The Hungry Idols--June 12, 2020

The Hungry Idols--June 12, 2020

"[King Josiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech. He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-melech, which was in the precincts; then he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down from there and broke in pieces, and threw the rubble into the Wadi Kidron. The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Destruction, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles, and covered the sites with human bones." [2 Kings 23:10-14]

If the statues, idols, and monuments around you demand that you sacrifice your (or someone else's) children to them, then pulling them down is an act of saving lives.

I know this passage from the book of Second Kings looks insanely tedious and obscure, and I know that this hardly looks like there is any blessing to wrestle from this text.  Honestly, I was a student in college before I had ever read any of the biblical accounts of King Josiah, and so there's no reason to blush or be embarrassed if you read this and scratch your head going, "What on earth is this all about?"

Let's do a quick recap.  Over the course of the generations, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah often had kings who would dabble in worship of the gods of their neighbors, usually for political purposes.  It was "good for business" to have altars (sometimes just called "the high places") to the gods of other peoples, just to hedge your bets, too--you know, just in case Israel's God didn't come through for you, you could go consult another god or goddess who specialized in what you needed.  That was the thinking, anyway.  And over time, plenty of Israel and Judah's kings had added their own personal altars, temples, idols, statues, monuments, and sacred poles for a whole pantheon of other gods in addition to the temple to Yahweh, the One we call on as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (rendered as "the LORD" in our English translations).  In fact, after enough time, most people in Israel and Judah thought these statues and monuments--whether dedicated to Astarte, Chemosh, Molech, or any of a number of sun gods, storm-gods, or harvest-fertility gods--were basically harmless.  After all, the thinking was, if it turns out they aren't real, well, who cares, and if it turns out they are, you definitely want to tap into their divine power by having a place to offer them sacrifices, right?  And the longer the shrines stood, the more they just seemed to be historical artifacts, monuments not just to the gods to whom they were dedicated but to the legacy of the kings who had set them up.  So at some point in time, it wasn't just about having a statue for worshiping the sun, it was about the "historical legacy" of the kings who had set those statues up.  In other words, at some point, the official party-line from the palace was, "It is patriotic to have these statues of horses dedicated to the sun, because our previous kings set them up!  If you love your country, people of Judah, you will want to keep these up forever."

But there was a cost to having the monuments to these gods.  There's always a cost.  Shrines, statues, and monuments become focal points for us--they tell us who and what we believe are worthy of our attention... our devotion... our allegiance.  Who and what we build monuments to says a great deal about who we are... and in turn, the shrines we set up shape the kind of people we, and our children, become.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, then, we are always giving our children to whatever we have given our allegiance to--whether it is a god with a name like Baal or Molech, or to a subtler god called "the Market" or "Success," or to the pernicious gods like white supremacy, greed, or hatred.  Or to the God of life.

So at some point in Israel and Judah's history, it had just become part of the normal routine that there was a shrine in the valley outside Jerusalem where people literally burned their children alive as sacrifices to the god Molech (in exchange, they thought, for better harvests, or divine favors, or whatever else one might pray for), just down the hill from the site where Yahweh was worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple.  I guess if you have a statue like that up for long enough, at some point everybody just assumes it has always been there and doesn't find it scandalous anymore that people are feeding their children to the god whose image is set up there.

Well along comes a king named Josiah, and as the storytelling goes, Josiah actually reads the book of God's instruction (what we call the Law, or the Torah), and he discovers that God had told the people long ago not to go meddling with foreign gods or monuments to hungry deities.  And Josiah realizes it is slowly destroying his people to have them offering up the lives of the next generation at shrines to Molech and Astarte and sun gods and harvest gods and all the rest.  Josiah realizes that the things you allow to command attention in the public square become thing things you give your heart and mind to... and that it is too costly to let his people keep sacrificing their children before these monuments and shrines, even though they have been there for a very long time and most folk are just "used" to having them around.

So Josiah pulls them all down. And what we have in the passage above is a listing (and just a partial one at that!) of the monuments, shrines, and statues that Josiah tore down, knowing full well that it would be met with hostility from folks who didn't realize the ways those shrines were devouring their children. Josiah knew he was going to make enemies who just saw the idols of the sun god or the sacred poles and pillars as part of their nation's great historical legacy.  But he did it anyway--not because their history as a people didn't matter, but because Josiah knew that statues and shrines aren't really about teaching the past; they are about directing our allegiance in the present, and shaping the direction of our future.

Josiah knew that they were sacrificing their future--literally burning their sons and daughters as offerings to these gods--by keeping the statue to Molech where it was in the Valley of Hinnom.  Josiah knew that worshiping the sun at the outside of the Temple was not compatible with worshiping the Creator of the sun on the inside of the Temple.  And he knew that any real deity worth their salt would not need to be fed with the blood of their children, no matter for how long people had gotten used to the idea.

In short, Josiah knew that pulling down the long-standing statues to the likes of Molech and Astarte and the rest was ultimately about saving the lives of those who would otherwise be fed to insatiable idols by parents who had gotten used to the system they lived in that demanded more blood to be spilled.  Josiah knew that saying NO to those altars and shrines was the necessary precursor to saying YES to the God of Life, on whom Israel had relied from the days of being freed from slavery in Egypt.  Josiah knew that "but it's been here a long time" is not a valid reason to leave something in place if it is costing the lives of someone's children, the same way doctors still cut out a tumor from the body even if "it's been here a long time."  

Maybe we need to take an honest look in our lives--both on the very personal individual level, and on the wider societal and national level--at the idols we have gotten used to, and which always come with a cost.  Maybe we need to re-examine the idol called "Wealth" toward which we so often push our children, thinking they will be successful and that we can be proud, if they make enough money--even if it makes them hollow and empty inside. Maybe we need to think again about what corporate logos command our kids' attention, and how it has come to be that they are growing up as good little consumers who are never satisfied, and we hadn't noticed it was happening.  Maybe even we religious folks need to ask if we are proud of having ornate, expensive, and impressive looking church buildings when the funds used to build them could have been spent giving shelter to a homeless family, digging a well for a community without clean water, or rebuilding a town after a hurricane or war.  And certainly, we need to ask about what literal monuments and statues we want to place our children in front of--because the things we place with honor on pedestals become the things that shape the kind of people our children and grandchildren will become.  And if we have gotten used to feeding someone else's children to the things set up on plinths in the public square, perhaps we need the courage to take them down in spite of the fact that we have gotten used to them being there.

Nobody in Josiah's day forgot their history when he pulled down the shrines to the hungry idols that they had all gotten used to; in fact, pulling them down was what helped them to remember Who it was that had been faithful to them all along from the days of slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt and ever since.  Getting rid of the death-dealing gods they had all grown accustomed to allowed them to remember their calling as God's people of life.

It is never easy work to root out the idols in our lives, whether in my own heart or in our collective consciousness.  But doing that difficult work is vital, because it determines the direction not only of our lives, but of what we give our children to.  It really is a matter of choosing death or life.

What do each of us need to say "NO" to... in order to more fully say "YES" to the God of life?

Lord God, we keep setting up idols and sacrificing our children to them, and we need to be free of them.  Pull down whatever takes our allegiance away from you, no matter how respectable or familiar, so that we can find fullness of life in you.