The Symbolism of Sacrifice

NOTE: Happy Easter everybody! Before reading, you should be aware that this blog post contains Christian themes and rhetoric. If you’d prefer to avoid such things, then feel free to click away and enjoy one of my less religiously-focused posts, but I hope you consider giving it a read anyway. Thanks as always, dear reader!

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Sacrifice in Biblical Literature

From my youth, I recall two particularly formative memories as a young boy learning about the Bible and Christianity. One was discovering Super Smash Bros for the first time watching and playing Melee during the brief amount of time we had before our little Kids Church event started. The second was bawling my eyes out at the stories of the ancient tribes of Israel sacrificing lambs to absolve their sins.

I was much too sensitive and naïve to understand the significance of the practice. Taking a poor, innocent, gentle baby animal and saying goodbye to it forever? All so that our bad deeds would be forgiven? Little Sean was still reeling from his first experience with death having lost his pet hamster recently; thinking of little sheep being condemned to death didn’t help either.

Now, though, I understand the weight of the ritual. The lamb was indeed a pure and innocent creature, and that was the point; acts of sin—failures to honor God’s commandments and creation, as per its literal definition—take a toll on both the sinner and the world around them. The only way to absolve impurity, according to the Israelites, was to “cover over” it with something undoubtedly pure. It also sends the message: the weight of the inherent foulness that dwells within people does have a cost—a debt to be paid in blood.

Of course, the whole point of the Easter holiday for Christians is to celebrate the ultimate, final sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us all. On the cross, he became the lamb for all humanity, paying the blood debt cast by sin past and present while putting a down payment on all sin that had yet to be. That’s not to say sin doesn’t exist anymore, nor should you feel free to live amorally without worrying about the consequence; the point is that the path has been cleared for a new way to live, not just for the original Israelites, but for all the people of the world.

To help clarify these points and put them into perspective, I’ve attached a pair of BibleProject videos, which you can check out now or whenever you feel like it. The first covers the overall concepts of sacrifice and atonement, while the second, which is part of a series summarizing the Book of Acts, summarizes the early days and growth of the early Christian movement into the rest of the world.

Anyway, what I’m trying to explain and emphasize here is that Biblically, the concept of sacrifice is about… let’s call it “coverage.” In the same way the sacrifice of the lamb, Jesus, etc. covers sin, we can see a similar kind of coverage across fictional literature and media.

Sacrifice in Fictional Media

Sacrifices in fictional stories typically fall into two pretty broad categories: well call them heroic sacrifices and redemptive sacrifices.

Heroic sacrifices are very much in line with the imagery of the slain lamb. The sacrificed character, typically either the hero, one of their companions, a mentor, or some other “pure” character, and their actions are often the key, if not a very helpful component, in the good guys’ ultimate victory.

The most recognizable of these kinds of deaths are the one where the hero goes down to make sure the villain is destroyed once and for all; other examples include deaths that motivate others to finish the job or otherwise trigger the characters’ win condition. Either way, the cause and affect are the death of a good man/woman in order to ensure evil is defeated (ideally) once and for all, covering the rest of the world and granting them the chance to enjoy a more peaceful future.

On the other side of the coin, sacrifices of the redemptive variety focus less on saving others and/or the masses and more on covering for the misdeeds of the sacrificial individual. Much of how the sacrifice occurs overlaps with the methodology of the heroic sacrifice, but in this case, it’s not just about doing it for the good of others, but to atone for the misdeeds, mistakes, and so on.

If the author has other plans for a character following their redemptive moment, they may forgive anything so heavy as a death sentence. However, even when that is the case, the villain-turned-good guy still ends up having to deal with some cost for their actions, whether it’s being forced to face down the evil they used to be a part of or having to come to terms with the loved ones they had to leave behind amidst their betrayal for the greater good. If the character isn’t sacrificing their life, then it’s a safe bet (and good writing) for them to have sacrificed something.

Conclusion

Anything that involves the giving or taking of life is inevitably going to be lofty. After all, we’re alive, and survival instinct alone helps us figure out that not being alive is kind of a big deal and something to be avoided.

But that’s why sacrifice—the very idea of deciding to give up living for the lives of others—is such an extraordinary topic, regardless of whether it’s viewed through a biblical or bibliological lens.