Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center on Johnstone Street.
Well, recently, a history teacher from Littleton, Colorado, went viral for praising the way that the Incas, her favorite empire. Sacrificed children. She also reprimanded white education for wrongly teaching generations of Americans that the practice was necessarily bad. No, I'm not making this up. After noting that human sacrifice was common within most ancient civilizations, the teacher then clarified that the Incan version of the practice offered victims from the upper class because they were closer to the gods.
Also, the Incas drugged the children before leaving them to die of exposure on top of a mountain. Objections to the cultural practice, she continued, are primarily due to a white perspective, which focuses on the negative aspects of. great civilizations while ignoring their wonderful accomplishments.
Now defending child sacrifice is of course the ultimate expression of cultural relativism. In this view, all cultures are equally valid, except for of course white cultures that judge others. To paraphrase a former colleague, in this view, there's no difference between cultures that love their neighbors and cultures that eat their neighbors. But of course, this teacher's innovative defense of the Incas misses a few important points. First, children as young as four were sacrificed, even if they could consent at that age.
Does that make it any less horrific? But of course, they cannot consent at that age. And the teacher fails to mention evidence of a four to five-year-old child who was. tied up before being buried alive. No, the simplest explanation for drugging young victims is minimizing resistance, not kindness, as the teacher claimed.
And to that point, is there any scenario whatsoever in which drugging a child and leaving her or him to die could be considered kind, even if that were the intent? And just as inconvenient to this narrative about the Incas. Are the sacrificial victims that were found who died from strangulation, suffocation, being stabbed in the back? it's much more likely that the most important motivator for this practice in that culture Was that it was considered an honor for a child to be chosen for sacrifice?
So, children were frequently volunteered by parents in villages in order to curry favor with the emperor. Children were offered when an Incan emperor died or on the birth of his heir or at times. Times of crisis, to lure the gods on their side, or for other ceremonial occasions. And another aspect of this conversation completely neglected by the teacher is what changed in history? Why is this kind of child sacrifice today almost universally viewed as abhorrent?
Well, the answer, of course, is Christianity. Believing that every human is made in the image of God, Christians from the very earliest centuries argued for the inherent dignity of the marginalized in society, including women, slaves, and children. Christians in Rome opposed the practice of infanticide. rescuing unwanted infants who were left to die and raising them as full members of the Christian community. And of course they also from the very beginning opposed abortion.
Thus the defense of children became a feature of Christian witness throughout history. For example, in the nineteenth century, missionary Mary Slesser was a very was known for rescuing twins who had been left to die. The tribal people of Nigeria believed that twins meant that one of the children had to be a child of a demon. And it was Schleser's actions that ended up ending that deadly practice.
Now to be clear, the sacrificing of children continues to be one of the most consistent features of this fallen world. Today aborted children are the victims of our wrong ideas about sexuality and the meaning of life. Most embryos created during the process of in vitro fertilization are deemed to be excess and left to die in freezers or medical experiments. Children are taught to be confused about who they are and thus become experiments of medical sterilization and surgical mutilation and also victims of the latest religious hysteria of adults. And that's why Christians oppose those practices.
And when they do, they are in good company within church history. And if the Western world continues to detach from its Christian foundations, we should expect that even more children will be devalued and harmed in even more ways. After all, it's a consistent feature of pagan societies that children will be in danger. We should only expect the same as society repaganizes. On the other hand, it's a consistent feature of Christians within a pagan society to work desperately to protect and defend children.
That remains the calling of the church today. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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