Book Review – Reflections on Immortal Kombat: Konfronting the Heart of Darkness
During one particular Lenten period, I made time for spiritual reading. And the book that had me so enthralled, keeping me on the edge of my seat, was this:
The title sufficed to grab my attention, as it reminded me of the Mortal Kombat video game franchise (and its associated movie adaptations).
Yes, the title’s misspelling was intentional.
In Mortal Kombat, warriors from different realms are chosen to battle to the death in the eponymous tournament that determines the fate of their worlds. The story typically revolves around Earthrealm’s champions, who must win ten consecutive victories to prevent their realm from falling to the tyrannical warlord Shao Kahn and his armada from Outworld.
In a similar vein, we, the baptized, represent Christ and His Church in spiritual warfare against diabolical forces from the unseen realms and within our hearts (Eph 6:12), with the victories in the latter making the most significant difference in bringing us towards freedom from being conquered (Gen 4:7).
Immortal Kombat is a book I highly recommend to inquirers, catechumens, and cultural Christians as an introduction to the Gospel and Spiritual Warfare.
Adrenaline-rushing and imagination-rousing, Fr. Dwight Longenecker skillfully weaves together pre-Christian Greek mythological elements and insights from renowned philosophers like Max Scheler and René Girard.
Such artistic prose rouses the imagination and invites thoughtful consideration of Christianity’s bold claims about our fallen human nature and the absolute necessity of trusting in Christ for salvation.
That said, the book does a great job of defining Original Sin and Salvation from a psychological and anthropological angle, which effectively counters the distorted caricatures resulting from bad theology and atheistic polemics disguised as rational enlightenment.
Original Sin and The Dark Triad: How Evil Works
“The act of taking is equally evil. We, from the moment of birth, continue to take. Food, connections, and even fellow blood. Living to the utmost, continuing to slaughter, kill, take.”
— Kuzen Yoshimura, Tokyo Ghoul (by Sui Ishida)
“Evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
In Immortal Kombat, the human heart or psyche is depicted as a labyrinth, alluding to the Greek tale of Theseus and the Minotaur.
According to the tale, King Minos of Crete reneged on his promise to sacrifice his prized bull to the god of the ocean, Poseidon, despite beseeching the deity for assistance in securing his throne. Thus, Poseidon bewitches Minos’ wife into mating with the bull, leading to the birth of the Minotaur.
Because the Minotaur is an unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, it has no natural source of nourishment; thus, it was born with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. For this reason, Minos orders the construction of a labyrinth to hide the Minotaur.
To keep it satiated and confined, Minos orders the regular sacrifice of several young Athenian men and women, sending them into the labyrinth where they are doomed to wander helplessly and meet a gruesome end.
The Minotaur serves as a physical manifestation of King Minos’ shame, which he keeps hidden in the labyrinth to maintain his pristine royal image while the root problem continues to fester unabated.
Similarly, we also carry shame that we repress or suppress with an elaborate labyrinth of our own in our psyches, guarded by three monsters: the triple-headed Cerberus, the Gorgon triplets, and the Geryon.
These monsters that inhabit the labyrinth, and the dynamics between them, reflect the mechanics of Original Sin in fallen human nature.
The three heads of the feral, ravenous Cerberus exemplify the 1st unholy trinity — Power, Pride, and Prejudice. As humans, we are gifted with sentience — the will to make free choices. However, this decision-making ability (i.e., Power) is often warped towards cheap and convenient means of immediate gratification.
Nevertheless, we still go ahead because of a deep-rooted assumption, “I am Right” (i.e., Pride). Anyone else who thinks otherwise couldn’t be more wrong (i.e., Prejudice — seeing the world with tinted glasses and judging with opinions preloaded).
Put another way, Cerberus is the embodiment of the 1st of the Dark Triad — narcissism. Narcissism is defined as a chronic sense of entitlement, which, when left unchecked and uncorrected, makes people irrationally unrestrained in satiating their desires and woefully inconsiderate of others.
However, problems (can and will) happen. But it’s hardly your fault, following the ‘logic’ of your prejudice. If anything, any possible contribution from you is negligible. Somebody else is to blame, in particular those who think differently from you.
Cerberus is wounded, and the Gorgon sisters (serpentine monsters with snakes for hair) come in to pet the dog. And the thing about Gorgons is, when they are in proximity, never look them in the eye or you will be immediately petrified.
Similarly, when Resentment, Rivalry, and Revenge (the 2nd unholy trinity represented by the Gorgon sisters) seductively stare at you, your heart becomes petrified, and the next thing you know, you become cold and unfeeling (Matt 13:15).
In other words, the Gorgons collectively embody the 2nd of the Dark Triad — psychopathy, which is characterized by traits including a lack of empathy and emotional instability. The breeding of Resentment within disposes a person to define their Rivals to exact Revenge on.
Next, find like-minded “Yes” men and gather in tribes. As a collective group, throw the designated scapegoats under the bus. Because they are the ‘problem’, they are to be eliminated or sacrificed, be it physically or by perpetual cancellation.
That said, the Geryon is a monstrous chimera with a human face, embodying the warping of the intellect towards deceptive self-justification in the aftermath of atrocities committed, or in other words, the 3rd of the Dark Triad that is Machiavellianism (Jer 17:9).
Convinced of the facade of righteousness, Geryon tells Cerberus and the Gorgon triplets to keep up their work.
The ends justify the means. Rinse and Repeat.
By this point, an uncomfortable sensation settles in, and some of us might think in protest: We aren’t like the violent Romans, the primitive Aztecs, or the Nazi soldiers. We don’t exploit, kill, or take part in human sacrifice! We are more evolved, more advanced.
