The Mayan god of rain was called Cha ac. When drought hit the jungles of Central America fifteen hundred years ago, Cha ac was called upon to send rain, so the Mayans, led by their shaman, offered a child – children, actually. The archeologists who studied Bartlett Cave in Belize say they found the bones of eighteen children in one area alone, and there were many areas. None of the children were over four years old. The Mayans would not kill the child. They’d leave the child to die in the cave believing that the child’s crying and tears would evoke pity from Cha ac, and he’d send rain. The child, in exchange for their sacrifice, would ascend straight to the afterlife.
It’s ghastly for us to think about today. Have you ever been deep in a cave and turned off the flashlight? It’s a pitch-black darkness that, unless you’ve done it, is impossible to imagine. The sound of every drop of water is magnified, and your brain begins playing tricks, imagining the dripping sounds are voices, and that was my experience in only five minutes of that darkness. Imagine that for days as the child slowly starved to death. Again, it’s ghastly.
The Mayans were utterly convinced their faith was right and correct and holy, that their communing with their gods and their interpretation of their god’s messages told them what their gods wanted and instructed them how to live in a holy way. They fought other tribes for their gods. They forced their captives to convert and worship Cha ac as well as the many other Mayan gods, and they did this for centuries. This was a religion with a theology and a practice and a hierarchy of men who claimed to know.
How different are we today? What’s changed? I listened this morning as the bishop of my church talked with certainty and confidence about our church, its lineage, and its strengths. He spoke with certainty about what God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit undoubtedly want from each of us, how the practice of our faith is a pathway to both the heaven of an afterlife and a heaven on here on earth right now. He’s a member of a very long tradition of shamans, medicine men, priests, rabbis, saints and others that commune with the invisible, telling us, with confidence, that he knows what god wants from and for us, that his reading of the sacred texts, his communing with his god, and his reading of the patterns of the earth say, with certainty, that he’s right, that he’s on to something, that he knows.
The shamans told the Mayans that Cha ac demanded the sacrifice of a child. How could a god ask for such a thing, we wonder? That’s insane. Well, my god walked on water and came back from the dead, and each Sunday we drop to our knees we partake in a ritual where he asks us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and I do. Is this, too, not insane?
So, I ask again, are we really all that different?
I’m Cam Marston, just trying to Keep it Real.
