Danielle in Baton Rouge

 I’ve been thinking about child sacrifice this week. What triggered this topic was a key term we discussed in one of my sociology classes: patriarchal bargain. Basically, this is when people make excuses to justify or act to maintain a harmful system (in this case, patriarchy) even when they are aware of the costs, because it is also a system that benefits them in some ways. In class, we were discussing some examples of patriarchal bargains. And then something clicked in my mind. We make these types of bargains in other settings as well. I've made these bargains when I’ve been silent about my convictions to maintain belonging in certain communities. So, child sacrifice. Most of us would consider it peak evil to sacrifice an innocent child. Indeed, growing up in the church I remember being taught that one thing that differentiated the God of Israel, the God in the Bible, was that He valued life, protected the innocent, and created the Law (the rulebook at the center of the Old Tes