Discover the unsettling parallels between ancient idol worship and the ideologies that consume our lives today. Join us on a journey to uncover the 'Modern Molochs' that hold sway over society. We peel back layers of cultural norms to reveal the sacrifices we make in our quest for personal achievement, often at the expense of what truly matters. This episode is a clarion call for introspection, challenging you to consider if your pursuit of success is equivalent to worshipping at the feet of today's false deities.
Discover the unsettling parallels between ancient idol worship and the ideologies that consume our lives today. Join us on a journey to uncover the 'Modern Molochs' that hold sway over society. We peel back layers of cultural norms to reveal the sacrifices we make in our quest for personal achievement, often at the expense of what truly matters. This episode is a clarion call for introspection, challenging you to consider if your pursuit of success is equivalent to worshipping at the feet of today's false deities.
On today's care. I've got to do this or do that. If that life were out of the way, my life would be better, and so I am willing to make that sacrifice and it's strange that it's really self-sacrifice that's involved with those things but nobody's saying prayers to Molech as they're doing these things. But essentially it's the same kind of worship of a false god at the cost of human life.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson, and today we're going to talk about modern Molochs. If the name Moloch rings a bell to you, you might have heard it from the Bible. He was an idol and maybe you guys can tell us a little bit more about Moloch and how that's going to fit into our discussion today.
Jeff Samelson:Well, pretty much every reference to Moloch that you'll come across in the Old Testament is extremely negative. To Molech that you'll come across in the Old Testament is extremely negative. It's the book of the law that is just condemning Molech and saying you shall not worship him, you shall not do anything, you shall not accommodate this in any way. And then, sadly, some passages a little bit later it shows where well people in Israel did actually adopt Molech as their god and worship him in various ways, and they were soundly condemned for that. Molech is generally identified as an Ammonite god from Ammon, but it's probable that he was worshipped beyond that smaller area. Sometimes it was called Milcom, but the basic the M, the M-L and K sound in there probably related to the Hebrew and Semitic word for ruling, so it was probably some idea of a ruling God that it involved human sacrifice, particularly child sacrifice, and probably, like most of the other pagan worship in the area, probably also involved sexual acts of some sort that were certainly not going to be something for a pure people to engage in.
Christa Potratz:When I encountered that in the Bible, it sounds terrible, I think in our modern mind too. You just think well, how could anybody do that and how could a culture do that? What was the idea behind sacrificing your children and giving that to the God?
Jeff Samelson:To a certain extent we have to use conjecture here, because we don't exactly have taped interviews with these people from back then, but it was usually the idea of okay, well, we want fertility from our fields, we want our harvests to be positive, we want life to continue and blossom and prosper, and things like that, and there was the idea that, well, in order to get, you have to give, and so the idea was that if you sacrifice life, then that is going to be something that the gods will then recognize and respond to by giving more life, and that's assumed to be part of the motivation or part of the way it was, shall we say, sold to people. There was also simply, I think, kind of an aspect of we have bloodthirsty gods and they demand payment, and this is the payment they demand. So if you want the God to treat us well and not smite us, then we'd better give the God what he wants. And if that happens to be our children, well, I hope it's yours and not mine.
Bob Fleischmann:And Jeff said a couple of things that I think are worth expanding on a little bit. The second point here, which is you know gods that demanded, they're bloodthirsty gods and everything. This is what you get when you create your own religion. You create gods who are just like people, people at their worst, people at their extreme Because I remember when I was studying up about Moloch and that religion, you find that you know how do you get to a religion like that?
Bob Fleischmann:And I got to thinking that sometimes we are that way. You know, like when you're praying to God for something deeply important to you that has to happen and it's not happening. And it's just not happening. And you start coming up with ways to please your God so that he might make it happen. But I'm going back to church, I am praying to you all the time and nothing's happening. And that's what begins to happen when you begin to say, well, I like God only as long as God agrees with me. So people oftentimes will create their own God and at hard times, droughts and so forth call for extreme measures and maybe God is so angry we need to sacrifice our children. So I think that was one really good point that he made, and that's what you get.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, and the second thing is a point that Jeff made earlier, and that is God says don't, don't do this, don't worship Moloch, don't stay away from Moloch and everything. And eventually they did. If you think of history, we do this all the time. God is crystal clear on some things. Don't do it, don't do it. And you start looking through history and then eventually we do it and don't make for yourself other gods, don't worship the Lord first, all those kinds of things. And given enough time, we flip it all the time and it's part of the sinful nature. And so I thought, when he had introduced the whole discussion about Moloch, god was very clear on it. It wasn't like there was doubt about how he wanted you to act. And yet, in our incredible ability to challenge God at every move, we eventually, as people, you move away from that and you see it kind of resurfacing in different forms in every generation.
