Recently, Blizzard released four animation shorts to promote their upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, Shadowlands. For those who don't know, this expansion takes place in WoW's realm of the dead, divided into four subrealms. These realms are Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth and where a soul is sent after death, within this mythology, depends largely on who they were in life and how they lived (like most mythologies). Bastion is the subrealm of those who lived their life in service to the Light (the WoW metaphor for God or the good divinity), Maldraxxus is the subrealm of those who lived and died as warriors, Ardenweald is for those who lived in service to and connected to nature, while Revendreth is a kind of purgatory subrealm for those who lived in pride, cruelty, and evil to be given a last chance. There is a fifth subrealm called the Maw to which go those who are considered completely irredeemable, and most closely equates to Tartarus or the traditional understanding of hell.
One of these animated shorts focuses on a character from WoW lore called Draka. She was, and is in the short, an Orc warrior, the wife of Durotan who was chieftain of the Frostwolf clan, and mother of Ge'ol, also known as Thrall, who would become one of the most important heroes in the lore and arguably the most important warchief of the Horde in WoW history. Draka was sent to Maldraxxus after her death. What struck me about this short was, as one commentator described it, that in spite of all she had been in life and all she had loved in life, she had completely let go of who she was in life to become what she needed to be in the Shadowlands. There was no looking back, no pining over what was lost. The last she had seen of her son, he was a baby in a basket floating down the river while she lay dying from an ambush. Even this, she had let go. When she entered the Shadowlands, she accepted where she was and that everything she had been was now gone, and she moved on, rising in the ranks of Maldraxxus to become it's most important asset.
This was in contrast to the short with Uther the Lightbringer who was sent to Bastion, and rightfully so. He was, in life, a good and compassionate man, and a faithful servant of the Light in life. In Bastion, the expectation too was to let go of one's old life and move on in order to truly ascend. But because of a wound Uther had received to his very soul, he couldn't. No matter how much time had passed he couldn't forget, let go of the wrong which had been done to him, which was very deep and grievous, and move on. As one commentator observed, his very soul had been split in two by the way he died and he could not let that go.
In Matthew 22 (WEB), there is an exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees as once more the Sanhedrin attempts to trap him with a Rabbinical argument:
On that day Sadducees (those who say that there is no resurrection) came to him. They asked him, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed for his brother.’ Now there were with us seven brothers. The first married and died, and having no seed left his wife to his brother. In the same way, the second also, and the third, to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection therefore, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had her.”
But Jesus answered them, "“You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. " "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like God’s angels in heaven. " "But concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven’t you read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, " "‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’" "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”"
Death means a total letting go of those attachments and relationships which we form in life. Whoever and whatever we are in life does not translate to who and what we will be in death. As it is said, we brought nothing with us into this life, and we can take nothing out of it with us. All marital attachments, all parental attachments, and all familial relationships are dissolved upon death. Just as we can take no material possessions with us, neither can we take those relationships with us. Clinging to them, clinging to loves lost, clinging to hurts done us, clinging to those things in this life, no matter how righteous a life might be lived, will only trap us and thrust us into a torment of our own making even though, like Uther, we might be surrounded by the Divine Light. There is no greater hell than that we make for ourselves.
Jesus taught those who followed Him, if they wanted to follow Him, that they had to disown themselves, and pick up the method of their own executions. They had to destroy their psyches in order to save them. Everything He taught was about letting go of something to which one might be attached, whether it be relationships, material possessions, ideas, wrongs and hurts done to you, your own self-identity, everything which might hold you here and hold you back from fully surrendering to His Eternal Life and union with God through Him. Living as though having died means just that. Just as St. Paul wrote, "Be mindful of the things above, not the things on the earth, because you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3-4).
We have a contrast in these animated shorts between a righteous man who couldn't let go, and a warrior woman who accepted her lot and moved on. In the end, Uther's inability to let go led not only to his own corruption, but also the corruption of another, while Draka's acceptance led to her being the key to Maldraxxus' deliverance. Whether the WoW writers intended it or not, there is a truth here to be understood.
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