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Throughout history, blood has been a symbol—and, in a real sense, the source—of life. In this article, physician Paul Brand continues his contemplation of blood in the second part of a three-part series. This article originally appeared in the March 4, 1983, issue of Christianity Today.

God's wrath, his eternal recoil against everything unholy, is for the believer turned aside by Christ's blood. This meaning of blood, one aspect we contemplate at Easter, has no medical counterpart today. But what follows, blood as the source of life, is central to both the Bible and medicine. Brand's thoughts were gleaned and expressed on paper by writer Philip Yancey.

Blood spatters the pages of mythology and of history. Drinking it gives strength and new life: to the ghosts of the dead in The Odyssey, to the Roman epileptics who dashed onto the floor of the Colosseum to quaff the blood of dying gladiators, to Kenya's Masai tribesmen who still celebrate feast days by drinking blood freshly drawn from a cow or goat.

In early history, blood assumed a mysterious, almost sacred, aura in human relations. An oath held more power than a person's word, but blood made a contract nearly inviolable. The ancients, unashamed to act out the physical literality of their symbols, would sometimes seal blood contracts by cutting themselves and mingling their blood.

We moderns inherit quaint symbolic tokens of the intrinsic mystery of blood: a wedding ring on the "/leech finger," which was believed to contain a vein that led directly to the heart, or perhaps a child's game of "blood brothers" in which two participants solemnly and unhygienically act out their undying loyalty. We echo misconceptions, too, when we use such terms as "pure blood," "mixed blood," "blood relations," harking back to the days when blood was assumed to be the substance of heredity.

Even after blood has been analyzed in laboratories and demythologized, it still retains some power, if only in the queasy feeling it evokes when we see it shed. There is something horribly unnatural—to some, physically nauseating-about watching the juice of life seep uncontrollably out of a living body. No wonder religions throughout history have exalted blood to sacral status. A ravaging plague, a minor drought, a desire to triumph over enemies, a decoy for the gods' anger—anything of major import may prompt a bloody sacrifice in a primitive religion.

Although worshipers feel increasingly uncomfortable with the thought, Christianity too is inescapably blood based. Old Testament writers describe blood sacrifices in painstaking detail and their New Testament counterparts layer those symbols with theological meanings. The word "blood" occurs three times as often as the "/cross" of Christ, five times as frequently as "death." And daily, weekly, or at least monthly (depending on denomination), we commemorate Christ's death with a ceremony based on his blood.

As a surgeon, I come into contact with blood almost daily. I read it as a measure of my patients' health. I suction it away from critical areas when I'm cutting. I order neatly labeled pints of it from a refrigerator when a patient needs an extra supply. I know well the warm, sticky, slightly acrid substance pumping around inside each of my patients-flecks of it stain every suit and lab coat I own.

But as a Christian, I instinctively wince at the blood symbol that suffuses our religion. We do not grow up in an environment stocked with mystagogic religions and animal sacrifices. As our culture moves further and further away from the culture of Bible times, the blood-linked concepts of expiation, atonement, sacrifice, and propititation lose their meanings; or worse, they repel people from the faith. A challenge arises. Can we discover meanings behind the biblical symbolism of blood that fit more naturally within our culture while preserving the essence of the metaphor?

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47