The fact of the matter is that paganism (from the Latin for country-dwellers, or the uncivilised) has deliberately brought barbarity, brutishness and blood to the parts of the world where it has, over the years, flourished. People forget that the ancient pagan cults, on all continents, were consumed by a blood-lust: with both animal and human sacrifices forming high-points of the cultic experience. Priests, witchdoctors, or shamans tended to be unlettered and controlling - far more so that those priests or ministers of developed religions. The theology tended to be primitive, bordering on the superstitious. The gods veered towards anger, not love; chaos as opposed to order. Pagan societies also tended to be far more patriarchal and war-obsessed than civilised ones.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition it has always been taught that those who are worshipping creation and creatures as opposed to the Creator God are sadly duped, and have lost proper perspective, making false gods (in man's image) at the expense of God (in whose image we are made). Advanced pagan religions, those with a system of gods and goddesses, explicitly seek to dislodge God from his rightful place, and often worship characters (Odin, Thor, Apollo, or whoever) that possess all the negative qualities of the human experience, but very little of the loving and merciful ones that belong to the real God, the lover and Father of humanity. Christians believe in a God that would willingly die for them. Pagans, on the other hand, often worship vengeful and obscene monsters that receive pleasure in the murder of innocents (which is what human sacrifice is).
Anyway, today I realised that a few people have visited this blog, having been referred to it from a pagan site. It is a most chilling site, the more so for its typically new age or new religious iconography. The banner is weird - showing a bucolic and perfect country scene, the type often found in the literature of the Jehovah's Witnesses, or other such groups. The words Pagan Network announce the site's name. To the untrained eye, it seems harmless enough - just another nature loving sect. But, beware what lies beneath! On the thread that links to this site (here) someone called "Frey" (a god that instituted human sacrifices in Uppsala, cf the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus) announced that my post has filled him with "beserker [sic] rage" (anger is obviously not a sin within pagan morality)! He then goes on to say, "This is the worst thing I have ever read, it's just the sheer amount ignorance/arrogance [sic] of it , [sic] I say we should sacrifice him to our gods!" Well, what a beautiful and peaceful movement paganism is! Having said that, at least "Frey" is unabashed in his lust for human blood, as opposed to those who wish us to believe they're harmless tree-huggers. To use the apt words of Jesus:
"For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." [Matthew 12: 35-37].
10 comments:
Amen to everything you have written here and in your excellent earlier post. I am not at all surprised by the hateful reaction to your words by the 'so mote it be' brigade, the one thing you must not do with these people is to call them on the dubious foundations on which their 'traditions ' and rites actually rest. It is indeed bunkum, and why so many Christians want to pay lip service to these people out of some misplaced sense of guilt, or worse, out of some half-baked notion that they have lost strand of wisdom to teach us, is beyond me. Like the BBC's man, the Irish media have also bought into their tree-hugging platitudes, one cannot find anything written about our national patroness without it being understood that she was really a pagan goddess hijacked by the big bad Church. The enthusiasm for modern so-called 'Celtic Christianity' has invested these jokers with a credibility they simply don't deserve. And, as your posts and the reaction to them shows, there is a darker side to these beautiful New Age tree-huggers plus a huge amount of hypocrisy. It is refreshing to see them being called on it, may St Benedict protect you from the berseker rage of deluded souls!
@ Brigit
Thank you.
I agree with your comments about "Celtic Christianity", too.
St Benedict is a most powerful friend to have!
I can only feel bad that you need to hate. Yes I followed the thread and yes I came here. I have many Christian friends and family who I would call "true" Christians, that is open, tolerant, loving people. You are shocked by "freys" anger? He was only a mirror projecting back your own anger in the post.
Your accusations of human sacrifice and warmongering are hurtful and untrue. I'm sure the crusades just slipped your mind for a moment there.
If you where not so full of anger and hate you would not attract hateful and anger filled remarks!
Do you REALLY think your God of LOVE is going to pat you on the back in heaven for spreading falsehoods and hating so many people?
If HE has a problem with it then I'm sure HE is quite able to sort it out himself?
