My secular colleagues often assert that humanity has a common obsession with the sacrificed and eaten god. Ritual sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. This is but one of a thousand arguments that all religions are really one and the same at their core, and rooted in "superstition" (whatever "superstition" may mean). I find it rather facile to stop there, however. There is something interesting that this common phenomenon reveals about the human psyche. In our deep-rooted, animistic core (I use the word animism without any sense of it being "degraded," "superstitious," or "barbarian". In some ways, I believe that the animists understand a good deal more about the world as it is than we do in secularized West. If we are to call animism "superstitious," then I find modern secularism equally so, the only difference being where each worldview keeps its "superstitions.") lies this fervent desire to kill god and by ingesting him, to somehow assume his power and so become god ourselves. It is interesting, then, to see how this plays out in Christianity. Man's very desire to kill god and eat him becomes the means by which salvation is effected. The author of life is too big for death, and so overwhelms it, the author of man is to big for man, and so cannot be held within him. Thus, the Son of God is lifted up and killed as a sacrifice for sin, and his body and blood become tokens of grace, and images of the Christ-Life within the believer. Ritual sacrifice becomes the Atonement, and ritual cannibalism the Eucharist. God is to big for man. To consume Him, one must either burst and be destroyed, or be made into a god himself. Thus does man's desire come full circle, thus does God make rebels and usurpers into sons and heirs.
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old. That's a couple years after it first came out. The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer. I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit. It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows. With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play. What was that first game? It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge. It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing? There were stretches when I didn't. Many times, I've just been too busy. There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
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