Blessings, Darlings!
I've said most of what I'm about to blog before, not so much here in the blog but in oral discussions, old Prodigy bulletin boards, and in various chat rooms. The impetus for putting it together here came from the following exchange on Facebook (in a discussion of the movie Thor):
Lucy Castellon Goffan I love to know when they are going to GET THAT WE DON'T WOSHIP SATAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kristi A Gilleland Lucy - probably when their preachers decide to quit telling them that.
I'm not going to argue about who 'we' are here - tho' I'm thinking that they aren't Asatruar, since I've never seen any Asatruar who spend any time wondering when 'they' are going to do ANYTHING. I'll assume that they are 'generic neopagan'.
Yes, I know very well that generic neopaganism doesn't involve the Christian version of Satan. I know that polarity is not duality.
But, oh you who demand tolerance, nay, demand acceptance - when are y'all going to accept that in traditional/standard Christian monotheism all Gods but their own are defined as Satan (or a Satanic delusion)?
Seriously: demanding respect by disrespecting their beliefs is lame.
So what if their religion defines 'our' religion as Satanic? Get over it. Maybe read my earlier post http://fernsfronds.blogspot.com/2010/09/rite-of-passage.html.
Frondly, Fern
Testing to see if I can post to this blog.
ReplyDeleteI think your parenthetical note is more right than you know; most mainline churches use "Satan's work" less as a literal dude with horns and more to mean the human temptation to go against what God wants and take the easy way out. So being a follower of some other deity isn't necessarily wrong, but if it leads you to go against what we think is right, then yeah, that's "caused by the will to go against YHVH" which is, well... Satan.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, pagans sometimes have just as tacky things to say about Christianity; in my faith, we have a religious framework for dealing with mistakes that hurt others and deliberate wrongdoing. It's okay with me if someone else's religion doesn't have such a framework, and they deal with screwups on a secular level only; but I've seen more than one person stuck-up enough to simply say "I don't believe in sin" as if they never do anything wrong at all.