There’s more to this symbolism of Molech than merely withholding your children from the state. It’s the issue of rule by fear. Molech was worshiped out of fear. There was no love for a god who consumes your first-born son as the price for letting you eat.
While the Hebrew text of Scripture does use more than one word which gets translated as “fear” in English, the most common one (yare’) is a primitive root word, rather ambiguous and requiring a context. One could say the common underlying emphasis is to be intimidated. As already noted in the previous post, the context indicates one “fears” Jehovah in the sense of respect. Sure, He can remove you and every memory of you, if He chose. On the other hand, He’s not interested in terrorizing anyone who is disposed to understand what He requires. Indeed, He makes it a point to promote the image of Himself as quite patient and kind, looking for any excuse to pour blessings on anyone who will simply try to honor Him as God. We get that image reading through the prophetic record.
Molech terrorizes. What little we know of his worship indicates a very ugly religion. If you are on his land, you had better cower in fear at the mention of his name. There is no limit to his demands; nothing you can name is too much. This is just like the modern nation-state. It’s not just the children; it’s the entire gamut of your existence.
The high sounding theory behind the term “public servants” has become an Orwellian lie. You are the servant, and there is no negotiation, so long as the state can foist any claim on the space you occupy. The state has the unilateral authority and you have whatever privileges the state decides to offer. At any given moment, that can change. The only thing which inhibits truly capricious actions at this point is the long legacy of wanting voluminous documentation to constrain the various agents of the state. Given the way government service borgs the whole mind, even the imagination of psychopaths is somewhat restrained by the documented procedures.
As our system of government drifts farther and farther into naked tyranny, as if the head is some unlimited dictator, and the pretense of accountability wears thin as stretch film, we should expect lesser executives to begin asserting totalitarian authority within the limits of their office. Caprice has already begun to rear its ugly head. Even the average policeman has gotten into the act. Stories of police abuse of authority are too many to count these days. Against that, the stories of them receiving just recompense are increasingly rare.
None of this is news, but the point here is Christians in particular are forbidden to become trapped in that pagan terror of the state. This is nothing more than a revival of worshiping Molech. You may not have any actual power in your hands to resist the state, but that does not justify surrendering to the dread of state interference with your calling from God. On the individual level, your embrace of God’s Laws will allow Him to tip the scales of what seems random chance in your favor. If more of us together agree to walk in His Laws, His power to bless according to those Laws will deepen into more areas of our lives.
It’s time to stop trembling before the altar of Molech or the State.
