In "The Last of the Mohicans", there is an extraordinarily compelling scene. A handful of captured colonials are brought before the Huron indian Sachem (the wise man) to have their fates judged. Their captor has a debt of life owed by these colonials, so the Sachem rules that one girl will be sacrificed to settle the debt and her sister and their friend Major Duncan may go free. Duncan, shown previously to be honorable, but jealous and a kiss-ass, does an incredible thing. Given a check for freedom, he volunteers freely to trade places with the condemned girl, a life for a life. He is stretched over a fire to burn to death, having to now settle the debt that only a life given, not just generously offered, could have fulfilled. What struck most forcefully was Duncan's recognition of the currency of his life and a willingness to pay that price when necessary.
This theme of sacrifice of life dogs the steps of impactful literature. In Mark Twain's Tale of Two Cities, when one of a pair of look-alikes must die, Sidney Carton makes the decision to cash in his life instead. In Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when young stupid Edmund makes a wrong choice that demands a payment of life and the great lion Aslan steps forward and writes that check for Edmund with his own life. When the just God of the Bible demanded the unpayable debt of all humans to be paid, His son the carpenter spends a couple of perfect decades in the Middle East and then emptied his account for their sake.
What is it about this currency of life that is so compelling, so gut-wrenching? Why is the willing sacrifice of life such a thing that it grips us so we may not look away?
Humanity has always been fascinated by the value of life, and given it the utmost value. When someone loses their life, we call it "paying the ultimate price". In ancient times and ancient religions, sacrifice of life was the only thing powerful enough to breach that barrier to the realm of the immortal. Yahweh asked for spotless lambs; Aztec gods wanted virgins; Molech held his brazen arms out for infants. Life has always had a high, even transcendent, value.
Why?
What is it about life that is so valuable? Perhaps that, for each being, they only have a single life to give?
The currency of life can be used to fulfill many ends; one is strategy, for example sacrificing a bishop in chess to win, showing a heirarchy of values. Some things are more important than life (such as pleasing the gods or saving another). Another end is justice; why did the ancients cut the throats of so many lives on so many altars? To be justified. They understood that in order to get the rains to come, in order for the crops to grow, in order to be thought right with God, there was a price to pay. And what was more precious than life?
But what a wearisome cycle! Eons of lives, our highest form of currency, spent on stone altars under whispered petitions, and the rains don't always come and the crops don't always bear fruit and there is still something wrong between us and our God. All these installments, these payments, on a debt seemingly infinite or capricious.
Where are the funds that satisfy? What is that last best sacrifice?
When Abraham was poised over his young son with a knife to sacrifice, a voice from heaven spoke of a suitable substitute.
We mortals have spent so long trying to breach and bridge the barrier to the immortal for so long with the little supplies we have. What if, beyond hope, the barrier was breached from the opposite side and the immortal came to us? We seeing only the mounting and insufficient cost of our best efforts, what if the being we sacrificed life after life to reaches into his back pocket and opens his wallet and pays the debt that he awakened the guilt for in us?
How would we respond?
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