JUDEO-CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION OF “ANIMAL & HUMAN SACRIFICE”

Having been raised in the condemning environment of Christian fundamentalism, I was always at least subconsciously aware of the hideous, sick belief that “God’s Plan” was “blood atonement” of animal sacrifice, and ultimately HUMAN sacrifice with the crucifixion. (People walk around with crosses around their necks, often like a good luck charm, to symbolize they actually hold this human sacrifice idea sacred…Question: What if Jesus had been hung? Do you suppose everyone would walk around with “rope nooses” around their necks? Just asking.)

It doesn’t get any sicker than such a religious belief as animal and human blood sacrifice, yet countless numbers of people blindly believe and accept this false teaching, even though it is in obvious contradiction to the core teaching that God is about unconditional love and forgiveness.

But people ignore huge red flag contradictions like the sick story they taught to us kids in sunday school and still routinely do to this day, about God supposedly commanding Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a human sacrifice to him, but after he had Isaac bound on the altar, it was “OK” because he sent an angel to stop him just as he was going to plunge the knife into his chest. I have a standup comedy bit I do about this story, the punchline being that when the Angel grabs Abraham’s arm and stops him, Abraham is very angry and yells, “What are you doing, God commanded me to sacrifice my son!” And the angel replies, “No he didn’t you DEAF OLD MAN, clean the wax out of your ears… he told you to CIRCUMCISE him!

And then there’s the horrible human sacrifice story the God supposedly masterminded in the story of Moses delivering the Jews from Egypt, in which God sends plague after plague, even though if you read the text in Exodus, SEVERAL times Pharoah decides to let the Jews go, but the Bible says “God hardened Pharoah’s heart”, meaning God changed Pharoah’s “free will” where he had decided to let them go, God wanted to continue with the plagues, ultimately the last one being God commanding that all the FIRST BORN CHILDREN of the Egyptians would be killed as penance for Pharoah not letting the Jews go.

Again, Pharoah decided to let them go multiple times as the text actually says, and it says God ‘hardened his heart’ and caused him to change his mind, to get to the final plague of killing innocent first born children. In this “wonderful” Bible story, the Jews were required by God to kill a lamb and paint its blood over their doors so the “Angel of Death” would accept THAT BLOOD ATONEMENT and not kill their firstborn kids, as this was the only thing that would protect any family from God killing their first born children as a blood atonement. This is beyond sick…Why would anyone believe in a God like that? 

The whole religious mythical belief of a “savior” dying for “sins” of the people dates back thousands of years BEFORE Christianity, but many aren’t educated about this fact. Even the myth of a “savior” having to be “born of a virgin” is a coopted myth that the crafters of the Bible lifted from many other religious myths well known from ages predating Bible times. Even the Garden of Eden story was plagiarized by Bible writers, as it was yet another popular myth, in various incarnations, that was made up by much older “Pagan” civilizations way before Jewish Old Testament writers coopted it from them. But back to the topic at hand, “blood sacrifice”…lovely topic huh?

Almost everyone sees any religious group that engages in “sacrificing” of a living creature for “blood atonement” as a vile cult to say the least. Yet millions and millions blindly ignore this foundation of Christianity, based entirely on human sacrifice, this after thousands of years of God supposedly  CRAVING and insisting on the practice of killing an innocent animal and shedding its blood for his satisfaction, in order to obtain “forgiveness for your sins” in Old Testament times.

Well guess what, times change, and OF COURSE that wasn’t going to remain shall we say ‘palatable’ for people if the religion was to survive going into more ‘progressive’ times of B.C into A.D, so Christianity sprung up with the more palatable idea of a “once and for all” HUMAN sacrifice, so no one would have to risk alienating their kids from the Almighty after killing their pet Labrador Retriever on an altar so God would have his “blood atonement”…nobody wants to see that right?

I’m currently reading a very well written, eye opening and informative book entitled “The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever SOLD” by Acharya S. In her book she quotes Kersey Graves on this topic of “God’s Plan”, from his book “The World’s 16 Crucified Saviors”:

“Rams, goats, bullocks and other animals had atoned for the sins of families and nations under older systems…Somebody must pay the penalty in blood, somebody must be slaughtered for every little foible or peccadillo or moral blunder into which erring man may chance to stumble…”

Kersey goes on to ask what I’ve always asked: “Whose soul, possessing the slightest moral sensibility does not inwardly and instinctively revolt from such a doctrine?… We hold the doctrine to be a high handed insult to the ‘All Loving Father’ “(end quote)

EXACTLY! Such a monstrous “blood sacrifice” cornerstone of Judeo/Christian teaching is proof all by itself of its inexcusable, horribly violent hypocrisy as seen constantly on many other topics throughout the Bible (please see my editorial series “Bible Lies 1, 2 and 3” on my blog page at www.conniebryan.com)

On a side note, did you know for the longest time, the Catholic priests were ordered by the Vatican to keep parishioners from actually reading the Bible? ONLY priests were to do so, and only select scriptures. This is because if you did read it, you’d see constant contradictions and hypocrisies, constant bigoted references that can only have come from ignorant men, constant examples of hate…examples of the opposite of love…

You’d find the Bible full of stories of God supposedly ordering genocide of men, women and children of all nations the Jews conquered, just like Hitler did, but simply because they were not “believers” (See Joshua Chapter 6 for one of countless examples of God ordering genocide) And I list many other hypocrisies in my Bible Lies series mentioned above.

And if you were strong enough to be HONEST with yourself after reading such countless hateful and vengeful stories, you’d be sick to your stomach as I was, being told I had to believe these horribly sick teachings about “God” or go to Hell. (Just that in itself is another example of what I’m saying: Love and Forgiveness by NATURE cannot condemn someone to HELL! By definition, love and forgiveness can NEVER condemn)

Here is the bottom line, and the author of the above mentioned book is inspiring because she gets it: If you are truly a PEACE MAKER as I am, you hopefully have realized that “organized religion” has been the primary BARRIER to world peace for thousands of years. Ironically, it ostensibly introduces one to the idea of “spirituality”.

But the main three – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – end up keeping their followers from the real understanding of spirituality by number one: teaching their followers such aforementioned hate, and number two: teaching them that they are SEPARATE from what “God” is. That is the biggest lie of all.

And that is what has kept mankind at war with each other, IN THE NAME OF GOD ironically, for all of history. We have to teach mankind that we are ALL brothers and sisters, and not only that, but we are all a PART of what “God” is, irrespective of religion. Religion mostly gets in the way with its condemnation which is in direct contradiction to LOVE and FORGIVENESS.

This is the next step for mankind…what I like to call a “Spiritual Renaissance”. We can create peace on earth…there can be peace in the middle east and between Jews and Palestinians, but it will require that we begin to make desperate progress in teaching this most important spiritual truth: NO ONE is SEPARATE from what “GOD” is… NO ONE is condemned. NO GROUP of “believers” are “SPECIAL” or “CHOSEN” as “God’s preferred race or people” as the Jews are described in the Bible, and as Christians and Muslims see themselves, believing all others to be “infidels”. All that is man-made bigotry masquerading as “gospel”.

And those sick beliefs are ever present in all the main organized religions. It is time that more of us work harder to expose the obvious error of those beliefs, instead of pretending that “religion does no harm”. It has been the primary cause of all harm throughout man’s history, and it is time those lies are exposed, that keep us from true spiritual understanding and achieving world peace by realizing we are all a part of “God”.

Connie Bryan