OnWord

“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.

This commentary is a preview of content that will appear later in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com.

“Phobia” is one of the many words which have been repurposed these days, as in “transphobe” or “homophobe.” So, appropriately, as I coin a new word—”infophobe”—I do so with some trepidation.

Here’s my concern: Any slide toward infophobia is a bad omen for all members of society. Many folks are developing an irrational aversion to the “information economy,” or the “marketplace of ideas,” or participation in the grand teamwork of seeking knowledge and wisdom.

Information, plainly defined, is nothing to be afraid of. It comprises “knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction.”

Or it is an “attribute” contained in and communicated by binary digits on the internet or the nucleotides in DNA.

Or it pertains to messages, pictures, and data which can make us stop, think, and learn.

We need, and inevitably receive, a constant flow of information about all sorts of things. The flow feeds our health, our wealth, our spiritual growth, and our freedom. Thomas Jefferson observed, “A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.”

Despite the immensity of new information available today, or maybe because of it, more people are phobic about it. They withdraw from what they see as a danger zone, even a battle zone, where words constitute or trigger violence and where opinions can be cancelled as markers of evil.

Some quick thoughts about today’s risk of infophobia and the need to heal it:

• Ignorance can be both the result and the cause of a breakdown in the communication of information. Nobody wants to admit their ignorance about something, or to admit that they are wrong, so some people would rather detach than debate. Let’s accept that, in some ways, we are more “ignorant” than ever; after all, new facts are being discovered every day, and old assumptions are under attack. We need to see this as a challenge to continuously inform our minds and form our consciences, gearing them for continuity amid change.

The Center for Humane Technology, which seeks to rein in the dangers of artificial intelligence, quotes E.O. Wilson as saying: “The real problem of humanity is the following—We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

• Society has helped to cause the growth of ignorance. Many students receive a shallow education that neither supplies a context to enable understanding nor stimulates a desire to renew our meaning, vision, and hope. Teachers give cursory treatment to history, civics, reasoning, debate, and the most important questions students naturally wonder about. We all should see ourselves as educators, constantly encouraging others to learn in ways combining perspective and purpose.

“There are three basic questions in life: Why am I alive? Does my life matter? What is my purpose?” – Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, posted at his website.

• Everything is information. The above definitions of the term do not guarantee it will all be true or valuable. Today, the abundant supply chain of brain-inputs is like the dangerous growth of the nation’s money supply. It makes us prematurely dismiss many bits and bytes as worthless, as mere playthings or actual nuisances. We drain away knowledge by applying filters like confirmation bias and partisan orthodoxies. With curiosity, awareness of the panoply of knowledge resources, and the Holy Spirit’s help, we can establish trusting relationships with sources of data that will contradict our comfort zones but help to avoid an “unexamined life.”

A quote from the Wisdom 2.0 initiative, in which contributors seek to improve and update humanity’s wisdom: “We’re all running malware.”

• In this age of “information inflation,” the currency of our conversations–the “pennies” of our thoughts—may seem to be shrinking in value. But we need to respect our open economy of wisdom, welcoming diverse inputs. This entails discerning when to shed a “bad penny,” when to recycle or reform ideas by testing them with reality, and when to assemble our derived insights into goods suited for productive exchange with others. The “gold standard” we can use to seek balance and trust in this economy is Christ—“the way, the truth, and the life”—as the centerpiece of reality.

A Harvard University website cites the World Health Organization’s term, “infodemic,” defined as “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.”

• Arguments become weaponized, and words appear violent, when people confuse their information with their “identities,” especially labels adopted autonomously. People naturally become infophobic if they fear entering a power struggle where the stakes are abnormally raised by spontaneous, intense emotions. We need more politicians, media figures, public intellectuals, and champions of causes at the local level who will moderate our fears and spotlight possibilities for the future. They must model discussions driven by reason and phronesis—practical wisdom, incrementally gained, serving the common good.

“Wokeness flattens everything,” says news commentator Bari Weiss in an interview on the “Uncommon Knowledge” program. Such thinking prompts us to stay in the lane of our superficialities, a lane assigned by the boxes people check, she warns, so we lose our panoramic creativity.

• Every human inherently seeks not just a fact, but the whole truth. In lieu of a religious viewpoint seeing God as the destination of a loving journey toward total truth, many people take shortcuts to truth, defining it in their own terms and reject alternatives. They especially defy viewpoints based on authoritative ideals—guides which threaten their own authority. But they forget that information is an endless array of building blocks with which they can build masterpieces of wisdom (if they are willing to use the assembly instructions).

A blogger at Psychology Today has spoken of the “psychological state” as a society governed by citizens seen less as rational actors than as emotional beings. He quotes authors who depicted this short-term-thinking citizen not as “homo-economicus,” but as “Homo Simpson.”

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