Christa Potratz:So what, then, is the tie to Moloch, who was an ancient false god? What is that tie today, in our modern culture?
Jeff Samelson:I think very few people would say, oh well, we don't do child sacrifice. That's just horrific. We don't do anything like that and we certainly wouldn't sacrifice any kind of human life for something silly like a blessing on our crops. We know that's not how things work. But if you get back to the essence of what it is the idea that okay, well, I want something good and it's okay with me if someone else's life is forfeited in order to pursue that good that I want, well then yeah, there's a lot of that going on in our society. Again, probably the most obvious thing is going to be abortion Millions of children that are sacrificed because their lives are inconvenient to their mothers or to their fathers or to whomever, are inconvenient to their mothers or to their fathers or to whomever.
Jeff Samelson:The idea that my life will be better if I don't have a child, so I will sacrifice this child that already exists that I am already a mother or a father of. I'm willing to sacrifice in that way, but again, not just abortion. So many other things that you know talk about euthanasia and assisted suicide and things like that that there's. This sense of this person's life is inconvenient to me. It's getting in the way of my enjoying life the way I want to, or having the things that I want, because I've got to pay for grandma's care, I've got to do this or do that. If that life were out of the way, my life would be better, and so I am willing to make that sacrifice. And it's strange that it's really self-sacrifice that's involved with those things but nobody's saying prayers to Molech as they're doing these things. But essentially it's the same kind of worship of a false god at the cost of human life.
Bob Fleischmann:There are various views of history, about history repeating itself, and I've always talked to a spiraling view of history. I believe that there is a tendency for it to repeat itself. We don't learn the lessons from history like we should, but it spirals in a sense, in that it comes back in a little bit different form. It's a little bit. Time has passed, technology has brought us new things, and so we have a way of being a little bit more sophisticated, and you experience it to some degree just when you have conversations with your grandparents and then with your parents and with your children.
Bob Fleischmann:There are things that your grandparents believed and practiced, that you look back and you're going oh, that's just crazy, what were they thinking? And then your children look to you and they're going oh, I can't believe you like that kind of music. And then their children will say that about them eventually, and so forth, and this is all part of just a lot of things changing in history. The point being is that, if you want to be as simple-minded, looking at this and you're saying well, nobody here is praying to a false god, nobody is here taking out and gutting their child to some great deity, but all we've done is it's still a god of our own manufacturing, one of our own mind, and we've become sophisticated in it.
Bob Fleischmann:So rather than bringing our child to the priest to offer the sacrifice, we bring the child to a clinic and tell the doctor take care of this for me, have me somewhat sedated, so I don't really know what's going on. And then don't bother me with the facts about what it is, and that's how it works. And no matter what else we look at and it does, it always comes around and it's always a little bit different. And it'll be different in the future, I'm pretty sure. But it'll come back and we'll have our own way of venerating a false god and there's going to be casualties. The thing that stands out in our minds is that the casualty is all the more abhorrent because it's a child.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, all the more abhorrent because it's a child. It isn't like we're sacrificing all the prisoners who had pillaged our village and raped our women and all that kind of stuff. Those aren't the people we're sacrificing. We're sacrificing the purest, most innocent of our people because we think this has got to be most pleased by it.
Jeff Samelson:And another way that this connects ancient times to modern times is who actually is being worshipped, who actually is being served by this. Old Testament points out all sorts of names for different gods and things like that, but in the New Testament, paul kind of spells it out in one or two places. It's like, yeah, these aren't real deities, they don't exist as gods, these are demons. Essentially, that you're serving, which means basically you're serving Satan. And that's why, when we look at this, bob was pointing out just the mind-blowing aspect of sacrificing your own child. Who could possibly be happy with that? Satan? And so people are serving him, because what does he love doing? His whole purpose is to destroy everything that's good, what God has created, what God has done with humanity. He wants to undo everything that is good as best he can, and he makes people think they're doing something right by going along with him. And so what was happening then with the horrendous public sacrifice of children? Now it's not quite so open, but we're still sacrificing our children and others and serving him in doing that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I mean, I think where I kind of would draw an additional parallel to it, too, is just this idea that has really permeated our culture of an individual's happiness and their success and everything is the most important thing that there is other than you know, just okay, you know having an abortion, or somebody who feels that they need to have an abortion so that they can have success in life.
