Let me preface by saying I am out of my league here. Forgive me if I speak in generalities or become inaccurate at/on some point(s). I basically want to get my questions out there to ‘the pros.’
One of the struggles I’ve had with Judeo-Christian faith is all the dang sacrificing going on, particularly in the OT. Slaughter that animal like a good believer. Lay it on an altar to please God. Abel’s sacrifice was good; Cain’s was bad.
For the longest time (I mean, into adulthood), I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t fully understand the most basic idea of Christianity: that Jesus died for our sins. How did Jesus dying do a thing for us? A friend explained that he was offered up as sort of an Ultimate Sacrifice to God. He pointed out all the references to Jesus as The Lamb of God. “I’ve been redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb,” etc.
Anybody else find this creepy?
Anybody else want to believe in a Creator-God that’s more powerful and intelligent, that isn’t like some monster in a cave, where you tie the virgin up out front for Him to snatch and munch on?
Was all of this reference to sacrifice an effort to appeal to and attract pagans? (I’ve heard the same reasoning for the hideous gargoyles you see on many of Europe’s old Catholic churches.)
“God’s ways are beyond your understanding,” just doesn’t cut it for me on this issue. Nor does the idea that yeah, sacrifices were once required, but things evolved. Doesn’t God transcend time?
I would appreciate any insight anyone is able to offer.
Wow, what a square, man! Drop your “civilized” hang-ups and go to the nearest alter and kill, kill, kill something! It’ll make you feel good.
The whole concept of sacrifice is to give up something that you value deeply. Meat for lent. Sexual relations. Alcohol. Your first born.
Sure, Catholicism is big on sacrifice - but if you ask me, they’ve gotten real soft in the last thousand years. The Jesus thing was nice, bloody and symbolic and I dug the crusades with all that, “Give up my soft life in this posh castle and trudge a thousand miles to kill some heathens for the Glory of God” stuff - a real good start, but since then it’s just been downhill.
At least the jews refuse to eat pigs, shellfish, meat with dairy, good wine, swallowing, etc. There’s some real sacrifice for you. Still doesn’t touch the OT Hebrews - they were some Manly Men who gave great honor to the fine art of the sacrifice. Them Greeks, too!
Seriously though, there is something quite profound about taking something you love and hold dear to your heart and burning it alive on an alter. It’s hard to put into words.
Well, I can give you the (Orthodox) Jewish perspective:
First of all, we obvoiusly don’t go with the whole “Jesus was a sacrifice” thing. In fact, human sacrifice is strictly forbidden in Judaism (virgins or not).
As for the concept itself, it is not necessarily primitive or unenlightened. A sacrifice was a way to bring yourself closer to God. In some cases (as in a sin-offering) the person had to confess the sin before the sacrifice. In addition, the person should view the sacrifice as if he himself were being sacrificed (as punishment for his sin).
In addition, in Judaism, most sacrifices were eaten (as opposed to burned in their entirty, on the Altar). A person could bring a sacrifice as a thanksgiving offering or a peace offering. The majority of these offerings were eaten by either the Kohanim (priests) or the owner of the sacrifice and his/her guests. It would then become a festive religious meal.
How does spilling some fresh blood or cooking up some meat, grain or veggies on a rock bring an individual or group closer to their God?
It would seem to be some kind of acknowledgement to God that you are aware and appreciative of the fact that He is the creator of the goods being ‘offered.’ Wouldn’t you think, though, that God would be above that?
I just don’t like to think of Him as some beast that needs to be appeased with blood.
No. It’s not a matter of God being above that. He doesn’t NEED our offerings.
When I give candy to my kids, I want them (and require them) to say please and thank you. I don’t NEED the acknowledgement. It is, however, for their benefit. The same holds true for sacrifice and prayer. They are for OUR benefit, not God’s.
And one thing I forgot to add to my latest post. Look in Isaiah (sorry, dont have C&V handy). When our sacrifices and prayers are insincere, or just as a matter of rote, rather than with the intended feelings behind them, God no longer wants them.
I could be wrong about this too, but I do believe that the Jews were the only ones at the time who were allowed to consume their own sacrificies. The Romans offered sacrifices to their gods regularily too, they just became property of their temple priests. Sharing of a meal became a very important practice for the early Christians. This was rooted in the Jewish practice of meal sharing and sacrifice. Thus you have later the sharing of wine and wafers as the symbolic body and blood of Christ.
