You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD

Leviticus 18:21 (ESV)

In June 2003, the American Medical Association declared its approval of human cloning for research purposes. The association also issued guidelines for doctors who wished to harvest stem cells from cloned embryos for their own research.1 Thus, the USA’s largest professional organization for physicians has publicly supported creating human life, in order to destroy it, in the hope of medical advances.

Preparing Israel for life in the Promised Land, the Lord warned His people not to be like the nations they would replace in Canaan. God had separated them from other nations to belong to Himself (Lev. 20:22-26). One of the Canaanite practices that He forbade was serving the false god Molech. The precise identity of this idol is uncertain. However, Molech worship clearly involved child sacrifice. Children were offered to him; literally, “caused to pass through” to him. This is further explained in 2 Kings 23:10, which says that they were “caused to pass through the fire.” The children were burned as an offering to seek Molech’s favor.

The mention of children (literally “seed”) recalls God’s covenant with Abraham, where the Lord promised to be with Abraham and his seed (Gen. 17:7). If Israel sacrificed their children to Molech, they would be rebelling against God’s promise of blessing for their offspring. Worse, they would be killing the children to seek blessing from an idol. Hence, they would deny God’s fidelity and power to bless, and so profane His name among the nations. But the Lord would not tolerate His covenant being despised and His reputation being defamed (Lev. 20:2).

Health and longevity are among the most prominent modern idols. For many, gyms have become modern shrines and diet guides their Bibles. Medical advances offer the hope of lasting life, whilst surgery provides redemption from past illness. None of these things is inherently bad. Health, long life, and medical progress can be signs of God’s blessing. Nevertheless, they easily become all-consuming, replacing the Christian hope of eternal life after death with the materialist hope of prolonged life and blessing in this world only. Killing other human beings—even the tiniest members of our species—to restore personal health or add years to life is a heinous perversion of medicine and an evidence of technological idolatry. It should seem shocking that a nation’s doctors appear willing to create living human beings and then to destroy them.

In the face of public pressure to create life in order to destroy, pastors will require great moral courage. Likewise, church members may have to refuse some medical treatments because they are morally tainted. But Christians must remain resolute in modeling the fact that the Church is not like the nations around. Any scientific innovation that requires the willful destruction of human lives is Molech-like. Pagans deities must be refused, even if they appear in temples called laboratories and have priests called doctors. The Lord alone is the God of the covenant.

Footnotes:
1
Samuel D. Hensely, “AMA Approves Creating Life for Destructive Purposes,” The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity Website, http://www.cbhd.org/resources/stemcells/hensley_2003-07-09.html (accessed August 11, 2004).
Ibid., 56.

Article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located across from the Principio Health Center in Perryville, MD