If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death, I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek. – Leviticus 20:4-5

Today's Scripture Reading (January 3, 2025): Leviticus 20

A few weeks ago, I walked past a room where a multicultural prayer service was taking place. It was an engaging experience. The prayers and songs were being spoken in a different language that I didn't understand. I stood and listened for a few minutes, vicariously enjoying the spirit of the meeting. But one of the things that amazed me, as I was listening to some very soft-spoken people pray, people who I had talked to and often struggled to hear, was how loudly they projected their prayers to God. At times, it almost seemed that they were yelling as if God was so far away that he might not hear their prayers if they didn't speak loudly. But I recognize that that is just the impression of a Westerner who more often hears the prayers of others almost whispered rather than spoken.

It is interesting how traditions vary. And most of the time, the differences are harmless or even positive changes in how we do things. I think I enjoy the prayer meeting where someone seems to be yelling their prayers over the one so quiet I can barely hear the prayers being offered. However, I am sure that God hears both of them.

My one nagging thought, though, is how much of what we do is influenced by other religions and is that necessarily a bad thing. I know that people call Christmas "pagan" because it draws from traditions other than those that are Christ-based. I have heard people rail against Christmas and Easter because neither are celebrated in the Bible, and the date of Christmas is based more on pagan celebrations surrounding the shortest day of the year than the birth of Christ, who was likely born in April or maybe even June. I am not convinced that any of this matters. Celebrating Jesus's birth in December, a date that was chosen so that Christians would have an alternative celebration to the pagan shortest-day celebrations that were already being celebrated in late December, doesn't devalue the Christian purpose behind the holiday. We know that Jesus was crucified during Passover, so our Easter celebration is grounded firmly in history, even if it was never actually commanded.

Molech, or Molek, was an ancient Canaanite god. From the biblical record, it appears that this God demanded child sacrifice as part of his worship experience. Even the Kings of Israel and Judah seem to have fallen to these demands, sacrificing their children to please this Canaanite god. However, some experts question whether this was ever true. Maybe these reports are just horror stories told around campfires or tales to make Israel's enemies seem worse than they really were. 

But the more disturbing possibility is that we are not talking about a god here, but rather a practice. This theory questions if Molek might not have been a foreign god but rather a foreign practice; that molek could be the practice of sacrificing children to the gods that would even include Yahweh. The thought that child sacrifice might have been used to worship the God of Abraham is almost too much to imagine. And it is no wonder that Leviticus demands that such activity must be erased from the house of Israel. God instructs that the practice is so bad that even those who knew the behavior was happening but decided to do nothing about it must be removed from the community.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 21