I suppose sacrificing does seem a little barbaric but I can think of very few religions that do not practice sacrifice in some form or another. Whether you are giving up something of yourself or something for which you have worked. Christians are admonished to give up their “first fruits”, which translates to the first 10% of your income, a tithe.
I’ve always been put off by the issue of sacrifice too. Not so much the idea of giving something up, but the actual bloody part of it does seem contrary to the spirit of what God is, or should be, all about. Also, the idea of Jesus dying for our sins has never made sense to me, even back when I was a kid and still believed.
I also find the idea of communion kind of creepy. I mean, it’s symbolic cannibalism! I understand that the Catholic doctrine of the Transubstantiation says that it is an actual transformation of bread and wine to the body and blood. That just gives me the willies.
In Mayan civilization, human sacrifice was very important. It was believed that without the human blood to grease the works (so to speak) that the universe would stop. Kings would wage wars with the main intent of collecting more prisoners to sacrifice.
Were the Maya pagans? It depends on your view, but I don’t think so. They had a number of gods that they believed in and a priest cast. Were they unintelligent? Not by long shot. Their knowledge of math, astronomy and architecture was as good or better than any other comtemporary civilization.
There might be a case that the Maya were unenlightened for allowing the human sacrifice to go on as long as it did, but when the wars ended so did the sacrifices and the “collapse” of Mayan civilization was not too far behind (granted there were other factors).
I see it kind of like saying Grace before a meal. You thank God for everything you have, ask for forgiveness for wrong-doing (just as you would in any personal relationship if you wronged the other party) and then eat. You do have to kill an animal to eat it, maybe we lose sight of that because we no longer have to do it ourselves, everything is prepackaged or preprepared. Now killing just for the killing and blood part would be wrong (and a waste of food) but it seems as if this was not a practice in Judaism.
This is just another “concept” borrowed by Christianity from Judaism, no where are Christians instructed to give up first fruits or 10%, only to give what they are able and with a cheerful heart. Just thought I’d say something about this common misconception.
I always loved that parody of a Chick Tract at the Jack Chick Parody Archive where God says to Chick; “I am God! Why would I have to sacrifice myself to myself in order to change a rule?”
I’m glad somebody asked this, as, like Ptahlis said, the idea of Jesus dying for our sins has never made sense to me, either. How does that work? Who exactly was making this particular sacrifice? The followers of Jesus didn’t willingly give him up (well, Judas aside), and the Romans weren’t losing anything by crucifying him. And it doesn’t make sense, logically, for God to sacrifice anything, as S/he already has everything. I don’t get it.
Then again I haven’t read the Bible in quite a while, so maybe I should read it carefully sometime soon.
For the sake of accuracy, “pagan” generally refers to the worship of non-Christian deities or religious philosophies. It’s not a characterization of the level of culture and sophistication of a civilization. The Maya were pagans by definition, as they were obviously non-Christian.
The term “pagan” is uncapitalized when referring to historical religious practices. “Pagan” is capitalized when referring to a variety of modern religions based on pre-Christian religion, non-traditional Goddess worship, and other non-traditional religious practices. It’s also capitalized when referring to a member of such a religion. “Pagan” is usually distinguished from “Theism”, “New-Age” or “spritual” by the identification and worship of specific deities (often historical or feminine).
There is some ambiguity as to whether canonical Pantheism, belief in the the transcendent religious nature of of everything, should be included as Pagan.
Said the Buddhist monk to the hot dog vendor: “Make me one with everything.”
Sorry for the niggle, but I think you might be confusing the Mayans with the Aztecs (or possibly with the Toltecs in general).
IIRC, while the Mayans occasionally used human sacrifice – sometimes dropping weighted people into cenotes – they often used personal pain/sacrifice instead, such as passing thorns and cords through their tongues.
The Aztecs on the other hand did go to war with their nieghbours for the express purpose of capturing sacrificial victims and believed that the blood of the sacrifices fed the sun. The year that Cortez arrived was the end of one of their 52 year cycles and there are accounts of ten thousand or more sacrifices made in one ceremony, with the priests continuing into the dark under lamp light and until they dropped from exhaustion.
This is off topic, but I wanted to clarify a few things about Mesoamerican peoples.
