The Altar of Human Sacrifice

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God wasn’t so happy with the Israelite people when they started mixing practices from other religions into their daily lives. Human sacrifice is one such practice in particular that leads to almost unbelievability. I imagine a few mothers of young sons were possibly not so happy either when it was their child who was chosen to be burned alive as an offering to the gods. Hundreds of thousands of children’s lives were cut short simply to appease these temperamental, suposedly superior godly beings. I wonder sometimes if anyone heard the helpless and horrific cries of these children during their worship service and felt a tingle in their spine like somehow they were just following the masses but it didn’t feel right?

I don’t have children so I can’t identify entirely with these faithful worshippers. I do have two cats. If anyone were to suggest that either of them be burned alive in the name of religion or anything else, this worldly or other, and I were asked to hand them over, there would be no shortage of the burning wrath I would be capable of embracing. Let there be no doubt that asses would be kicked first and names would be taken later if there was time or it seemed like it mattered. None of these children were honored with tombstones. To this day they lie piled in mass graves. I think the names of the “faithful” then probably wouldn’t matter so much either.

On the other hand, maybe it was a status symbol within your religion to have sacrificed a child. Maybe it was a symbolic badge of honor owned only by those who had suffered tremendous loss for their service. Maybe the truly religious suffered because it was their duty and they were honored and praised for it.

I’ve heard said by good church going people in our time that we need fresh blood in the church. They believe the problem with the American church today is simply that the current faithful are tired and burned out by their service. If we can reach out to our community and bring a few more people in, our problems will be solved because we can replace the suffering, tired servants with fresh ones to suffer in their place. There is a critical flaw in this thinking. This kind of outreach is for the sake of the church, not for the sake of the Kingdom. This kind of outreach is done to appease the church machine and give it what it needs to keep running. This kind of outreach burns people out which is really not so different from burning people up.

Church outreach programs and strategies don’t work for one simple reason. It’s because they’re church outreach programs and strategies. We pretend they’re done in the name of Jesus but we can’t fool ourselves out of knowing deep down inside that we’re just looking for fresh blood to offer to the church machine. We’re suspect even of our own motivation. Whether burning people up or burning people out, we feel guilty for leading people to a place where we know their lives are going to be sacrificed. And, we should.

Jesus’ blood was sufficient, dear friends. There is no need for us to be trying to find more to lavish on the altars of our churches. In fact, maybe it’s time to be willing to sacrifice our churches for the sake of the lives for whom Jesus’ blood was shed in the first place.

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