Sacrifice

©2022 by Vernon Miles Kerr and VernonMilesKerr.com

#FirstCuppaJoe for Wed Oct 5 (thread)

Today, my #MorningMeditations were rather wide-ranging — spanning from the vastness of this particular #Universe, to the logical negation of a “Satan,” to my paternal roots in Indigenous America, to its bloody history of constant warring, to the epitome of North American indigenous “civilizations,”— some of which were centered upon pleasing the gods with human sacrifice. So, all this, seems to be to be pointing toward one word: #sacrifice.

If there is a supreme intelligence, over-arching this and all other conceivable universes, and that intelligence is aware of us little primates, even designed our own evolution, for its own purposes, would it want physical sacrifice — any kind of physical sacrifice? Is the point of human existence to show lock-step obedience to human, or divine leadership?

In that great, Western saga of myths we call “The Bible,” the “God” depicted therein commanded Abraham (the progenitor of both Jews and Arabs) to kill his first-born son. Just as the downward-plunging dagger was about to pierce Isaac’s sternum, God called “Halt.” Abraham had proven — what? Had he proven that, for God’s further purposes, Abraham would be a mindless automaton, following His every whim, in a metallic, clanking obedience? If so, why? Yes, Abraham would be the “father of many nations,” and, historically speaking, I guess he was, even alien adopted-nations like those in Europe — virtually speaking.

Again, so what? The history of my own relatives, the Maya and the Aztecs is replete with gruesome human sacrifice. My mind flashes on human heads bouncing down the steps of fabulous, stone pyramidal temples. So civilized … yet, so barbaric. All this to please the gods of weather in order to sustain their agricultural empires. It seems their answer from the gods was a civilization-ending drought in one case and an overwhelming, civilization-ending, alien hoard in another. Maybe that hints at what a real supreme being thinks of sacrifice.

But, looking once again across the Atlantic, across Northern Africa and back several millennia — to the time depicted in our book of myths and sagas —those to the east of Abraham’s descendants had cranked-up “sacrifice” to include their own infants! Giving a little credit to Abraham’s kin, they had at least sublimated sacrifice — limiting it to gruesome butchery of animals at the seat of their worship. (If you have a stomach for it, go read the gruesome, detailed instructions for animal sacrifices in “The Bible,” starting at Leviticus Chapter 1, Verse 1, et seq.)

Yeah, I know, the Christian tradition holds that God sacrificed His Own Son, in order to atone for the sins of the entire world. But if that son really still sits at His right hand, then He only sacrificed Jesus’s earthly avatar.
I know, I know, when I was in “church,” this statement would have made my hair stand on end , due to its blasphemy. But hmmm, that isn’t happening.

Getting back to #sacrifice. Would, the hypothetical, “God” like to see sacrifice to an invisible entity or sacrifice, even in tiny ways, to one’s own kin — other humans?
Our REAL saga, springing from dinosaur-like eating and breeding machines, to more social, sometimes altruistic primates to our present state: intelligent, maybe spirit infused, potentially civilized primates hints that those tiny day-to-day sacrifices, would be the true “sweet savor,” in the nostrils of a loving God.