@ HandsInTheDirtAgain
Why would the Crusades have slipped my mind - the only regrettable thing about that movement of liberation is that it failed to secure the lasting peace and freedom it set out to achieve. There's nothing wrong with going off to liberate a people who have been subjected to oppression and terror by an aggressive force. All the Crusaders set out to achieve was the restoration of stolen lands - it's usually called justice.
Sacrificing animals or human beings to false gods (or demons) is neither just or rational. It could be argued that such a system is pure theological evil. If you think that paganism was a set of religions and cults without human or animal sacrifice, then you're sadly misguided. If modern paganism doesn't co-respond to what we know of ancient pagan rituals, then it's not really related to the same thing, is it? If this is the case, then what is modern "paganism" other than a set of made up beliefs from the 18th - 21st Centuries?
I do not hate anyone, and never have. In fact, true love is to speak the truth, and lead people to the real God, away from falsehood.
As for being a "true" Christian, I think an enemy of Christ is the last person qualified to judge on whether or not a person is a follower of Jesus Christ. The Christ-like person is called to be loving, yes - but "open" and "tolerant" are not virtues that appear in the Gospels (in fact they are very secular and modern "virtues"), especially when it comes to preaching against all things that remove the soul from true communion with God (the real God). As G K Chesterton once said "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions"!
As for God, He doesn't impose His will on anyone - He has given us freedom of will, to do good or bad. Having said that, the moment we die, the consequences of our life, our behaviour, but most of all, our relationship (or enmity) with (or towards) Him, will be sorted out!
Anger against injustice, falsehood, and those who demean God is a virtue within Christianity (cf Christ's anger at the money-lenders). Anger that threatens "human sacrifice" is just pure hate, or misguided guile at best.
Thank you for your comment, though!
PS - Chesteron also said, concerning being "open": "I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."
True followers of most neo-Pagan beliefs are more tolerant of the Christian views than any Christian is of ours. I follow the Old Religion that my ancestors believed in anf I'm proud of it. I know what you're thinking: "That heathen will burn in hell." Hard for me to burn in a place that I don't believe in. I'll reside in Odin's hall where the brave may live forever because I have the backbone to stand up afor what I believe in rather than turn to unwarranted hatred out of fear. Christians fear what they do not understand and therefore hate for no reason at all. I respect those beliefs, but Christians are cowars in my book.
Pagan Rome outlawed first human and then animal sacrifice . It was the enforcing of this new law that led to the destruction of the synagouge in jerusalem. That was where the jews commited sacrifice and it had to be done within its four walls. Basically put, a Pagan society chose to end sacrifice of its own accord and so you are using a faulty argument.
@ Green Man
The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple was nothing to do with Roman cultic laws. In fact the Jewish reluctance to sacrifice to the Emperor caused far greater difficulties.
The Romans saw the "barbarians" (as they called them: i.e. Germanic and Celtic tribes) as pagan, even if the term was later applied to the Romans by the medieval Church.
The Christian Church, like the Israelites before it, has always taught that God's providence prepares the geo-political landscape for the success of His will. St Paul said that Christ has come "in the fullness of time", when the Pax Romana secured a) easy travel throughout the Mediterranean (needed for the Christian Gospel to spread); a common (known) world language (Greek); and the means for the final destruction of the Temple (a result of a Jewish revolt) and of sacrifices: which were completely unnecessary, void, and useless after the perfect Sacrifice of Christ, the Son of God.
There are those that would disagree with you. Its hardly suprising that the Romans refered to certain tribes as pagan as the word 'paganus' which they would have used and from which our word comes means 'country dweller'. The urban Romans were simply being descriptive, the equivalent of saying rural. The word did not describe a religion at that time.
@ Green Man
I agree with you, and mentioned this in one of my posts. The "pagani" were, as far as the Romans were concerned, country-folk. Being an empire built on the ideal of citizenship, and therefore on the "urbus", the Romans did not really value the myths, religions and folklores of the "backward" pagani. Of course, in time, even before the fall of Rome (which, by then was Christian), "paganism" was identified with rural and simplistic religions or cults. Christianity, by then, had become the religion of the "civilized".
St Augustine, though, managed to remind Christians that God is to be found in the countryside, whereas, so often, the cities of men breed violence and discontent.
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