Recker's World
Reason 31
I see a god who endorses human sacrifice
Around 1998 I first seriously questioned something in the bible. It was the first time I ever considered that maybe the story wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. No, it wasn’t the story of Noah’s Ark, nor the story of Jonah and the giant fish. It was the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac. (Genesis 22:1-19)
This story began to trouble me big time. How could a man like Abraham possibly believe that God was telling him to make a human sacrifice? God would never do something like that, surely? It didn’t occur to me at the time he was willing to sacrifice his own son Jesus, if you can call it a sacrifice. Nevertheless, it seems preposterous to me that anything like that could happen. God would never tell Abraham to do such a thing, even as a test.
I considered what if God asked someone to sacrifice their own son in this day and age. Would we believe it was God making that command? Of course not! We would all be adamant it was Satan trying to tempt that person into performing an atrocity. So, surely, Abraham would think the same?
Surely, he would question God, saying something like, ‘Why lord? You would never demand such an atrocity to be done. You would never demand that a human be sacrificed. Is this really you speaking to me or am I being deceived by the evil one?’
There is no doubt we’d consider it Satan today, yet back then, a man who knew God so well, didn’t question. He went ahead with the demand he believed came from God. Could it really be that back in those days followers of Yahweh thought nothing of sacrificing human beings to him? Was it something Yahweh often required so it was accepted? Or was this simply God playing cruel games with one of his creations?
I didn’t want to consider such things. The best I could come up with was that Abraham was mistaken about it being God commanding him to sacrifice Isaac. That in fact it was really Satan. Then God stepped in at the last moment to stop him from committing a terrible atrocity. That seemed to be the only logical explanation in my mind.
I expressed my concern about this story to a Christian friend of mine who I met while doing my BIT degree.
All he could say was, ‘I can assure you, it was God.’
As if he was in any position to make such an assurance! He clearly had no solid evidence to believe that, apart from his own mindset that the bible couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Most people would agree that a god that requires human sacrifice is an evil, primitive, barbaric type of god unworthy of worship. Yet the bible god clearly encourages human sacrifice.
If you were like me as a Christian you would not have acknowledged this. You wouldn’t have even thought about Jesus dying on the cross as a human sacrifice, but it was! John 3:16. However Jesus dying on the cross isn’t the only example of human sacrifice endorsed by the bible God.
Let’s take a look at the many other examples of God in the bible endorsing human sacrifice:
Other incidents of human sacrifice to God in the bible:
- 2 Kings 3:26-27 – King of Moab sacrifices his son.
- 1 Kings 16:34 – Mentions how Hiel sacrificed his son.
- 1 Kings 13:1-2 /2 Kings 23:20-25 - Josiah sacrifices priests to God.
- Deuteronomy 13:13-19 - God demands non-believers to be burned as a sacrifice to him.
- Numbers 31: 28: People sacrificed along with animals.
- Judges 11:29-40 - Jephthah promises to sacrifice to God, the first person who comes through the door, as a burnt offering. He did so.
The last one there is particularly noteworthy. Jephthah surely expected it would be a human coming through the door as sheep don’t tend to come inside. Alas the first person to come through that door was his daughter. Sickeningly, he went through with this sacrifice and God stood by while this happened. He never stepped in to stop it like he did with Abraham and Isaac.
To me all this explains why the sacrifice of Jesus would be the method that God chose to redeem mankind. Human sacrifice was clearly his thing and a lot more powerful than simply sacrificing an animal!