door opened, and a person came out singing. It was his daughter. A terrible thing, but Jephthah felt obliged to hold up his end of the bargain.
Jephthah is not celebrated in the scriptures, though. He is held up as a tragic character, who made a terrible mistake. He was borrowing a custom from other cultures, which we sometimes do. There is a veritable smorgasbord of idols, values, and practices at our fingertips, things that do not bear the reflection of our almighty God, yet are readily available and we can sample at will. Cutting a bargain with God is one. Always a mistake. Our God is not about transactions.
We read these tales – the story of Jephthah, or stories about human sacrifice in other cultures – and we are appalled by them. We do not want to believe they really happened. They are anathema to us, counter to all we hold dear. I think.
I thought.
But I have come to the point at which I believe that we the people of the United States are practicing child sacrifice.
For we watch this happen again and again and again. In Colorado, in Connecticut, in Kentucky, in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in Florida, in Texas, in so many places we see this horror replay. Each time we are flooded with anguish. But then we dry our tears and carry on and do virtually nothing different.
We take steps like “hardening” schools, hiring school security officers, training local police. We run schoolkids through active shooter drills. Nothing that we do seems to be enough, though.
We talk a lot about reforming gun laws – banning assault weapons, strengthening background checks. We talk about the mental health problems that seem to afflict the ones who carry out these mass shootings. But the talk doesn’t lead to anything more. In the halls of government, it doesn’t even lead to very much talk anymore.
If we really want to protect our dear children, we would do whatever it takes, wouldn’t we? If we really cherish our children, why wouldn’t we make a massive, concerted all-out effort to keep them from becoming human sacrifices?
I have heard some say that these terrible events are simply the price of freedom, but I cannot accept that. I don’t doubt that freedom has a certain price, but I steadfastly reject the notion that our children should be paying it.
Nor do I believe that God wants that either.
We have a story in the book of Genesis in which father Abraham is summoned by God to take his son Isaac up the mountain and make him a sacrifice. Abraham is obedient to God and so he takes an armful of firewood and his son Isaac up the mountain. At the very last minute an angel of the Lord intervenes, stopping Abraham’s hand. A ram appears to take the place of Isaac.
This is possibly the hardest story in the whole of the Bible. The point of the story is that in the end God did not require this of Abraham, although it is a terrifying way to get to this assurance. Here is what I believe this is about:
All the peoples around Israel practiced this form of sacrifice to their gods. It was commonly accepted that such things were sometimes necessary – the price of freedom, perhaps they said. And the Hebrew people wanted to know, needed to know: was their God any different? Did they dare believe that their God would be merciful and compassionate in a way the other gods were not? and the answer is yes. The answer is yes, and the way to learn this is through a lesson they could never forget. In this story, the God of Israel says yes, I am different. I am not like these other, lesser gods of the world. So I command you: turn away from all those other gods, those lesser, menacing, evil gods; follow me and you will live.
Turn away from whatever idols you might be worshiping. Turn away from your cynicism and your apathy. Turn away from your fears that prevent you from standing up against injustice, against cruelty, against oppression.
Our God is a God of love, of unity, of justice, of peace.
It is not too much for our God to demand that we commit ourselves to these same things. It is not too much for our God to demand that we use our words, our minds, our bodies, whatever power and influence we have to bring more love, more justice, more peace to the world, and especially to our children. Remember, they are all our children. There is no such thing as “other people’s children.” It is not too much that we should be obedient to God’s command. If we call ourselves people of faith.
Jesus prayed that we, the church, might be one, united in him, so that the love of God would be known in the world, through us. The world will know God only by what we do and what we say; we had better be true. Or else, in the words of the prophet Amos, the day of the Lord will, indeed, be a terrible darkness.
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Photo: The sacrifice of Isaac. Talmoryair, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
