Donald Trump, in a prerecorded statement released Oct. 15, said: “The Republicans eat their young; they really do, and it’s a terrible statement but it’s true.”
He added: “And that’s the problem with so many in our party; they just don’t have the loyalty and the strength to stick together.”
This time, he may be right. Eating one’s own children is the ultimate betrayal, putting the survival of the parent or self above all else, at all cost.
Julia Goldie Day
We have seen this similar betrayal of democracy quite often as of late. Few Republicans have been able to promote democracy and rule of law against a tide of reckless pressure as they fear loss of power and the wrath of the defunct leader of their party, Trump himself, who has demonstrated his own words are true about his own actions and party. He expects absolute loyalty to him but is quick to offer anyone else as a worthy sacrifice.
As Jim Jordan sought to bully Republican House members into a vote for him as speaker, we saw this same mindset. A vote for “Gym Jordan” as he is often called on social media, is a vote for someone who had significant ethical issues before coming to Congress. While serving as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, he allegedly ignored claims that another coach was abusing wrestlers. His service as a lawmaker includes an attempt to decertify a lawful presidential election and allegedly collude in the violent insurrection coup January 6. He continues to have effectively dodged a congressional subpoena without any consequence. As it stands, he is above the law.
Jim Jordan has clearly demonstrated he is willing to eat the young. Hungry for power at the cost of anyone in the way, including children, and the tenants of democracy.
From “Dramatic Reader For Lower Grades,” by Florence Holbrook, Copyright 1911, public domain.
When I think back about the tales of eating children, it is most often a witch or an old woman in disguise tricking gullible children into her oven, being cooked up for supper like the famous Hansel and Gretel. In the fairytale, the myth of eating one’s young seems typically applied to vilified women. But very often in real life it’s the men, the leaders of war, the fathers who give up children at the voracious altar of so-called necessity. The story of Abraham agreeing to sacrifice his son, Issac, from the Old Testament comes to mind — it bewilders me, as a mother, who would not agree to sacrifice my own child or any child no matter the cost.
Here’s where we have gone wrong in our churches. The narrative around the story of the almost sacrifice of Issac mirrors the Crucifixion of Jesus, somehow making it make a sick sense. God gave up Jesus to appease God’s own wrath for our sins. Violent sacrifice was necessary to pay the price for our wretchedness. God ate God’s own young.
Violence begets violence. The violent theology of penal substitionary atonement leads us to have violent attitudes of our own against those who must be against God. We see war as justified somehow.
It has been said that if women were in charge there would be no more war. It certainly would help matters. It also would help if Christians, male and female and everyone on the gender spectrum, would lay down the sin of eating our young.
The death of children in Israel, Palestine and Ukraine is too much to bear.
From Hozier’s 2023 Unreal Unearth album the song “Eat Your Young” says in part:
Seven new ways that you can eat your young
Come and get some
Skinning the children for a war drum
Putting food on the table selling bombs and guns
It’s quicker and easier to eat your young
This gruesome imagery reminds us that children are far more than a resource to be easily spent when we cannot get along.
James Baldwin says:
The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I’m beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.
Jesus says in Matthew chapter 18:
If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.
War requires a high price. Even if we are oceans away and our own children seemingly safe in our homes.
The children of the world need to see us live lives of love and peace. Of making hard decisions that don’t require the loss of life. Our pride, our willingness to cause lives to be lost, for children to be harmed, our faulty theology, and the need for political power must be thrown into the sea like the horrible millstone it is, without it attached to our necks, or it will drag us to our demise.
I have to believe in a God who sent Jesus to show us how to love. This God loves deeply and freely and gives us the opportunity to promote peace by loving our enemies and, because it needs to be said, not eating our young.
Jesus, like a mother, wrap your protecting arms around the children who are suffering. May we emulate your powerful love as we seek ways to nurture peace.
Julia Goldie Day is an ordained minister within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and lives in Memphis, Tenn. She is a painter and proud mother to Jasper, Barak and Jillian. Learn more at her website or follow her on socials @JuliaGoldieDay.
Related article:
‘The moment we allow our hearts to go numb to the deaths of any children is the moment we shut down our humanity’ | Analysis by Rick Pidcock