I wonder what a person who was completely ignorant of Christianity would make of Christian words and worship when first exposed to it. Let’s face it, although Christian language is increasingly warm and fuzzy, there remains some genuinely strange and quite frankly bizarre and disturbing elements to Christian language and imagery that all Christians take for granted.
I’m referring to the imagery of bloodshed. We sing, “There is fountain filled with blood,” or speak in the Catholic Mass of “This victim, this spotless victim,” “the Lamb of God,” “the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” and “the Precious Blood.” Every church has a crucifix with a bloody human corpse on it, and we use the language of sacrifice constantly.
It would be understandable if a twenty-first century person were to ask, “Why all the talk of blood sacrifice? We’re modern people. We don’t slit the throats of sheep and goats to satisfy God! And if I’m not mistaken, you’re actually talking about human sacrifice. What is that about?! C’mon. We don’t do that anymore. We have Netflix, Amazon, AI, and smart phones!”
In researching my latest book, I followed up on my hunch that blood sacrifice is a component of almost all human societies in every place down through history. One of the most infamous historical examples is the sacrifice of infants in ancient Carthage (present-day Tunisia). Archeologists exploring the ruins of the Roman era city have uncovered the Tophet—a large open-air site where human infants, along with lambs and young goats, were sacrifice to the god Baal Hammon. Thousands of urns containing the skeletons of babies have been found, confirming the textual account of the practice recorded by Roman historians Diodorus Siculus, Cleitarchus, and Plutarch.
Diodorus Siculus recorded the details: “There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus [Baal], extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.”
This horrible activity aligns with the Biblical accounts of the Molech sacrifice—in which children were “passed through the fire” (2 Kings, Leviticus, and Jeremiah) as sacrifices to Baal. Evidence of the practice has been uncovered in Sicily, Sardinia, and elsewhere in the ancient Middle East.
The bloodletting was not confined to the Mediterranean area. Evidence for child sacrifice has been found among the Aztecs, the Mayan, and the Incan cultures in Central and South America as well as in ancient China. Elsewhere the evidence of human sacrifice abounds in legends, myths, and artistic representations.
While we are revolted by such tales, we are also intrigued. What is the fascination with bloodshed? While we may not indulge in ritualized religious sacrifice anymore, is our society any less violent? We indulge in film and television violence—fascinated by tales of torture, murder, and mayhem.
And our lust for blood is not fictional. Millions of unborn children have been slaughtered—not in bloody religious rituals, but in abortion clinics. It is not a coincidence that it was the wealthy class of Carthage who were offering their children to Baal Hammon; they did so to ensure peace, prosperity, and pleasure for themselves. Are we so different?
Our own violence radiates out in wars that take innocent lives while gang feuds and drug-related murders spill over into our cities. It seems that blood lust is part of our human condition. There is a disturbing echo haunting our hearts and minds… “There will be blood.”
There is a good reason why human blood lust is rooted in religion. Deep within the human soul is the conviction that bloodshed is necessary. Hatred, envy, and blame roil in human relationships. How do we solve the problem of the ever-spiraling cycle of rivalry, resentment, and revenge?
We feel deep down that someone has to pay the price. So, the taking of a human life seems to settle the cycle of envy, rivalry, resentment, and revenge. Somehow, someone, somewhere is satisfied. A debt is paid. The shadow is lifted. Life can go on. This sense of reconciliation and release was acted out in multiple cultures in multifarious religious rites down through history.
The problem is, it didn’t really solve the problem. The envy, resentment, and desire for revenge continued. That’s why the ancients concluded that if it wasn’t working, then more and more brutal sacrifices were needed.
Then God sent His only begotten son to engage in the ancient bloodletting. He took the bloodlust onto Himself and willingly became the victim on that hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.
As Christians we believe all the ancient blood sacrifices find their fulfillment and completion in the one, full, final sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This action of sacrifice in the center of time is the ultimate bloodshed that brings blessing.
This is why, despite the disturbing strangeness of it, we continue to use the language of blood sacrifice. In the Catholic Mass, we celebrate this sacrifice that ends all sacrifices. We do not sacrifice Jesus again and again; instead, through a dynamic act of remembrance, we bring that sacrifice into the present moment and apply it to our lives today.
Editor’s Note: For more on the history of sacrifice and its perfect and complete fulfillment in the Lamb of God, read Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s new release, Bloodshed and Blessing: Stories of Sacrifice from Ancient Altars to the Holy Mass, available from Sophia Institute Press.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
