Profane Sacrament

A Deeper Evil Than Other Forms of Murder

You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.

-The Didache

Deep Witchcraft

“Nobody likes abortion,” so says the bleeding heart. “It’s just a necessary evil, we need to have more sympathy for victims.” The victims in view, oddly enough, are always the perpetrators carrying out the massacre, never the children being slaughtered. So blow the winds of our time. If you’re a Christian who affirms what the historic Christian faith has to say about the killing of an unborn child, you’ve probably had an encounter like the one above. You’ve probably been told that you just need to try and empathize more with the suffering mothers, and then you would see that the issue isn’t as black and white as your bigotry has led you to believe. But what if the opposite is true? What if further reflection on the nature of abortion doesn’t lead you into lesser-defined gray areas and fluffy emotionalism, but into a deeper abhorrence for the practice of abortion?

Abortion is a far deeper action with greater consequences than many understand. It is more than an ethical issue, a political issue, or even a religious issue – it’s deeply spiritual and cosmic in its reverberations. Even many Christians, who are entirely against abortion on theological and moral grounds, can often misunderstand how very profane the act of abortion is, and the implications it holds for how we view human nature and our world. Abortion isn’t just a personal act of sin that heaps condemnation on an individual’s head – though it is certainly that. Abortion stains the very land itself, it spills blood onto the earth, into the very soil of a nation, and turns God’s face against it. Look to the book of Leviticus, to the Law of God.

Moreover, thou shalt say to the children of Israel: Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. I also will set My face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people, because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile My sanctuary, and to profane My holy name. And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and put him not to death; then I will set My face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go astray after him, to go astray after Molech, from among their people.

— Leviticus 20:2–5

The God of Israel in Leviticus 20 condemns practices associated with Molech worship – Molech being one of the many pagan deities worshiped by the surrounding nations, specifically in this case, Assyria. The central distinguishing feature of Molech worship was the “giving of seed,” or put simply, the offering of a child. Child sacrifice played a central role in the worship of Molech, as it did in many ancient pagan systems. Most of us will be familiar with Molech, as his worship has often been used by Christians today as a parallel for the modern atrocity of child sacrifice we see in our own culture. It will be worthwhile to look closely at exactly what’s being condemned in Leviticus, and why the worship of Molech – and therefore, abortion – is so profane.

When God issues His prohibition regarding Molech worship and child sacrifice, He doesn’t just forbid it in the same way He forbids plenty of other unclean practices in the Old Testament. He specifically forbids it by penalty of death, along with the penalty of receiving God’s hatred, or God “setting His face against that man.” He gives a twofold explanation for the severity of this sin: it defiles His sanctuary and profanes His holy name. It makes sense to us on the face of things that a sacrifice to a false God would defile God’s sanctuary and profane His name – after all, the Israelites were God’s own people, and to commit any idolatrous act of worship would be inherently blasphemous. But the act in question is being condemned more forcefully and clearly than plenty of other lesser blasphemous acts. How is it that the act of sacrificing a child to Molech profanes God’s name specifically?

I believe there are at least two primary factors involved that make child sacrifice – whether to Molech directly or via abortion – a heinous profanity toward God’s name. For starters, we know that a sacrifice to Molech, like any pagan worship, isn’t simply a meaningless act for a god who doesn’t exist. It is a sacrifice to a demon – a real, dangerous, and evil supernatural being. Paul tells us explicitly that offerings to false idols are offered to demons (1 Corinthians 10:20), and so we shouldn’t forget that demons and evil powers are not only real, but can play a significant role in atrocities that are acted out by human beings. The demons behind the false gods of this world are active, living, malevolent agents that seek worship for themselves, and seek to lead people away from worship of the true God.

The second factor in play is that child sacrifice – and especially abortion – is an act of blasphemy aimed directly at the face of the Most High. It’s an attempt to destroy not just a person created in the image of God, but to destroy the very image of God itself. It’s the closest a mortal can come to striking at God’s very nature, outside of Calvary’s cross.

This is My Body

Sacrament – (in the Christian Church) a religious ceremony or ritual regarded as imparting divine grace, such as baptism, the Eucharist…

Abortion is demonic, and not only in character, but in actuality. It’s a sacrament of Satan, an offering to the accuser himself. I refer to it as a “Satanic Sacrament” because it’s a cruel inversion of a true sacrament, a mockery of those divine institutions that the Church has practiced for millennia. A sacrament is a divine channel through which we receive grace from above, through no work or merit of our own, but purely through God’s divine favor. Though Christians may disagree on specifically how the Sacraments function and what they accomplish, we all agree – it’s God’s work, not ours. The false sacrament of abortion is a way that we attempt to pull grace up from Hell by force, a way to cover our past mistakes (no pregnancy is a “mistake” in my view, but this is how they are viewed by many) by our own power, and by the power of supernatural evils beyond our reckoning. To murder one’s child is quite literally to make a deal with the devil: to say “Have this innocent life, but spare me my own life, freedom, or autonomy.” This choice is never free of consequences. Like all deals with the Father of Lies, the fine print is hard to read.

Abortion is magic – magic is being used here in the Tolkienic sense, as something that seeks power over nature or another person through unnatural means. In the case of abortion, it’s seeking both: power over another person, and power over nature. It is seeking power over reality, power to define existence, and power over life. The profane sacrament of abortion is a twisting of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as pointed out by Peter Kreeft, it’s “the Antichrist’s demonic parody of the Eucharist. That’s why it uses the same holy words, ‘This is my body,’ with the blasphemous opposite meaning.” Rather than a grace received with gratitude, it’s bail paid out in innocent blood, trading a life just begun for a bit more measly “freedom” in a life being destroyed. It’s an offering to Molech, in exchange for spoiled goods.

