Mixed media on recycled canvas
76cm X 122cm (30″ X 48″)

One side begins, We believe so strongly in an idea or concept we are willing to kill humans for it. The other side replies, This idea is so toxic we must sacrifice human lives to defeat it.

On March 21, 2003 Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, the first serviceman to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom, was killed in a firefight near Umm Qasr Iraq. An orphan and native of Guatemala, Gutierrez came to the U.S. illegally and was granted citizenship postmortem.

The biblical story of The Binding of Isaac, where Abraham is commanded by Yahweh to sacrifice his son Isaac, was taught to me as a child to illustrate Abraham’s devotion to the Semitic god. Christians take it further believing Yahweh wanted Abraham to comprehend the future sacrifice Yahweh would make of his own son, Jesus. For the mythical Abraham and Sarah it was only a test. For the fathers and mothers of the 4,491 dead soldiers and one million Iraqi civilians it was not.

The concept of sacrifice is found deep in human DNA and replete through history. Some scholars believe the original myth ended in the sacrifice of Isaac but was censored later by way of Deus ex machina with the intervention of an angel and substitution of a ram. Child sacrifice was common in that epoch just as human sacrifice is in our time.

One side begins, We believe so strongly in an idea or concept, we are willing to kill humans for it. The other side replies, This idea is so toxic we must sacrifice human lives to defeat it.