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Child Sacrifice Persists, and We're All Complicit
What should be done when parents rely on religion instead of medicine to heal sick children?
Of course, child sacrifice should horrify us. But the fact that it still exists, and is making headlines in a number of states, should not really surprise us. After all, the notion of using the life of one's child to prove the depth of one's faith and commitment is present in virtually all of the world's religious and political traditions. The followers of all three Abrahamic faiths flirt with this tradition in numerous ways including the foundational stories of the "binding of Isaac" in Genesis, Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael in the Qur'an, and the entire story of Jesus which celebrates a "father" who offers "his only begotten son" on the cross.
Similar stories can be found in other religious traditions as well, and writing this on Memorial Day reminds me that politics is just as effective as religion in mobilizing nations to prove their commitment to a cause by sacrificing young men and women to implement the policies of their elders.
Since I believe that some wars do need to be fought, I can accept this. But we should not pretend that the impulse to celebrate the loss of children "who made the ultimate sacrifice" is foreign to any of us. In fact, our distancing ourselves from this question actually empowers and protects those who respond to it in the most grotesque ways. The real question is what do we do with that impulse, the impulse to offer those people we love most for the ideas we love most?
Clearly, the parents of Leilani Neumann and Daniel Hauser have decided that murdering their children to honor their faith is the way to go. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. From coast to coast, thousands of kids are in danger because of the fanatical faith of their parents.
In Oregon for example, there is a cemetery filled with the graves of 80 youngsters whose families decided to let them die because their faith forbids modern medicine. It's going on all over the country and there is a word for it, murder.
Parents are murdering their kids and the really disturbing part is not so much that they are doing it, but that they are getting away with it. Why? Because we let them. That's right, us. And our culpability is the real story here.
It's easy to go on about how sick and wicked these parents are, but the real story here is how nice people like you and me tolerate a situation in which, according to the law in as many as 45 states (the statute is debatable in a few) parents who withhold standard-of-care medical treatment for curable illnesses from their kids are not criminally culpable in the deaths of those children. Talk about freedom of religion having run amok!
Freedom of religion does not include parents' rights to make irreversible decisions which contradict the best medical information that we possess, about the lives of their children. I agree that the last thing we need is government regulation of our spiritual lives. But when we are dealing with kids who can not make decisions for themselves, the government does have a role in assuring these children a safe passage into adulthood, when they can do so.
Better laws alone, will not end the phenomenon of parents murdering their kids for God. But assuming our full measure of responsibility for having a legal system which holds such parents fully accountable will help. Most importantly, it will move us from a culture of complaint about "those people" to a culture of activism on behalf of the young victims of fanatical faith. And if this really is about our genuine concern for these children, nothing could be more important.
By
Brad Hirschfield
|
May 25, 2009; 9:27 AM ET
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Posted by: Paganplace | May 28, 2009 5:38 PM
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"Yet I don't suppose that you would consider abortion "child sacrifice.""
That would be ...because it's not.
All hysteria aside, when whatever you think 'abortion' is happens, it's not about putting a child through suffering in order to 'prove or test or appease' the faith of some religion that thinks sacrifices are powerful, whether they approve of them or not.
Watching a child suffer and die when you could jab them with some insulin in order that your God may be pleased with your piety... Yeah, that *is* child sacrifice.
Posted by: Paganplace | May 28, 2009 5:07 PM
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Yet I don't suppose that you would consider abortion "child sacrifice."
Posted by: johnbird321 | May 27, 2009 4:47 PM
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Also on 'Child Sacrifice Exists and we're all Complicit," well, speak for yourself, you SOB.
It's all just a metaphor and accusation to level at outsiders and the 'unorthodox' or political opponents to people who want to call political opposition 'babykillers. '
Always claiming it's the *rest* of the world that's soulless and mechanistic, but they want to justify everything they do to children as long as a dead stem cell isn't there for them to froth about their God being displeased about.... them not hurting enough kids over.
They want the 'benefit of the doubt' on contraceptives, when they try to ban them, ...but want excuses to try and 'beat the divil' out of kids they drive mad.
These 'sacrifices' happen all the time. as long as no one dies, they are content to put the leavings out on the street and scornfully look at em, 'Get a job.'
If there *is* a 'Gospel of the Witches,' and we Pagans don't like the idea of Gospels and texts, cause things get twisted in *just* these ways, it's that if we got a 'message,' it was short and sweet and it said, "I demand naught of sacrifice. (For behold, My good stuff is poured out upon the Earth.)"
Naught. Nothing. No fine lines, no demands, no surrogate lambs telling us all to be good sheep or get worse..
What's given by good Gods is given *freely, and without 'sacrifice' or ordeals or demands, and most certainly not 'appeasements,' whether it's a sick child or an undesireable class to scapegoat to maintain your nonsensical 'authority...'
I think it's something we Pagan people have learned, because someone *took away* all our pretty and old stuff, got us all wound up about a book that wasn't ours, (and rightfully belongs to a few, like the Rabbi here, maybe,) but something remains.
And has been here all along.
Things, and also we, *change,* and so do we.
Gods help us to do so, actually, cause there's no way out (or in) looking back.
No one can centralize control right now, and this is *good.* This Internet we are on right now is a *byproduct of someone's attempted self-fulfilling Apocalypse.*
You know what that word means?
An Unveiling.
Wouldn't it be funny if all the stuff some have been spouting about bombs and big death and all-too-tidy-for karma 'ends of the world' .... maybe the bombs just served to get our attention.
Here we are. Very few veils between us.
Able to do nothing to each other, but speak.
May as well do that. I figure. 'Great Destruction' hasn't changed in a *long* time. Won't make a damn bit of difference when or why we fail to make something useful out of what we've *all* built together, even by fighting each other.
What we have now was *expensive.* You may have no idea how, if it's all a book to you.
Let's do our Gods proud. All of them. Or this is a big waste and you can stone me to death later.