A woman I have known since I was in literally primary school passed away recently. It was heartbreaking to find this out. Though I had not talked to her since high school, we reconnected on Facebook. She was married with children now, of course. However, to me she was still the same person who helped me tie my shoes into 1st grade. My line to her was, “How many times have you tied your own shoes?” She would say, “Thousands”. I would say, “Ok, how about doing it 1001 times!” and then ask her to do mine.

For as long as I knew her, she and her brother were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was not sure what they were all about then and I am still not sure. However, when I got back in touch with her in the early 2010s through Facebook, she was now an Atheist as she said that she could not reconcile instances of human sacrifice in the Bible. I was not completely sure what to say about that as I knew that there were many times that the Bible says that God says that human sacrifice is NOT the will of God, yet Jesus was a human sacrifice for our sins. I also just did not want to get into a Biblical debate as I believed there were other reasons (as there are with most people) she was angry at the Lord, and the Bible, and probably the Church in general, too.

I know that the Bible talks a lot about human sacrifice. It was very common in the ancient world. The Bible mentions human sacrifices to Baal and Moloch and others. In addition, the Vikings practiced human sacrifice, the Incas and the Aztecs did, Druids of the British Isles did, and various South Pacific tribes did too. There were probably others too.

The Bible is clear that our God HATES human sacrifice. Even in the story of Abraham and Isaac, God stops Abraham—it was more of a test of whether or not Abraham loved God more than his son, than an affirmation of God’s support of human sacrifice. One could mention other cases, but there are no cases where God supports a human sacrifice in the Old Testament.

Regarding the New Testament, there maybe two cases of human sacrifice that God supports. The first is obviously, Jesus. While Jesus maybe considered a human sacrifice, God Himself was the one making the sacrifice…of Himself. If there was a human sacrifice, then that sacrifice accomplished our redemption and healed our relationship with the One-Above-All.

Secondly, the Bible does call us to make a sacrifice of ourselves. Whenever I see human sacrifice in a movie or something (like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) they always make me chuckle since someone is always sacrificing someone else. Everyone is always ready to sacrifice someone else, not themselves. We are called to live our lives, saying “your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven’. However, that is something only we can give–it cannot be decided by someone else.

So was my friend right that human sacrifice is something that is in the Bible? Yes, it is. However, the only sacrifice that the one, true God calls for is motivated by, is surrounded by, and results in love.

Romans 12:! Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

————————————————————————————-W