Christa Potratz:I also see it, though, too, in just this idea that I almost call it the dead to me movement, where, if you disagree with someone, okay, just cut them out of your life. I mean just be done with them and you don't need them and you just focus on you. I mean we're seeing this, you know. I mean obviously like with divorce and that type of thing, to how people are just okay adamant on this person now has ruined my life or whatever. I'm just going to be done with them. But I just I see it more to like with just with parents, to where their kids have said all right, you know, I don't want anything to do with mom and dad anymore, or just on social media, and just people kind of cutting out people from their lives because they just don't want them anymore.
Christa Potratz:I just I feel like there is a parallel to that, like they're not killing them but, they're just saying like I don't want to deal with you anymore because it's getting in the way of me.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, that's a good point, Krista, and I think there's another way that's again stops short of actual killing that parents sacrifice children today. And you think of, for instance, the dad who always wanted to be a professional ball player, whatever the sport was football, basketball, baseball or whatever and so he does everything there that can be done to make sure that his son or his children have the chance that he never had to play professionally. And so push, push, push. Morning practice, evening practice, that push, push, push without ever any real thought about is this actually what's best for the child? Is this what the child actually wants?
Jeff Samelson:But the parent is living out his or her dreams through the child and similarly it's like, well, my child has to have the best education and go to this school or that school, or my child has to be dressed in a certain way or whatever. And they're sacrificing what is best for the child because they have a selfish image of what their child should be. That child has to bring them glory or satisfaction or whatever it might be, without really concern for the life of the individuality of that child. That is sacrificed in order to bring pleasure or satisfaction to the parent.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I mean it all goes back to Bob's heaven on earth, right I?
Bob Fleischmann:mean it all goes back to Bob's, you know, heaven on earth, right, well, and you know and I hate to beat the familiar drum on that but people oftentimes say the problem with Christianity and the Crusades and the fighting, the killing and all that kind of stuff. Well, really, my suspicion is that even within the Christian community, we lose ourselves in the part we begin to set out to create a heaven on earth, and in that pursuit we lose. And we're not the only casualties. Casualties are our children and the grandchildren after them. And so what do we do about that? And because our culture really is a Moloch culture, we're pursuing some God that clearly isn't the true God. It's a God that never satisfies because we never get enough. We never have enough. So how do we confront it?
Bob Fleischmann:And it's given me the opportunity to read about two things lately. One is the Rod Dreher had written about the Benedictine option, which is the idea like the religious community kind of almost needs to kind of step back, kind of regroup, before going out. I like a lot of what he writes, but I wasn't comfortable with that option. And then I, just as of this morning, just actually read a piece, and then I went back and read the 2017 piece on. It called the Calvary Option, and the Calvary Option had to do with a movie called Calvary and it was about Irish Roman Catholics and there had been sexual abuse going on within the Catholic Church and there was a fellow who thought he was going to make a statement and threatened to kill the good priest who wasn't doing the molesting. Threatened to kill the good priest, and so the priest decided I'm not going to withdraw, I am just going to continue on doing my work, which, in a sense, made a lot of sense to me, because that's really the Paul solution to Timothy you keep your head. That's what he tells him in 2 Timothy 4. You keep your head, you stay focused, you keep doing your work, and the problem is that when you're trying to create heaven on earth, and whether you're worshiping Moloch you know millennials ago or you're worshiping a different kind of Moloch today, the only way you can fix it is stick to your game plan Keep loving, sacrificing for others, keep doing, keep proclaiming, talking about Jesus.
Bob Fleischmann:That, ultimately, is the and this one author, carl Truman, who's one of my favorite writers, calls the Calvary option. Even under the threat of punishment and danger, you just keep doing what you're supposed to do. And I think that—because I think we are living in a time of great, increasing danger for Christians the world doesn't have patience for us, and they shouldn't. I mean, think about it. If they're trying to build a heaven on earth and we believe there is a heaven outside of here, we have to be a problem for them.
Christa Potratz:Any other thoughts on Scripture, and just our response to these modern-day Moloch's.
Jeff Samelson:Well, I think you know, God willing, one of the purposes of this particular podcast and you know what we've been aiming for is just to it helps to identify them.