It is a common myth that the Maya or Aztecs were more advanced in Astronomy and archetechure than thier European counterparts. This is simply not true. It is possible to argue that thier astrnomical and calendrical systems were slightly more accurate than those used in Europe, but you have to remember that this was still a stone-age civilization. They could not have built the Colloseum or Notre Dame. The Mayans did not even work gold. Over-eager Mesoamericanists and most especially the National Geographic have for years exaggerated the accomplishments of these peoples. This is understandandable and forgivable–when you dedicate your life to an obscure study you are apt to develop the tendency to oversell it. The various groups that emerged in this hostile area are remarkable for what they did do, and it irritates me to no end when people feel the need to exagerate those accomplishments, as if they wouldn’t be nearly so neat if they wern’t “better” than the Europeans in some area.
All Mesoamerican groups practiced blood sacrifice, both self-inflicted and on the bodies of others. Mayans most certainly did sacrifice prisoners. Numbers are impossible to determine, but recent evidence suggests that it was higher than previous esttimates. Certain early Mayanologists (Thompson) downplayed this aspect of Mayan society out of a desire to project the Mayans as being more “civilized” than the Aztecs. Mayans were also fond of self-inflicted sacrifice–in addition to running thorny vines through their tounges and lips they also ritually pierced thier own penises with stingray spines. On a completly irrelevant tangent, they also administered hallucenigenic enemas as part of religious ceromonies. Heart-sacrifice Where the victem’s heart was removed) was not practiced by the Classic Maya, but was introduced in the post-classic period (after c. 1100 AD), probably by Toltec invaders from the North. The Aztecs also inherited this practice from the Toltecs. The Aztecs practiced heart-sacrifice on an amazing scale–once again, accurate numbers are impossible to determine, but estimates in the thousands per year are probably not too high.
On the more general function of sacrifice: It is very hard for us today in our post-industrial comfort to realize how close pre-industrial man lived to tragedy. One bad year–a little to little rain–and most of the people you knew would die in horrible, misrable pain. Imagene the amount of labor it takes to plant a field with a dull stick. If you get a week of hard freezing at just the wrong time after planting you could loose most of the crop. If this happened, all that work would be wasted, and since you had no more surplus you wouldn’t be able to replant. So you would look at your wife and five kids and know that you would spend the next winter watching the weaker ones starve to deaath–bellies bloating, eyes sinking, growing weaker. You’d know what it would look like because you’d have seen it before. Added to this are all the other randomn tragedies of life: For example, today, when a young man in the prime of heath–the star athelete in his high school–develops a high fever and drops dead in a matter of hours, we preform an autopsy and announce “menegitis”. It becomes something understood and there are concrete things we can do to make sure that the same thing dosen’t happen to us or our loved ones. In a pre-modern society there would be no followup explaination–the strongest man in the village just fell over dead for no good reason at all. The never-ending terror of this had to be almost unbearable.
The concept of sacrifice arises pretty naturally out of this mix because of the evidently in-born notion that you don’t get something for nothing. We all believe in Charma at some level, and when what you are paying for is enough protection to live in a world that is unbelivably hostile and unforgiving it makes sense that that protection should cost something dear–otherwise you couldn’t be sure it would work. We don’t value that which comes cheap.
The harshness or pre-modern sacrifice has to be understood both in the context of this harsh world and with the reminder that people in general were more familiar with some of the realities of life–sacrificing a bull dosen’t have the same “ick” factor if you’ve done the same thing back on the farm before, and you’ve delivered babies, and washed your relitives before you buried them.
We have a kinder and gentler world now, and thus our need is for a kinder and gentler God. From a thiestic standpoint I guess one could suggest that while God is eternal, people and society aren’t, and he has had to change his message to answer our changing needs.
I wasn’t brought up to see the whole bible as a cement block, but as something that was built up over the years (and years). Some parts tell stories, some parts explain rules, some parts tell history, parts tell the complex history of the travels of Abraham’s family, some parts are elaborate cultural rules that didn’t appear again until ancient tablets were found 2-40 years ago. And that’s just the torah.
Just saying, “I don’t like the part about Cain and Abel” doesn’t get you anywhere. But stopping to find out the who, when, what, where, and why just might get you someplace, except by the time you find those things you could compile the size of a small novel. Looking at it from a May 2000 perspective doesn’t do it justice.
Rather than mish-mash all the different parts together and argue back and forth, why not try to set up one thread for Abraham. Then another for another time - Cain and Abel, for example, and so on.
