Sacrifice, part I

The search for a path through life

Photo: Revelations, center panel, 60” x 84”, oil on linen. Painting by the author, 1995

To sacrifice means to make sacred, to dedicate or consecrate to God, or for a religious purpose. So when we speak of sacrifice being necessary in inner work, implicit in the idea is God's presence as a fact – not a conjecture, a belief, or a supposition.

We cannot, in other words, even use the word without invoking the concept of God as a fact. It serves as the axiom rooted at the base of the discussion. In this sense, the word sacrifice is generally not for the mouths of agnostics, and definitely not for the tongues of atheists; because there is no point in being unsure of whether or not there’s a God, and then deciding to sacrifice for God anyway, as though one is covering the bases, just in case. To cover the bases is too cynical; it betrays God before it begins. And there is definitely no point in sacrifice if there is no God. Without God, the very idea of sacrifice itself ceases to exist. The very presence of the word itself indicates a created universe.

So, when we use the word, we acknowledge God's existence, and His and Her presence here and now.

The idea of sacrifice furthermore acknowledges the metaphysical premise that everything ultimately belongs to God, is not only of God and emanates from God, but in a certain sense is God; because the omnipresent nature of God arrives on our doorstep in this instant with everything included in its Being. This, of course, is a metaphysical point that could be argued in one way or another; metaphysics, like ordinary physics, earns its living by remaining unsettled and asking questions that, if they are real questions and not mere sophistry,  inevitably lead us to see that we don't understand much of anything.

In this sense, metaphysics is indeed a science just like physics.