There is a question that’s been nagging at me, and I suspect it’s been gnawing at you too.
Is it possible that America, a country that still, in some corners, calls itself a Christian nation, has been duped into accepting a new kind of paganism? Not the kind with stone altars and animal carcasses. The kind that sneaks in through boardrooms, campaign ads, and quarterly earnings reports. The kind we don’t even recognize as religion anymore because it looks so much like normal life.
But here is the thing: it’s not actually new. It’s the same ancient pattern, dressed in modern clothes. The only thing that’s changed is the names of the gods and the design of the altars.
And here is the harder truth: we didn’t stumble into this. We built them.
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I started digging into this because I kept running into a strange pattern in the Old Testament. The ancient Israelites were surrounded by pagan nations. They were constantly warned not to intermingle with them, not to adopt their practices. But once they settled into the Promised Land, they did exactly that. They strayed, over and over again, and worshipped foreign gods.
Now, there were a lot of foreign gods. The Canaanites had a whole pantheon. But three of them kept showing up in Scripture with special urgency, singled out again and again, as if they represent something bigger than primitive superstition. As if they were harbingers of a pattern that would repeat itself as long as empires existed. Those three are Molech, Ashtoreth, and Baal. And I think they still matter because I think they’re still here. We just gave them new names.
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Let’s start with Molech (Milcom). He first appears in Leviticus 18:21. He was the national god of the Ammonites, and he was the god of crisis. When you were desperate, when the enemy was at the gate, when the harvest had failed, when your future looked hopeless, you turned to Molech. And the way you turned to him was by sacrificing your children. You passed them through the fire.
Now, before we get too comfortable thinking that’s ancient barbarism, let’s ask ourselves: what are we sacrificing today? What are we passing through the fire to secure our immediate survival? Does the list include student debt, economic strangulation, a healthcare system that profits off sickness even while hospitals are closing and medical professionals are relocating to Canada? Does it include climate policies that kick the can down the road while the planet burns and gun violence that we accept as the price of freedom?
We are sacrificing the future, our children’s futures, for the present. We just don’t call it Molech anymore. We call it pragmatism. We call it realism. We call it the way things have to be. But it’s the same altar, just redesigned.
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Then there’s Ashtoreth (Astarte, Ishtar). She first shows up in Judges 2:13. She was the Canaanite and Phoenician goddess of love, fertility, war, and political power. She embodied the raw, untamed forces of reproduction, and shrewdness. Her worship involved ritual sexuality, sacred prostitution, and military rites. She was the goddess you turned to when you wanted influence, when you wanted to dominate your enemies, forge alliances, and project strength.
Now look around. Look at our culture. We have turned politics into blood sport. We have built an endless war machine that consumes trillions while we debate whether to fund mental health services. We have commodified intimacy, turning sex into a $100 billion industry of pornography and exploitation. We have turned celebrity worship into a religion, granting actors, athletes, and influencers moral authority they haven’t earned. We call it entertainment. We call it democracy. We call it security. But it’s the same altar, just redecorated.
And then there’s Baal. He first appears in Numbers 25:3. His name means “Lord.” He was the storm god of the Canaanites, the one who brought rain. In an agrarian society, rain meant life. Without it, there was famine, poverty, and death. Baal wasn’t just a god of nature; he was the god of survival and prosperity. He was the economy.
Now look at what we worship today: GDP, stock prices, quarterly earnings, endless growth, etc. We measure the wealth of our nation not by how well our people are doing, but by how much we are producing. We have turned consumerism into a religion, with Black Friday as our high holy day and Amazon as our temple. We work ourselves to exhaustion, sacrificing rest, family, and sanity for the measure of career success. We treat the earth as a resource to be extracted, not a home to be stewarded.
We call it prosperity. We call it the American Dream. We call it progress. But it’s the same altar, just rebranded.
Here’s the thing about these three gods. They don’t stand alone. They form a cyclical, self-sabotaging vortex really.
You start with Molech: you sacrifice the future to get wealth. Then you move to Ashtoreth: you use that wealth to gain power, and you use that power to make war, either to protect your wealth or to steal the wealth of others. Then you appeal to Baal. You worship the source of the rain that brings prosperity.
But here’s the trap. When the rains fail, and they always do, the panic sets in. So, you sacrifice more to Molech. You double down on Ashtoreth’s wars. You beg Baal harder. And with each loop, the system becomes more morally bankrupt, until nothing is left but ruin.
This is the downfall of every empire: Achaemenid Persia, Assyria, the Aztec Empire Babylon, Carthage, Israel in 586 BC, the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, the USSR, and Rome.
They all followed the same spiral of sin. They sacrificed values for wealth. They militarized themselves to keep it and steal that of others. They worshipped the resources to sustain it. And when it failed, they sacrificed more. They repeated this until collapse and ruin followed which always ushers in a new balance of world power.
