Sacrifice! Sacrifice!

Ok ok, estudiantes! As promised, I am finally responding to all the overwhelming requests to talk about the oh-so controversial topic from  Aztec and Mayan culture- human sacrifice. As many of you may remember from our third grade Mexico study, the Aztec and Maya practiced human sacrifice and almost any innocent person could become a victim. For example, if you lost a ballgame of Tlatchtli or if you were chosen by an aztec leader, you could find yourself facing beheading or worse...


Sounds pretty brutal, huh? Well, before I continue with this sacrifice, lets talk about another sacrificial system. In the Old Testament, God gave the Israelites a unique system of sacrifice that would be used to cover the sins of that nation. A person would bring an animal offering to the priest and the innocent animal would be killed on behalf of the guilty. In the book of Hebrews (verse 10:4), it says that the blood of animals could never take away our sins. Under this Old Testament system, sins were only covered for a temporary period of time. However, these rituals provided types and shadows of the real sacrifice that would come one day and take all sin away forever, never to be repeated again. Do you know who I am talking about?


Now, back to the Aztecs.  In hindsight, They also had what seems to be of types and shadows. They knew the concept of sin and atonement, but they didn't quite have the whole picture. They knew someone else had to shed blood to provide life and to send blessing on them and their nation but they didn't know who. They also believed that their many gods can sacrifice themselves at one point to help creation. Remember the chocolate drink that they dyed red to represent the blood of their gods? Does that sound like any of the sacraments we might partake in at church? Who knows how many countless lives were lost and how much blood was shed and yes-- from a literal since, it was pretty gruesome. However, that doesn't make the Aztec or Mayan nations gruesome people- they simply didn't know what we know today. I think of it to be like having a thirst and not knowing what water is. You might do some pretty crazy things too to try not to be thirsty!  


Have you figured it out the real sacrifice system yet? The perfect innocent sacrifice that we all have now is Jesus. The writer of Hebrews is right- the blood of animals could not provide forgiveness for us humans. But then again, neither can another "innocent" human being because everyone has sinned and fallen short (Romans 3:23). We couldn't reach God, so God came down to us, through His perfect, sinless Son Jesus, who choose to lay down His life for us. And He didn't have to try and beat someone at a game of Thalchtli or anything like that- He choose to lay His life down and now we have complete forgiveness because of that one perfect sacrifce. Wow- how awesome! 


So, it seemed the Aztecs and Maya had bits and pieces of the way to salvation, but didn't have the whole picture until later. Today, the descendants of the Maya and the Aztecs are predominantly Catholic and many nations are becoming more and more protestant. I would say that one "plus" of the european conquest of Latin America was the introduction of Christianity. The Spanish may not have found all the gold they were looking for, but at least the natives found "water".