America’s political scene is dismal, but what’s most disturbing is the cultural scene and the speed with which it is changing. America was once a country that looked to the Bible for its values. Now, and with ever-increasing speed, it’s returning to paganism. That’s something that should terrify us because, contrary to the leftist vision of paganism as a non-judgmental time of love and flowers, the pagan world was judgmental, random, and remarkably cruel.

The Bible introduced ethical monotheism. Before the Bible, religion in every society revolved around animist gods tied to the earth. Pre-modern people created a pantheon of gods they believed were responsible for the mysteries surrounding them—crops, harvests, rain, storms, volcanoes, etc.

Because the natural phenomena people experienced were capricious, the gods were, too. Read the mythology from any pre-Biblical society, and you find gods that are immature, selfish, narcissistic, and vindictive. One did not placate these amoral gods with moral behavior; one placated them with sacrifices. These ranged from simple food offerings to live animal sacrifices to brutal human sacrifices. Their capriciousness made fixed rules of justice and morality impossible.

One of the most important lessons from the Bible, told through the Binding of Isaac, is that a moral, invisible, omnipotent God doesn’t require human sacrifice. We are His creations, made in His image, and should not destroy ourselves or each other unless we are doing so in pursuit of ethical monotheism. Murder is bad; a just war is acceptable.

Today, Western societies, while proud that they don’t execute the most heinous murderers, which would be just, routinely engage in human sacrifice. In America alone, over 60 million humans were sacrificed through abortion. Increasingly, abortion is justified to protect “Mother Earth” or “Gaia” from the insult humanity causes her merely by existing. (Indeed, they revel in it.) In the Bible, humans are revered as God’s creation; under modern paganism, they’re parasites.

The sculpture outside Tucson’s Planned Parenthood. Photo by Olivia Murray.

This reverence for the human body extends to all types of body mutilation. Under Jewish law, even tattoos are forbidden because one must not mutilate God’s handiwork. In today’s world, it’s the rare young person who isn’t tattooed.

Tattooing, though, is the least of what’s being done to young people. In service to so-called “transgenderism,” a huge and growing movement in America sees young women (and teen girls) remove healthy breasts and uteruses. Likewise, young men (and teen boys) are encouraged to castrate themselves, whether by removing their testicles or their penises too. Castration was once reserved for the non-Biblical world, whether the Romans or the Ottomans.

In place of these biologically correct, healthy organs, women have their forearms stripped to create a fake penis. Men have their healthy penis hollowed out, inverted, and pushed into a hole in their abdominal cavity, a sometimes deadly surgery. Even the pagans hadn’t figured out mutilation at that scale.

This type of body mutilation is purely sexual in nature, and the new centrality of human sexuality is another aspect of paganism that’s on the rise. The pagan world has always revolved around sex because human sex has been equated with the earth’s fecundity in terms of crops. Ritual prostitution and religious sex orgies were central to pagan beliefs. Because the Bible had an abstract moral God, sex left the public sphere and became a private matter between husband and wife, for a relationship that was both procreative and emotional.

Part of the Bible’s focus on heterosexuality was a response to the rampant pedophilia in the ancient world. This was probably for the same reason it’s still rampant across the Muslim world: Women are valuable property, and paternity is overwhelmingly important. Having sexual relationships with boys allowed men sexual release without the risks of either pregnancy or adultery.

America now has a rising pedophilia problem. What was once viewed as completely immoral, diseased, and disgusting, is now emerging in art (scroll down at this link), advertising, and political advocacy. “Cute” social media accounts abound.

Pedophilia is also obvious to every parent who sees what’s happening at schools and in children’s media (e.g., Disney). In classrooms, teachers obsessively talk about their own sexuality to children, and they and their fellow travelers are adamant that pornographic literature (which school boards refuse to hear read aloud) must be in classrooms and libraries. Those drag queens need their child audiences for a reason.

Humans are inherently very brutal, and the pagan world did nothing to tame that. Human sacrifice, torture, child abuse, body mutilation…they had it all. And it’s true that early Jews and Christians came from that world but, over several millennia, relying on the Bible, Jews and Christians broke free from that. Now, though, leftists, who loathe the Biblical worldview because it’s God-centered, not human-centered, are returning us to a world of human sacrifice, body mutilation, and child abuse.