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The prophets saw it coming. Hosea 2:5-8 shows Israel saying, “I will go after my lovers [Baal], who give me my bread and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink.” But God replies, “She did not know that I gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.” They chased the cycle of wealth, war, and water, completely forgetting the true source.
Jeremiah 7 connects these three directly. He condemns Molech worship, Baal worship, and the nationalistic pride that belongs to Ashtoreth’s sphere, as the direct causes of Judah’s destruction.
It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was a system. A system that had become so normal, so baked into the fabric of daily life, that nobody even recognized it as idolatry anymore. Sound familiar?
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So, let’s say the names out loud. We don’t call them Molech, Ashtoreth, and Baal anymore. We call them Pragmatism, Power, and Profit.
Pragmatism is the altar where we sacrifice the future for the present. It’s the “whatever works” mentality that justifies student debt, healthcare for profit, climate inaction, and gun violence. It’s the altar where we lay our children: black youth killed on the streets, young people crushed by debt, entire generations sacrificed to a system that refuses to change.
Power is the sanctum where we worship influence, military might, political tribalism, and celebrity. It’s the altar decorated with endless wars, drenched in the tears of the parents who children are killed in foreign wars, and extremely lucrative hyper-sexualization. Power´s altar is located in a political landscape that treats opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens.
Profit is the shrine where we bow to the economy, GDP, consumerism, and endless growth. It’s the shrine where we measure everything by money, work ourselves to exhaustion, and treat the earth as a resource to be extracted rather than a home to be stewarded.
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Now picture this: a homeless veteran sleeps on a sidewalk while the city spends millions on a new sports stadium. Politicians debate funding for mental health services while proudly boasting about increased military spending. Young people graduate with crippling debt, unable to afford housing, while corporations receive massive tax breaks.
We call this normal. We call it the way things are. But the ancient prophets would recognize it instantly. They would walk through our streets and weep, not because we are worse than ancient apostate Israel, but because we are exactly the same.
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There is a story in the Bible that feels particularly relevant here.
Nadab and Abihu were the two eldest sons of Aaron, the high priest. They had been consecrated to serve in the tabernacle, the very dwelling place of God. They had seen miracles. They had heard the voice of the Lord. They knew the difference between sacred and profane.
And yet, one day, they took their censers, placed fire in them, added incense, and offered “strange fire” before the Lord, fire He had not commanded.
We don’t know exactly what they were thinking. Maybe they were careless. Maybe they were arrogant. Maybe they had been drinking, since the very next verses warn Aaron and his remaining sons against entering the tabernacle under the influence.
But we do know the consequence: fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them. They died before the Lord.
Why such severity? Because they had approached the Holy One on their own terms, not His. They had presumed to offer worship according to their own preferences, rather than divine instruction. They had treated the sacred as if it were common.
Moses explained it: “Among those who approach Me I will be proved holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.”
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We are approaching the altar of Pragmatism and calling it wisdom. We are approaching the altar of Power and calling it security. We are approaching the altar of Profit and calling it prosperity. But we are offering strange fire. And the fire of judgment is coming.
Not because God is cruel, but because systems built on self-gratification, domination, and extraction are inherently unstable. They collapse under their own weight. They consume themselves.
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The prophets didn’t just condemn. They offered a way out, a path that sounds radically out of step with our world, but is the only path to life.
Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Isaiah 58:6-7: “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free; is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?”
Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
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We are standing at the crossroads. The altars are before us. The strange fire is in our hands. The choice is ours: continue bowing at the altars of Pragmatism, Power, and Profit, or tear them down and build something new.
Something that honors justice, mercy, and truth. Something that invests in children instead of sacrificing them. Something that builds peace instead of worshiping war. Something that stewards creation instead of extracting it.
The fire is coming. But so is the mercy. The only question is: which one will we walk into?
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God of the prophets,
Who burned and who saved,
Who tore down and who rebuilt,
Open our eyes to see the altars we have built.
Open our ears to hear the prophets’ cry.
Open our hearts to repent and turn.
Deliver us from the altar of Pragmatism,
Where we sacrifice the future for the present.
Deliver us from the altar of Power,
Where we worship control at the expense of justice.
Deliver us from the altar of Profit,
Where we bow to mammon instead of to You.
Give us the courage to offer only what You command:
Justice, mercy, and a humble walk with You.
For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
Not the kingdoms of this world.
Not the power of empires.
Not the glory of gold.
Amen.
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A Final Note
The ancient names, Molech, Ashtoreth, and Baal, sound foreign to us. But the realities they represent are not foreign at all. They are the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the system we have accepted as normal.
Naming them is the first step to tearing them down.
And that is what this is: an attempt to name them, so that we can see them clearly enough to walk away.
Whether we do is up to us.
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