Rethinking Child Sacrifice

Could sacrificing all the Palestinian children to Jehovah make Jesus come back?

When I asked Peruvian commenter

Aldonichts

to compare the political mood in Peru to that here in the US, this was part of the response, “However, I feel that in the global South, we are even more free and fresh. Europe is for us today just a great museum to visit, and the USA a great amusement park.”

Okay, fair enough. But what kind of amusement park?

I could easily live in South America. Here’s one of the things I like about it:

I was staying in a small hotel in a small town in Venezuela. One evening, I had dinner in a little restaurant near the hotel and it was such a pleasant experience that it quickly became my regular spot. It was a family-run business. Mom was in the kitchen, dad was tending bar, the older kids were waiters, the younger kids bussed tables, grandma collected payments.

One evening, I arrived as usual for dinner, only to discover the place closed. Closed on a Saturday night? I hope everything is okay. I turned to go find another place to eat when I heard someone call, “Señor!” It was one of the little kids standing beside the restaurant, motioning me to follow him to the back.

As I followed him, I began to hear music and voices and laughter and when we got in back of the restaurant, I saw why it was closed. It was grandma’s birthday and they were giving her a party. The dad saw me and brought me a beer. I thanked him and wished the old lady happy birthday. Someone brought me a plate of food. I sat down and watched the party as I ate.

It seemed like the whole town had turned out for it. The music was loud and, under the colored lights hanging in the trees, people were dancing. Little kids were screaming and running all over the place. Everyone was shouting at each other to be heard, and some of the men were getting tipsy. It was bedlam and it was beautiful and there was grandma, taking it all in, beaming from ear to ear. She was sitting in the middle of her whole life, and all those people were there to honor it. She was a very rich lady.

And they closed the restaurant on a Saturday night!

I tried to imagine a restaurant closing on a Saturday night in the United States for grandma’s birthday and couldn’t. Are you kidding? That’s our best night of the week. We need that money. Grandma can have her party in the afternoon. Or on Monday. But close the restaurant on a Saturday night so we can have a party? Are you out of your mind?

That old Venezuelan woman was a woman of great wealth but also of great accomplishment. She was the matriarch of a family that was thoughtful enough—decent enough—to station a little kid out front to watch for a hungry American who might happen along so he could shepherd him back behind the restaurant to share a meal and a celebration of her life with her family. Come the revolution, that warm kindness will be rightfully seen as evidence of a high degree of religious development.

In Gaza right now, there are families just like that Venezuelan family who are being blown to pieces, buried in rubble, slaughtered like animals. I can’t think of better evidence of our low and primitive religious development than that we support the slaughter of innocents.

Jews, apparently, overwhelmingly support the genocide they are committing. But that’s not surprising. In the Bible, “God” commands the Jews to do exactly that: “And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:”¹ If that text has served as your people’s religious foundation for a couple thousand years, it’s not surprising that you, as a people, are going to commit the occasional genocide. It’s like the Incan practice of child sacrifice. Gross, but that’s just them. Incas do child sacrifice—sometimes 200 at a clip, Jehovans do genocide.

Illustration of what was previously the largest sacrifice of infants in history. Around 1450 AD, 227 children were sacrificed in the Peruvian Chimu culture. The theory is that this great sacrifice was made to appease the rain gods because the rain did not stop, flooding the area, ruining the crops and more.

But whatever your position on child sacrifice, I think we can all agree we wouldn’t want the American-Incan Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) interfering in our elections on behalf of the Incas. We wouldn’t want AIPAC becoming the most powerful and feared lobbying outfit in our capital city. And we certainly wouldn’t want AIPAC to take control of our foreign policy. If they did, given the Incan love of slaughter, and their primitive religious beliefs, we could end up funding two genocides simultaneously, arming the killers as they went about their child-killing business.

The largest child sacrifice in history is still underway in Gaza. More than 10,000 children have been sacrificed by the Christian Zionists in a bid to make Jesus come back. The fundamentalist Jews, too, have some belief having to do with their Messiah,…blah…blah…blah…kill 10,000 children.

More than 500 years ago, in modern day Peru, the Inca sacrificed 227 infants to get Apu Illapu to make the rain stop. Christian Zionists are on board with the sacrifice of 10,000 Palestinian children to make Jesus come back. Jews think their Messiah will show up as soon as they knock down that mosque and put up a temple. Killing the 10,000 Palestinian children is just icing on the cake.

Dear Incas, Christian Zionists, and Jews, if you want to impress God, love one another, like that family in Venezuela. No real god rewards child-killing. Killing children won’t make the rain stop, it won’t make Jesus come back, and it wont produce your Messiah. So, stop. If you must kill someone, kill John Hagee, but leave the children alone.

1. Deuteronomy 7:2