“Ask what you can do for your country.” If a U.S. president said this today, as President Kennedy did in 1961, it would trigger a negative reaction in some circles. What would we call that reaction, clinically speaking?

Depending on what we were asked to do, our reaction might be algophobia—a fear of pain (not of algorithms). If we feared losing out on a luxury, the acronym for that is well-known: FOMO.

But no name exists for the pushback against an action that countries, religions, and life in general ask us to take all the time—namely, to sacrifice.

To fill this glaring language gap, allow me to coin the term sacriphobia.

To spell it as “sacrophobia” would erroneously imply a fear of the sacred. A word already exists for that: hierophobia (pronounced hi-ero), where “hier” (as in hierarchy) has Latin and Greek roots meaning holy.  

Many people harbor such a fear today, but I imagine sacriphobia is more widespread and visceral. It’s embedded in our egos. Our culture is out of order.

God’s Chosen People Made Their Choice

An excellent podcast series called “Exodus” presents intellectual Jedi knight Jordan Peterson as he leads scholars in discussing the second book of the Bible. In one video episode, they explored what people should do as caretakers of the social order.

The discussants mused about sacrifice not as something that is feared or avoided, but as a truth at the crux of our relationships. From this perspective, an epidemic of sacriphobia constitutes a secular and spiritual crisis.

In the podcast, an analysis of the Egyptian pharaoh prompted Peterson to remark that “the essence of tyranny” is the lack of restraint by such factors as loyalties or concern about the implications of one’s actions.

“You might think, well, you get to do whatever you want! You’re free from the constraints of society,” the eclectic psychologist said. But having no ties that bind or guide you means “you’re not free.” You’re trapped by chaotic thinking and a hardened heart.

“And that’s why it’s so interesting that God keeps insisting,” as He unleashes multiple plagues, that the pharaoh must free the Hebrews so they can “serve Him” through sacrificial worship in the desert.

“Real freedom,” Peterson continued, “is to be found in the proper ordering of things and the proper subservience to things.”

Their special relationship doesn’t make the Hebrews pitiable slaves to Yahweh. In Exodus 10:9, Moses explains that God’s people should be liberated “for we must hold a feast unto the Lord.”

One of Peterson’s interlocutors, Jonathan Pageau, pipes up: “Sacrifice is always a feast. We forget that even when you offer a sacrifice, you eat the meat. So sacrifice and communion are always related together. You get the body [of the sacrificial animal, consecrated to God], you offer up the smoke … and then you join together in eating the same food. It’s a really primordial symbolism.”

The communal sharing of that body as food is done in the service of God and makes those at the feast recognize themselves as one body—“the nation as a body or the family as a body,” Pageau pointed out. When that meal is shared with strangers, they can expand the community and introduce healthy diversity into it.

Because it is a sacrificial meal, “you do have this idea that the vertical sanctifies the horizontal, as It were—the family and the community” in a ceremonial relationship with God, another discussant said.

“When you give of yourself, you give what is yours, you give what you have received, you give what is under you … you’re participating in a kind of profound reciprocity with the way things are,” he continued.

In contrast, “when you say no, I’m keeping this all to myself, you can’t even have what you had. The locusts eat it.”

We Have Our Ups and Downs

People today have been willing to sacrifice in ways that seem basically horizontal and distanced—as in wearing masks or enduring inflation for causes like climate change and Ukraine expenditues. But these are often motivated by fears, appearance, and government rules, not love of a higher authority or one’s neighbor.

Our most profound sacrifices, like feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, are ideally vertical in disguise.

The tenth and ultimate Exodus plague—in which God says the firstborn child of every family in Egypt shall die, potentially including the Hebrew families—drives home the point that everyone must be willing to deny oneself in intense ways for heartfelt reasons and vertical purposes.

This requires us to ponder “the manner in which reality exists through sacrifice itself,” according to Pageau. “The first fruits, the firstborn, are normally offered to God because that’s how the world works. For something to exist, the highest aspect of it has to be given up to the level above it…. You have to give the best of you up.”

