2 April

Moloch, a Canaanite god. Worshipped in Carthage, by some accounts, in the form of a giant bronze statue, which was heated to red hot, and children were then thrown into the statue as sacrifices. Barbarism, you might say. The ‘modern world’ has gone past this sort of mythology. But...it’s likely that we have never been modern, and that the desire to strip myth and sacrifice from our lives will never work, it continues to this day. For example, over 1.3 million people die in traffic accidents every year, worldwide. That’s over 3000 people a day. We might think the Carthaginians are barbaric idol worshippers, but like them we know these people will die in cars every day, and we see vehicles and travel as so important that we carry on regardless. How is that different to throwing children into the red hot statue? Genuine question. (And not an argument to get rid of cars, more to say that the way we live doesn’t change from era to era as much as we might think.)