[Dialogue] Spong on Human Sacrifice

[KroegerD at aol.com]

Allan Hytowitz from the  Internet writes: 
"How do you personally, and Christian doctrine in particular,  reconcile the 
contradiction of that biblical prohibition against child sacrifice  with the 
claim that "God sacrificed his child" in explaining the horrific death  of 
Jesus? It seems to me that rather than the "sacrifice of Jesus" being of  benefit 
to Christians, it serves more to threaten them with death and/or eternal  
punishment if they are not obedient to the wishes and decrees of the Church."  
Dear Allan,I think you have hit the Christological nail right on the  head. 
The whole sacrifice mentality that permeates Christian theology needs to  be 
raised to consciousness and expelled from Christianity. However, it is so  deep 
that many feel that Christianity will die if it is ever separated from this  
idea.  
Child sacrifice was part of ancient religion even in Judaism as the story of  
Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac suggests. It was later 
replaced  with animal sacrifice that was very much a part of worship in the Old 
Testament.  The Passover observance was marked by the sacrifice of the paschal 
lamb. Yom  Kippur, the Day of Atonement was also marked by the sacrifice of the 
Lamb of  God, whose blood was thought to cleanse the people from their sins.  
It was all but inevitable that the crucifixion of Jesus would be interpreted  
against the background of these two Jewish worship traditions. Paul calls 
Jesus  our "new paschal lamb" and the images of Yom Kippur are present throughout 
the  Gospels in such places as when Paul says: "he died for our sins"; when 
Mark  calls his death a "ransom;" and when John the Baptist refers to Jesus as 
"the  Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Even the story of 
the cross  in which we are told, "none of his (Jesus') bones were broken," was 
drawn from  the liturgy of the Yom Kippur sacrifice.  
Because that was how the 1st century Jews interpreted the death of Christ  
does not mean that we are bound by that thinking forever. Human attitudes toward 
 child sacrifice are today violently negative. Attitudes toward animal 
sacrifice  are expressed in such words as "cult worship," "black magic" and "devil  
liturgies." I wonder why these negative concepts are not allowed to flow 
toward  the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to 
overcome  the sins of the world. That idea makes God barbaric. It makes Jesus the 
victim  of a sadistic deity. It introduces masochism into Christianity and it 
deeply  violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love 
calling us  to love.  
Why can we not see the cross, not as a sacrifice, but as an ultimate  
expression of the humanity of one who was so whole he could give his life away  and 
of one who wanted to demonstrate that even when you kill the love of God,  the 
love of God still loves its killers? Why can we not get away from that  
message of guilt and control that is found in the pious but destructive phrase,  
"Jesus died for my sins"?  
I believe that the future of Christianity rests on our ability in the  
Christian Church to escape the language of sacrifice and punishment and begin to  
think in terms of finding in Jesus the power to live fully, the grace to love  
wastefully and the courage to be all that we can be.  
Thank you for your question.  
-- John Shelby Spong
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