Jeff Samelson:You know, so that we can say oh, that's what's going on here, so that we realize this is not a minor thing, this is a serious thing. Yeah, it's an old thing, but it's something that's always going to be with us, and you know okay. Well, if we identify a modern Moloch, what do we want to do? Well, like the ancient Israelites, we keep our kids away from them and we stay away from them ourselves. We say I'm not going to have anything to do with it. It's not just that, it's not worship of the true God, it is just an incredible, detestable kind of thing that they're doing. But, as with most things, when you eliminate the negative, you want to replace it with the positive, which means the way that we fight against these things for ourselves and our own hearts and minds, for our families, for our churches and, to the extent that we're able to influence, our communities.
Jeff Samelson:Spend that time in scripture. Be fed and nurture your faith and your children's faith on the means of grace, the word of God, the sacraments. Go to worship. Spend time with your brothers and sisters. Focus on the self-sacrifice that characterizes the Christian life. Do the things that give society a good reason to say, hey, they're different, because we're supposed to be, we're supposed to stand out for these things and not stand out as goody goodies, but stand out as people who actually love, people who actually care, people who put others' interests ahead of their own. Yeah, scripture is clear that, as the end draws near, our situation on earth will will get worse and worse. But it's also clear, uh, that, uh, god's word is never without it. You know it's fruit and, uh, the people that need to see our witness and say, hey, I want what they have. They will still be there and it's still worth being out there in society for their sake.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I mean I think too, like with people that went to Molech, and in some of these cases too, okay, like you know, they want good crops or they wanted all these things and just a lot of them. I mean, if you're looking at the Israeli people who maybe went that way, they didn't want to wait on God anymore. And I think too, like that's just such a thing that I have found just personally in my life too, is that I know that God does have my best interest at heart and that sometimes that is waiting. And I think, you know, just in our culture too, with this instant gratification, and I mean we just we want to control our life. We want to, you know, take the reins, and even as Christians we're tempted to do that sometimes in life but to just remember that often God may call us to a place of waiting, and that doesn't mean he's not there, but it does mean that we have to relinquish that control that we want to have.
Bob Fleischmann:It's important to remember that, first of all, everyone has a religion. It could be the religion of self, it could be the religion of—it's an object of worship. And, what's also important to recognize, every religion demands a sacrifice. Every religion, every religion demands a sacrifice. A worship of Moloch, in the eyes of some, demanded the sacrifice of their most innocent, their children. Even Christianity demanded a sacrifice of the most innocent. But what makes Christianity distinctively different is that the sacrifice was done for us and because the sacrifice was done for us, we do not need to be making those sacrifices to gain heaven or to create heaven on earth. And when people are going through life, a lot of times we're very short-term thinkers. We're thinking about what I want today, what I want this week, maybe this month, something, maybe this year, maybe for a career which is just a few years down the road. If I got a career, what do I want for family? We're always thinking in the short term. Christianity is the very unique religion that begins with the long term. Heaven is our home. So we operate as strangers in this world and we operate accordingly. But just remember this there is a lot to be said for the tangible. Just remember this. There is a lot to be said for the tangible. So you know, I can touch my career, I can touch my children, I can touch—and so we tend to be dragged into that.
Bob Fleischmann:And I still look back in the Old Testament. You know why did Cain—you would think that even the true faith could not have had too much of a chance to be corrupted back then. I mean not like it gets to be today, thousands of years on the road, and yet Cain felt I don't need to bring God the best that I have. Why? Because Cain had already begun creating his own God. He had already begun creating his own form of worship. And I think all of us have to sometimes take a deep breath when we look at some of the things we chase and we ask ourselves, if we look way down the road, what will it have accomplished? Has it contributed towards a mindset that we've got a divine king who has made the ultimate sacrifice, and so really our responsibility is to just spread that message, and to do that by loving others as we've been loved, or are we just unknowingly? Have we been sucked into the world? Have we become caned figuring? Well, I can be a Christian, but it's not going to require as much of my devotion, because I'm also going to have my other foot in this world and I want to create a kingdom for myself here.
Bob Fleischmann:And I think you know the Moloch story. I've always I've really grasped onto this idea that all of Scripture is written for our learning. In other words, there's a reason that story is there, and it's not just to remind you of stupid bloodshed years ago, but it also reminds you of how we fall into it time and time and time, again and again. Going back to what Jeff said earlier, you know, god told them stay away and they fell for it. He tells us to stay away from a lot of stuff today and we fall for it. It should be a wake-up call.
Christa Potratz:Thank you so much to all of our listeners for joining us today, and if you have any feedback, please reach out to us at lifechallengesus. We look forward to having you back next time.
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