Molech Morality

Molech was a god to whom the Israelite’s routinely sacrificed their children in order to invoke the power of the sun. They had a habit of doing this when they had turned away from Yahweh prostituting their faith for provision from a lesser source. Sacrifices to Molech took place when the first born fruit of a mother’s womb was slowly burned to death in the outstretched arms of a welcoming idol. Molech’s hungry limbs were made of metal, hollowed out, heated up on the inside and had a fire below where children, after being painfully blistered and scalded, fell headlong into the fire and were reduced to ash. And thus, Molech was pleased. It’s hard to comprehend that for these ancient peoples the promise of Molech far outweighed the value of their children, but it did!

In Biblical Hebrew culture the unfolded arms of Molech held the promise of renewed strength from the sun. The graven image was the source that insured warmth and a robust harvest. Hebrew seed was sacrificed in order to provide what antiquity deemed important for their subsistence. Worship to an idol, as a means to an end, took priority over the survival of their young. Primal primitive imposing cultures forfeited their progeny in order to assure the fulfillment of preeminent creature comfort and satisfaction of carnal needs, disregarding God’s command, “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 18:21) (KJV).

God didn’t give the Israelites the permission to thrash out what they thought “seed” was. He didn’t ask them their opinion on the meaning of “passing through”. His command was clear and sure and when yearning overtook morality they chose to disobey.

To parallel this custom with our own secularly progressive culture it would be more apropos to use the modern English language usage of the term Molech, which refers to persons or things, which demand or require costly sacrifice. I believe that there is a direct correlation between the antiquated and the contemporary.

We look back on history and perceive ourselves to be “highly evolved ”. In order to insure the health of the economy or world peace, if asked to bring our first born to an altar to be incinerated we would bristle in disgust and refuse to comply. Regardless of how we perceive ourselves, the truth is we’re no better than the Ammonites or irreverent Israelites. Blatantly, boldly and unabashedly, we follow in the path of their example worshiping at the altar of Baal. Unlike the heathens of Molech we adulate in secret, in sterile environments, under the covering of perverted laws, not in open fields celebrating our bounty with dancing. We do not drown out the shrieks of our offspring with flutes and tambourines as they cremate. Rather our children burn and writhe in a clandestine conflagration hidden from the naked eye in a fiery inferno of saline deep within the womb.

We use words like “science” and “choice” in place of murder and slaughter and as we deceive ourselves, Molech is pleased. We have gods in our culture that demand “costly sacrifice” and we are more than willing to fulfill their call to abandon what should be considered sanctified. We rush to the fore in an effort to justify and cooperate with the never satisfied blood lust for innocence from a cadre of gods who we look to for gratification in this life. The late German philosopher, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was walked from a concentration camp and hung by the Nazi’s for speaking out against their inhumane policies, once said?

Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent (beginning to exist or develop) life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

I realize this is his opinion and what right does he have to inflict his opinion on anyone? In our enlightened society self reigns supreme. We make the rules, we define moral code and we pronounce as immoral anyone who would question our personal standard of right and wrong.

The name Molech is derived from combining consonants from the Hebrew melech “king” with the vowels of boshet “shame”. Molech is the King of Shame, but not for us. We have no shame. Shame is something that we repress along with our guilt, truth and indignity. We do not have the courage to admit what intrinsically we know is true. In turn, we rush to deny human nature and continue to supply the arms of Molech with abundant gifts. We swiftly run after politicians whose goal is a culture of death and we do so to contribute to having our corporate consciousness freed from the bondage of self-reproach by drowning it out with the roar of an adoring crowd.

Beneath Molech is a foundation that we have built for our god to rest steadfastly upon. We have justified choice and made a way for selfishness and personal aspiration to take precedence. Man, self and secularism have become the proprietor of Molech, graving and hammering out the idol in gold and setting it up in the public square in place of a basic human rights and ethics. Those are the values, which stoke the fire and await the sacrifice as we dance before our idol. We forgo the wood and fire.  Instead, our tools for sacrifice are scalpels, saline and suction. We demean and diminish the worth of life in order to satisfy Molech. We are diligent as a society to substantiate our support of evil in our own minds and to endorse it in the lives of others, promoting it as righteous, upstanding and even virtuous. Molech is exceedingly pleased.

We do not hesitate to reassure ourselves that what we support is honorable. We are deluded into believing we are decent and upright. Our corporate society and culture has concluded that the value of one life takes precedence over another and we get to ordain which one. Some are allotted to die so another has the hope of wholeness? Does our self-aggrandizing altruism and compassion toward the personal desires and concern for the future of others provide rationalization for our young one’s writhing in agony in the arms of a brutal and demanding god? When helpless, defenseless infants plummet into the fire and burn up, do we rejoice because our ends justified our means? Does “choice” now take precedence over life? If the answer is even remotely yes, Molech is pleased.

As we stoke the blaze it is best to be aware that there will be no escape from the fire we ourselves have enthusiastically prepared. The day will surely come, one which is not far off, when those who sacrificed and supported human offerings at the altar of Molech are themselves in danger of being sacrificed. The same code of ethics that justified the killing of blamelessness will extend to justify the killing of all. As we are being hoisted unwillingly into the arms of Molech will we remember the value system that brought us there? Will we cry out in terror as we realize that the sacrificial system we fought so hard to defend, we ourselves have become victim to?

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