But that’s not the case. The cruelties we witness in the world aren’t anything new — it’s the same game under a different name.
The same substance manifested in different accidents of varying extents.
For example, in ancient Rome, the people made gladiators sacrifice their bodies in the arenas to entertain the crowd. Today, we nonchalantly make athletes sacrifice their mental health for our amusement behind our screens.
Back then, people conducted human sacrifices to eliminate those deemed to be the problem and achieve prosperity; we still do this, especially on social media through cyberbullying and cancel culture.
Also, with the advances of the Internet and smart portable devices, it has become a lot easier to access explicit material to objectify others exponentially and indulge ourselves with the illusion of intimacy.
In short, we may not operate gas chambers or visit red-light districts, but the same dynamic, fuelled by the three psychic monsters, is at work when we objectify others and play the blame game.
We see this play out in families, schools, workplaces, and institutions. At some point, we know of someone who was mistreated, abused, or sidelined. Other times, it’s us on the receiving end and/or the guilty parties.
Make no mistake, Original Sin (or Ancestral Sin) does not mean two things:
You are guilty of the same sin as Adam and Eve; thus, whatever suffering you experience is nothing short of punishment (see Eze 18:20).
God projects depravity onto you, making you out to be utterly incapable of recognizing or choosing the good.
What Original Sin refers to is the dynamics of the Dark Triad at play in the human heart. Believe it or not, we all have smidgens of the Dark Triad; some express them more conspicuously than others.
This dynamic is inherited like intergenerational trauma. Similar to how an expectant, alcoholic mother passes health complications to her child (see CCC 405).
In a way, the stain of Sin in our hearts is Death – physical death, decay, and the darkening of the psyche – brought into the world through the Fall of Eden. As a result, our good desires for food, security, and love become warped.
This leads us to take from others – hoarding property, engaging in promiscuity, and consuming more food than we need – to satiate ourselves beyond mere survival, in an attempt to feel immortal. And this perpetuates a vicious cycle of suffering and death.
Without a change of heart, the more we remain unaware of the darkness within, and the more we remain stuck in the vicious cycle, inclined to covering our shame with appearances of virtue.
And Hell is the final consequence of this dynamic when left to fester through impenitence — being eternally consumed by Death; this time spiritually (CCC 1033–1037).
The only way to break the cycle is from the inside out through Divine grace (John 3:3). Even the great psychologists like Carl Jung have wisely noted that nobody can affirm their way into change, let alone compensate with external behavioural modification to achieve true virtue.
The Meaning of Christ’s Salvific Work
“The God of Christianity isn’t the violent God of archaic religion, but the non-violent God who willingly becomes a victim in order to free us from our violence.”
— René Girard, The Scandal of Christianity (p. 219)
Behold the Lamb of God. Source: Word on Fire.
People often express confusion over the necessity of Christ having to die to redeem humanity, and are aghast at the idea that God needs to be appeased with a substitutionary blood atonement (and rightfully so).
The great philosopher René Girard, who was once non-believing and moved to embrace Christ through the Tridentine Mass, offers a different, wholesome angle, one that draws upon the progressive revelation of God in the Bible and contrasts the dynamics of pagan sacrificial systems with the redemptive love fully revealed in the Sacred Heart of Christ.
The reason Christ died was so that He could enter our Labyrinths, just like Theseus in the Greek tale, who entered Minos’ dark and treacherous Labyrinth to free the trapped youths and slay the Minotaur once and for all.
(On this note, it could be said that the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur may have been a subtle foreshadowing of Christ’s work of salvation, hinting at the future preaching of the Good News to the Gentiles – Greeks, Asians, etc.)
By entering our Labyrinths, Christ breaks us free from the vicious cycle by embracing our inner shame and gifting us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Because He was truly innocent, He could serve as a sponge absorbing the collective Sin enveloping the World, and so in dying, Sin dies with Him.
And because He is God, death could not contain Him any more than the night can hold back the dawn of a new day. By coming back to life, He secures our freedom from the Labyrinth.
Icon of the Resurrection of Christ. Source: St Ann Melkite Catholic Church.
The blood and water that gushed from the Sacred Heart of Christ at the cross birthed the Church and her seven sacraments, which equip and empower us to advance in righteousness; this time no longer from a foundation of fear and shame, but from love (1 John 4:19).
Thus, we enter a new cycle opposite to the Dark Triad, this time, a positive feedback loop of infused righteousness and cooperation with grace, oriented towards Heaven.
Through Christ, we learn The Way to live in real freedom from the fear of death, which is learning the art of dying – to free our ambitious mind through accepting defeat, the way to lose. To turn difficulty, inconvenience, or adversity into moments of transformation, of charitable service for your fellows.
That’s what it means to perform a fatality on the three monsters personifying the Dark Triad. To learn to die is to learn to love and live abundantly. For things in the world to change, first I must change (Matt 15:18). Kindness is, in truth, a survival skill — perhaps the most essential of them all.
P.S. To understand better why good works don’t save (contra Pelagius), think of the people (e.g., parent, best friend, romantic partner) who treasure you for you. Your breakthrough changes in lifestyle and outlook occurred because they opened safe spaces for you, and embodied their principles by example, inspiring a reform in the man in the mirror.
That said, the good works that you do weren’t to earn their initial favour or acceptance, but out of magnanimity and reciprocity, to grow closer to each other.
A love that needs to be earned is not real love.
To quote Abraham Lincoln,
“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
Peace.
