Why do many Christians have qualms about Paganism?

[flameburns623]

Here is an interview by one of my Heathen friends which gives some meatier overview of what one serious, thoughtful Heathen believes and how he sees monotheism:

m.thehexfactory.com/site/mobile?dm_path=%2Fwyattkaldenberg.htm&fw_sig_time=1360979343256&fw_sig_is_admin=0&fw_sig_url=http://www.thehexfactory.com/&fw_sig_permissions=none&fw_sig_potential_abuse=1&fw_sig_session_key=b50085d9854f589d26a4292b99464820a982b8cc936139f76ab7c57881e35d70-35321501&fw_sig_site=35321501&fw_sig_api_key=522b0eedffc137c934fc7268582d53a1&fw_sig_permission_level=0&fw_sig_tier=1&fw_sig_social=0&fw_sig_premium=1&fw_sig=e2bf4d1ab8d3e23323745d9f527d6fc2&fw_sig_access_token=f45db53251c32ef53c0e70d226526ff8571399da&fb_sig_network=fw

 

[Darryl1958]

Yes, and it was the comment: “I think it is important that we Christians an monotheists really own up to the fact that we have been the intolerant ones, often the brutally intolerant ones, more often than have the polytheists and pagans” that stuck in my craw. It just isn’t true.

It is a pet peave of mine. How often do you hear that “religion is the cause of war” or some such similar comment. We cannot ignore the atheists in this discussion. Why don’t we consider Stalin, Hitler and Mao in this equation. They murdered millions upon millions of people. So no, I will not “own up to the fact that we have been the intolerant ones…”.

Please don’t get me wrong here. There have no doubt been abuses by members of the Church. But it is nowhere near the scale of non-Christian abuses.

Dostoyevsky said that without God, all becomes permitted. The history of the twentieth century proved him correct. The level of death and destruction and intolerance was unprecedented in all of human history up until that point.

It isn’t over. The war on the womb is a war against life itself.

Pagans have so far been as irrelevant as Harry Potter in that fight.

 

[flameburns623]

If a Catholic apologist wished to really address Heathenry and Paganism, IMHO, IT SHOULD BE DONE FROM A POSITION OF RESPECT, COURTESY, AND ADMIRATION for the positive attributes which Pagans embrace–and which Catholics share in common with them. Note the images I am appending to this post, counterposing Heathen imagry to Catholic.

 

[flameburns623]

There is no want of courage, heroism, ritual and beauty within pre-Christian European worship. And frankly, Christianity and Catholicism sometimes neglect these strong virtues in our modern expression of our faith.

On the other hand, there are elements of human experience which Heathenry and Paganism just cannot address so far as I am able to see.

 

[flameburns623]

My point being, that while Pagans embrace the heroic–modern Heathenry hasn’t done well, so far as I can see, in addressing the disappointments, difficulties, trials, and suffering in life.

I’m about a third of the way through Alain de Benoist’s On Being A Pagan, and aside from some early divergences between how he sees such Biblical events as the Fall–he sees the decision of Adam & Eve to disobey God as rendering them human and opening them to true life, whereas Christians say that sin is death-dealing and ultimately dehumanising–apart from that, de Benoist seems to think that suffering is God’s way of humiliating humanity.

What I think gets missed–perhaps de Benoist or other Pagans address this elsewhere–is that some failure, some suffering, befalls most people in this life. That not all deaths occur on battlefields–some happen on sickbeds, after long, lingering years of pain. And some sicknesses, some suffering, is self-inflicted, while other times it is random and meaningless in the proximate sense.

Christians, while we struggle with the philosophical theodicy, the “problem of evil”–Christians have a better sense of how to give meaning to pain and suffering, of how to find hope in even the worst and most irreversible defeats. We do not abandon our young to the elements as did the Pagan Romans or the Aluit. We don’t open our veins rather than face shame, like the Stoics or the Japanese Samarai. And we go to leper colonies and dirty, hopeless Indian cities, and to Rum Row, and to the bedsides of the incurably ill and we tender comfort and love to those whom others find unlovable.

I’m not certain Heathens can do the same.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

If a Catholic apologist wished to really address Heathenry and Paganism, IMHO, IT SHOULD BE DONE FROM A POSITION OF RESPECT, COURTESY, AND ADMIRATION for the positive attributes which Pagans embrace–and which Catholics share in common with them. Note the images I am appending to this post, counterposing Heathen imagry to Catholic.

I actually find much more literary inspiration from ‘heathen’ or ‘pagan’ inspired art than traditional Catholic imagery. No offense to classical art fans but I’d rather decorate my room with modern fantasy art (for all it’s ‘pagan’ or ‘heathen’ influences) than traditional, Renaissance portraits of the saints.