And Molech is not dead. Demons don’t die, at least not yet. The very same spirit behind the Assyrian people that was receiving the dead bodies of children en masse is still living and still collecting bodies today. Like all clever demons, as Lewis so deftly shows us in The Screwtape Letters, a demon adapts to the preferences and weaknesses of his victims and chooses to take on any form that will aid him in his goals. He morphs and shifts to accommodate the whims of the people he is persuading. Paul tells us that in our hospitality we may entertain angels unaware, I suggest that in our selfishness we also entertain demons, and perhaps even more often – this realm was the Devil’s, after all. But we don’t entertain demons in passing them on the street or in opening doors for strangers. Nor is it always in dark alleyways and secret chambers. No, we do it in the fluorescently lit clinics, in the hospitals, and in far too many cases, over the counter. We do it in supporting an untethered “bodily autonomy” free of any higher laws, unattached to anything real, good, or true.

Every time we kill an unborn child, we offer a piece of our collective soul to an ancient and powerful being intent on our destruction and on spitting in the Creator’s face. And yes, it’s our collective soul, not just our personal one. The penalty for giving a child to Molech is severe not only for the perpetrator, but for the neighbors who tolerate or ignore it. For ancient Israel, to refuse to justly put to death the one who has spilled innocent blood results in God’s face being turned against them as well. The blood of abortion stains the earth and the nation in which it takes place. It will not go unpunished.

We offer up our soul to Molech with every abortion we tolerate, and with every injustice committed against the most innocent among us. We do it with every blasphemy – and that’s what abortion is, a blasphemy at the highest level.

Highest Profanity

Profane – serving to debase or defile what is holy…

Abortion is murder, that much is clear and generally acknowledged by Christians and many non-Christians alike. But abortion is more than murder. A simple murder is an attack against a specific individual, and it usually has some kind of cause (never an excuse, but a cause) that led to it. A murder is personal, and it’s directed at the ending of another specific human being. But abortion isn’t this, because abortion has no specific target in mind, and is done without any specific reason or wrong associated.

Abortion isn’t just the murder of an individual, it’s an attempt at murdering the very idea of humanity itself, to erase the image of God. It’s pure negation, a negation of potential, a negation of the idea of life coming forth, a negation of humanity in a general sense rather than simply a negation of one individual. Abortion is a childish tantrum thrown against the very idea that a human might be, might live, might love, and reflect God’s glory back at Him by being made in His image. It’s an attempt to overthrow the image of God entirely by preventing it from ever seeing the light of day, because it’s the murder of a person unmet, with a life just begun. In this sense, it’s the earlier-term abortions that are more insidious, rather than less as many would like you to believe. The more impersonal the killing, the greater the attack against the idea of God’s image is.

Though this attempt to destroy God’s image fails, the attempt in and of itself is the highest blasphemy a human in our world could offer toward God with a physical act. By sacrificing an unborn child you’ve never met, held, or known, you’re giving your child, unwittingly or not, to a demon in hopes of a prosperous return, you’re handing over your own flesh and blood to a demon who has hated God since even before that God took on flesh in a human womb just like yours, and you’re aiming all the firepower you possess at the Most High and hoping that he will fall. He won’t, but you will.

Made Whole, Again

As we’ve seen in the text from Leviticus, God hates the sacrifice to Molech so much that He not only disallows it, but offers the penalty of His wrath against any who would ignore or tolerate it, any who would refuse to put to death those who take part. If the people witness evil and refuse to carry out God’s justice, they receive the same hatred from God that the sacrificer does. Apparently, not only is evil intolerable, but tolerating it is intolerable as well. Tolerance, after all, is the virtue of the man without convictions, sayeth Chesterton.

But there is good news. Not just good, but the best news ever known to man. The good news is that the penalty God assigns for this sin, the penalty of death, the penalty of God’s hatred, has been borne by a God who arrived via woman’s womb to pay it. He’s borne death, murder, and the face of God’s wrath: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we – you, and I, and all the rest – killed God, He made a way for us to be forgiven for killing His image too. Death for the taking of innocent life may still be the just penalty on this Earth, but it needn’t be the penalty hereafter as well. All have sinned and fallen short, much more than short. All have hated God, all have run after evil and away from their Father. Though I’ve never killed a child, I’m just as sinful and culpable as those who have, and for my part even moreso, because I know how deep my own iniquity runs. 

If you’ve offered a sacrifice to Molech, if you’ve gone to a clinic or hospital or pharmacy to try to erase what you thought was a mistake, if you’ve killed your child only to receive heartache, pain, remorse, and more suffering, that doesn’t need to be the end of the story. This universe was created by a God who chose to walk among His fallen creatures and wade through the demons and the pain to restore what has been lost. He’s a God who has made a way for restoration, and He offers that restoration through the means of faith and repentance. He offers us an alternative to the demons of the wild that we’ve been worshiping in our wandering. He gives us a way out of the darkness, and into marvelous light.

The beauty of the Gospel of Christ is that if you’ve killed your child, if you’ve ripped your baby limb from limb into pieces and placed it on the altar of a demon, you can be forgiven – and you can be with your child again. And if the blood of Christ covers the innocent blood that you’ve spilled – and believe me, it can – then when you enter into the presence of God, your child will be waiting for you, limbs put back together, healed arms outstretched to embrace you and forgive you, as God has forgiven us. Come to Jesus, and live.

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Image Credit: Unsplash

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