The Exorcist: When Sacrifice Looks a Lot Like Suicide
I’ve been thinking about The Exorcist again, particularly Father Karras’s final act.
Religious viewers often see it as noble self-sacrifice. Karras gives his life to save Regan. He becomes the ultimate servant: another person’s life is preserved at the expense of his own.
Beautiful, right?
Maybe.
But as an atheist humanist, I look at that scene and think:
He threw himself out a window and down a flight of stairs.
That’s a pretty elaborate way of saying goodbye to this life.
And that’s where the movie gets philosophically interesting.
If you believe in heaven, death changes the equation
If you believe in God and an afterlife, sacrificing your life can look very different.
Your earthly existence may be viewed as temporary. Death isn’t necessarily the end. Your sacrifice may even be understood as spiritually rewarded.
In that framework, Karras isn’t simply losing his life.
He’s giving something up for something greater.
But I don’t believe there’s anything waiting for us on the other side.
No heaven.
No eternal consciousness.
No cosmic reward system.
No celestial customer-service department processing the sacrifice.
There is no backup life.
That’s a pretty important detail when you’re deciding whether your current one is worth throwing away.
What if Regan’s possession is a metaphor for mental illness?
There’s another reason I see the movie differently from its religious interpretation.
As a secular person who trusts science, I don’t need to interpret Regan’s behavior as literal demonic possession.
I can see her possession as a metaphor for severe mental illness.
And interestingly, the movie itself gives us that doorway. Karras is a priest and a psychiatrist, and early in the story the medical and psychiatric explanations are very much part of the discussion. The screenplay explicitly invokes conditions such as paranoia and schizophrenia when considering what might be happening to Regan.
So I can watch Regan’s terrifying transformation without believing that a supernatural entity actually climbed inside her.
The demon can function as a metaphor.
The suffering is real even if the supernatural explanation isn’t.
And that’s very compatible with humanism.
A person can be profoundly disturbed, psychologically ill, terrified, delusional, or otherwise trapped inside a mind that has become almost incomprehensible to them — and none of that requires a demon.
I grew up with a brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, so I’ve seen firsthand what severe mental illness can look like and how deeply it can affect not only the person experiencing it, but everyone around them. You don’t need a supernatural explanation to account for something that can already be terrifyingly real.
In fact, from a secular perspective, there’s something even more frightening about that possibility.
There may be no demon to throw out.
There may simply be a human brain in terrible distress.
And that makes compassion important without requiring supernatural beliefs.
There is no heavenly reimbursement
I think this is one of the biggest differences between religious and secular ideas about sacrifice.
If this life is merely the first act of an eternal existence, then sacrificing it can potentially seem like a very good bargain.
But if this is the only life we get?
That’s a different transaction.
There is no cosmic compensation.
There is no heavenly reimbursement for the years you gave away.
There isn’t another 50 years sitting in a warehouse somewhere because you were particularly selfless.
You don’t get a replacement consciousness.
You don’t get upgraded to Heaven Premium.
You just stop existing.
And that makes human life seem more precious, not less.
Someone else’s suffering doesn’t automatically become my obligation
Here’s where I part company with the whole romanticization of self-sacrifice.
I can care deeply about someone who is suffering.
I can be horrified by their pain.
I can want desperately to help them.
But their suffering doesn’t create an obligation for me to destroy myself.
That’s an important distinction.
Get MinimalCompass’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Compassion doesn’t have to mean self-erasure.
Love doesn’t have to mean martyrdom.
Helping someone doesn’t require turning yourself into the sacrificial animal.
Yet we’re surrounded by this idea that the more of yourself you give away, the more virtuous you are.
Give your time.
Give your money.
Give your energy.
Put everyone else first.
Deny yourself.
Serve.
Sacrifice.
And if you really want the gold medal, apparently throw yourself down a staircase.
😂
Karras was already carrying guilt
And Karras isn’t just some random priest who happens to wander into Regan’s bedroom.
He’s already drowning in guilt over his mother.
She’s poor. She’s suffering. He feels that he hasn’t done enough for her.
Then Regan comes along.
And suddenly here’s someone he can save.
That’s psychologically fascinating.
He can’t undo what happened with his mother.
But maybe he can save Regan.
Maybe saving her allows him to feel that he hasn’t completely failed at being the person he thinks he should be.
So his sacrifice isn’t necessarily just about Regan.
It’s also about Karras.
His guilt.
His faith.
His sense of duty.
His need to redeem himself.
His belief that his own life is something he can surrender for someone else.
And that’s what makes the ending so disturbing to me.
The movie presents his self-destruction as the culmination of his moral goodness.
I can’t help asking whether we’ve simply been trained to admire people for destroying themselves.
My life isn’t disposable because someone else is suffering
This doesn’t mean I don’t value other people.
Quite the opposite.
I don’t need God to tell me that another human being matters.
I don’t need an immortal soul to recognize that a frightened child deserves protection.
I don’t need heaven to motivate compassion.
Science has given us an extraordinary understanding of just how improbable conscious existence is.
For a brief moment, matter is organized in such a way that the universe can look back at itself and experience being alive.
That’s fucking amazing.
And I’m not particularly interested in throwing that away because somebody decided self-sacrifice is morally beautiful.
I can love people without worshipping sacrifice.
I can help people without making myself disappear.
I can feel compassion without converting someone else’s suffering into a debt that I have to pay with my own life.
Their suffering matters.
My life matters too.
And if this really is the only life either of us gets?
Then maybe protecting a human life isn’t selfish at all.
Maybe it’s the most rational thing in the world.
Because there is no backup life.
No cosmic compensation.
No heavenly reimbursement.
Just this one.
⬛