This Exodus truth is profound, but not crushing. “The final Christian answer will be that, no, you offer yourself,” not your firstborn, Pageau explained. “It’s sacrifice to God….You’re giving it up to purpose.” If we join together in this offering, we focus our attention on God and unite in submitting to Him, and His purposes.

It makes sense to me, and it seems to promise community and good order through doing what is “right and just”—cushioned by mercy.

We’re not giving in to a cruel taskmaster. In that tenth plague, a loving God spared the firstborn children of the Hebrews through the Passover. In Genesis, He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but then spared the boy.

In the New Testament, the Son of God died on the cross to offer Himself as a sacrifice to His father’s love and for our salvation (CCC 2100). He told us to remember this—to join in the offering, and to be one with God in service to the vision of mercy and justice for all. For Catholics and others, this remembrance takes the forms of a meal and a community missioned to spread the Good News.

Take Up the Offering

As a wordsmith, I now have a deeper understanding of the phrase, giving up. In any earthly contest, we “give up”to the victor. God is not competing with humanity, fortunately, but He wants us to see what we can, and can’t, do.

The Catholic maxim I learned in my youth—to offer it up when I suffered—now makes more sense, too. A life surrendered to God means offering everything up. This grateful, constructive habit creates common ground with others, plus the hope that losses can be redeemed.

But this perspective comes with responsibilities. Reality really does “exist through sacrifice.” The Olympic athlete gives up plenty in order to bring out the best of her talents. Military “service members” and first-responders are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Even hobbyists go “all-in” for the sake of an avocation—their “passion.”

The sense of good order can break down when we slip into sacriphobia, which we all do from time to time. This phobia can become rampant in a materialistic culture where politics, greed, narcissism, fear, and half-heartedness overshadow the Bible’s advice to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” (Colossians 3:2)

Nowadays, taught to value our personal freedom and flourishing above others, we resist constraints from authorities of all sorts, much like the tyrants Peterson mentioned.

We’ve learned to preserve and impose our own “truths,” so we’re not willing to endure listening to opinions which might tamper with our minds.

We avoid ridicule, or acknowledging our imperfections, in the Pinterest-perfect marketplace of megalomania. Indeed, psychologists do have a term for this: atelophobia.

Elitists who don’t want to admit any guilt or responsibility for unjust conditions perpetrate virtue-signaling and distractions so they can retain their privileges in an increasingly suspicious world.

People portray themselves as victims for whom others should sacrifice. God instructed that the good we do for those who suffer, we do unto Him. But we feel manipulated by martyrs who want us to do unto them.

Our leaders have de-emphasized responsibilities as the necessary complement to rights. We need inspiration from institutions and individuals who help us envision the best we can be, for society’s sake. But scorched-earth deconstruction has eroded trust in traditional sources of motivation, so it’s less likely we will make the inquiry President Kennedy prescribed.

Many people are lonely, anxious, sad, and angry, but they avoid the reconstructive (even progressive!) sacrifices that can come with reaching out to others, making  commitments, falling in love, making discoveries through disagreements, and investing in the future.

Phobics Can Be Friends

Secular and religious folks alike see that suffering is everywhere today. In politics and prayer, media and meditation, we need to admit and address it more directly as a fact of life, one we can strive to heal together. We need to speak frequently of the vertical aspect of our activities—why we do things and how we find some peace.

Our humble and practical confrontations with everyday troubles, especially if we can joke about them or gratefully welcome others into our journeys. Forbearance can substitute for blame games and escapes into artificial reality.

When we ask each other “how are things going,” let’s be ready to tell, and hear, the truth. We’re all in this together—and to gather.

It’s time to elevate the plague of suffering, to raise it up as an opportunity to sacrifice for higher purposes of unity and order, to look for good news amid the mess.

The best cure for sacriphobia, or any phobia, is behavioral / exposure therapy, where we confront our fear face-to-face. As our necessary nationwide support group scales up, we then can enjoy the second-best cure—when the sacrifice is accompanied by a feast.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.