The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves, and present an offering made to the LORD by fire. (Lev. 23:27)
[Aaron] is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover. (Lev. 16:14)
There was a time in my life, many years ago, when I lost my appetite for Christianity. It happened right about the time that I started doing comparative religious studies, looking at the creeds and cultic habits of other religions and realizing (so I thought) that the Christian religion wasn't all that special or unique. The one thing that bothered me the most - enough that I can still remember, clearly, sending a lengthy email on the subject to a friend of mine - was the way that God appeared very much at home in the pantheon of the rest of world's blood-thirsty deities.
The gods get angry and demand blood sacrifice. God gets angry and demands blood sacrifice.
The gods don't seem to care who or what dies, as long as there's blood spilled. God doesn't seem to care who or what dies, as long as blood gets spilled, smeared, or sprinkled.
The gods are appeased by the death of the victim, and favor the people with blessing. God is appeased by the death of the victim, and favors His people with blessing again.
I eventually came out of the tangle of comparative religion and took a step of faith to settle down and live, as best I could, with the Christian religion. But it wasn't until years later that God showed me a little bit about what His nature is, and why things like The Day of Atonement existed.
It is of no little significance that Aaron was commanded to sacrifice a bull on the Day of Atonement, year after year. The writer of Hebrews says "those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins" (Heb. 10:3). A reminder of what sins? Well, any sins, I suppose, but one particular sin stands out specifically: the sin of apostasy, when Israel worshiped a golden calf. It was Aaron who orchestrated that event; he told the people to bring them their gold, and Exodus 32 says he was the one who made the calf, built an altar for it, and led the worship.
Why a calf? Because the people had just spent several decades in Egypt, where the cult of the Egyptian deity, Apis the Bull, was popular. Aaron gave the people a god they knew, a god they were familiar with. And because God is a wise Father who knows exactly how to instruct His children and set them free, He commanded in His wisdom that the annual Day of Atonement ritual would include the slaughter of a bull. What more powerful way to illustrate that the god they had worshiped was no god at all? What more instructive way to help them break their addiction to such familiar idolatry, than to have a yearly ritual in which the cult of Apis would be renounced, again and again?
It would be like a recovering cocaine addict being given a fresh bag of his favorite drug every day, and being told to take it and flush it down the toilet, day after day after day, to go through the exercise of renouncing the drug's hold on his life.
But there is a flip side to this offering as well, one that speaks more directly to the nature of God. Why should He want blood sprinkled on the atonement seat? He says in the words of the Psalmist, "I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens ... Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?" (Ps. 50:9, 13). Again, the writer of Hebrews, quoting from Psalm 40, says "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, 'Here I am--it is written about me in the scroll-- I have come to do your will, O God'" (Heb. 10:5-7).
God isn't particularly interested in blood as a commodity in itself. But He is very interested in what that blood represents: the totality of life, complete self-offering, whole-hearted surrender. He is very interested in having an intimate relationship with His children, and that relationship is founded upon giving all of ourselves to Him, because He gives all of Himself to us. Keith Green summed it up in one of his songs: "I don't need your money, I want your life" ("To Obey is Better than Sacrifice").
This is what makes God utterly "other" and separate from any blood-thirsty pagan deity. He isn't appeased by senseless violence, bloodshed, or the slaughter of innocent victims; He doesn't ultimately want our bulls, goats, rams, money, or any other material thing - He wants our unconditional "Yes" to Him. He wants us. And He wants us to have Him (certainly no pagan deity ever made that claim). And when, as Rich Mullins said, "the stuff of earth competes for the allegiance" we owe to Him, then maybe sacrifice begins to look like nothing more mundane than giving material gifts to Him - but it isn't. If He calls us to slaughter our personal Apis the Bull on the altar of self-surrender, it's because He wants to help us remove any obstacle that would hinder us from having Him in His entirety.
I suppose there's plenty more that could be said, but these are the things about the Day of Atonement that I wanted to remind myself of, and that I wanted to share.
Take everything I have, Father, if only you will give me all of You in return.
Jacob
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