Strange Platypus(es) Part VII

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.