What will future archaeologists think we worshipped?

History is brutal. Recently I discovered that YouTube has quite a few full-length, commercial-free documentaries on various channels. My husband, Sam, and I have been watching a few of them. I find the ones on archaeology and history most interesting. But they bring you face to face with terrible wars, horrific sacrifices, and infamous genocides.

One documentary that got my attention had a short portion on ancient South American people who made many, many child and infant sacrifices at one point in time. The archaeologists were, naturally, quite appalled, and the description in the narration was told in a horrified manner.

The style of the sacrifices—the slicing through the backbone near the base of the skull—caused me to think of the recent news about Kermit Gosnell and his horrific snipping of babies’ backbones. I cannot convince myself that his infant slaughterhouse is a one-of-a-kind, hell-on-earth situation either. I believe that it goes on far more than any of us would like to believe.

Any killing of babies, at any stage of their life, inside or outside the womb, has always been unthinkable to me. Take a moment, please. Try to imagine archaeologists, many years from now, digging up abortion clinics and wondering, horrified, what could possibly be so important that the people felt the need to sacrifice so many of their infants! Was this some sort of temple?

Yes. Abortion clinics, infant slaughterhouses, are temples. The “priests” who operate these bloody temples offer the promise of escape from difficulties in order to secure cooperation, so that they will receive their portion of the sacrifice—their payments—from the client. These “clinics” are temples founded on fear, shame, and selfishness.

What else have I thought about as I watch documentaries? Well, I watched one about the genocides in Europe during the Nazi reign of terror. Again, I know that this goes on today in places like Africa and Korea and probably many more; I know it’s a very real problem in the world. But what is harder to face is that this is also a very real problem HERE, in America. It is, I think, fairly well known that these infant sacrifice temples are located in places where they will naturally attract low-income, minority people.

What message are we supposed to believe here? Are the high priests/owners of all these interconnected slaughterhouses racist? Is white supremacy still making massive advances with its nasty claws into government-dependent, minority areas? It is almost too horrible to even consider.

Perhaps this post came about because I am now pregnant myself, and, even though I have not yet felt or heard the baby, I cannot imagine sacrificing my child. Or perhaps it came about because I’ve watched too many documentaries while simultaneously reading too many articles about the Gosnell case. Or perhaps it’s just because I’ve had all these thoughts pent up for years, and I finally figured out a semi-coherent way to write it out. It doesn’t really matter why it came about. I can only pray that these temples where many infant sacrifices go on every day will be shut down and vigorously condemned as the slaughterhouses that they are. I pray that the people currently gripped by the gods of these temples will see the Light and repent. I pray that ministries like the Morning Center will grow, thrive, and make true change. And I pray that I will never become desensitized to the thought of such horrible human sacrifice, infanticide, and genocide that goes on in so many communities around America.

Laura Evans wrote a version of this recently on her blog (reformedtngirl.wordpress.com). Her husband, Samuel Evans, works in the Support Center at Samaritan Ministries.