Do people still worship Baal?
Baal has had a bad press. Ever since the authors of the Bible portrayed him as a wicked god, to whom worshippers would offer up the sacrifice of their first-born sons, Baal has had an image problem.
It was not always thus. For hundreds of years before the Bible demonized him, Baal was loved and worshipped as a fertility god, the bringer of rain, the prince of peace. He caused the crops to grow and defeated the power of death. He defended the people from their enemies.
Then something happened that shook the Ancient World to its very foundations. Terrifying bands of warriors came from over the Western Sea and laid waste to the cities of Canaan. It seemed Baal could no longer protect his people. The sea god had defeated him in battle. Thus began the long decline of Baal’s reign, and the ascent of a new power — the power of Yahweh.
Three thousand years later, we are still living under the reign of Yahweh. No other god has remained in power so long before, and Lord Acton’s dictum is as true of the gods as it is of men: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Over the course of his long reign, Yahweh has become an evil tyrant, a twisted and malicious deity who delights in spreading death and destruction.
If I had read those words just a few months ago, I would have dismissed them as the ravings of a madman. When I first arrived in Lebanon in January 2016, to spend a semester as a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut, I was a hardened sceptic and a devout atheist. Talk of gods was to me the stuff of fairy-tale and myth. I hadn’t so much as glanced at a Bible since Sunday school.
That was before I discovered the Children of Baal. While I was in Syria, in April this year, I came across a remote village where a faithful band of devotees continue to keep the name of Baal alive. For over two thousand years they have lived in secrecy in the mountains of Lebanon and Syria, hiding from the jealous sons of Yahweh. The civil war that has raged in Syria since 2011 has disrupted their communities just as it has those of other mountain sects such as the Mazdeans, the Ismaelis and the Druze. But they will survive this conflagration, as they have survived many others before in their long and painful history.
I will let you into a secret. The gods feed on human worship like vampires feed on human blood. As the worship of other gods has faded, their power has ebbed away too. Baal and his fellow deities now languish in obscurity, living only in the shadows, while Yahweh continues to gorge himself on the prayers of billions of worshippers worldwide. The Children of Baal believe that it is high time Baal reclaimed his throne. Perhaps they are wrong, but I can’t help sympathizing with these humble, peaceful, joyful pagans. It is time the world paid them some attention.
https://www.amazon.com/Children-Baal-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01H2HGGCY/
