A Pagan View of Christian God's

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A Pagan View of Christian Gods

Neopagans tend to believe that all gods are true for their believers. As David Brin put it "The Dogma of otherness insists that all voices deserve a hearing, that all points of view have something of value to offer." (Brin, p89) We do not believe that there is one truth that is right for every one. We have no central authority that decides points of doctrine so there is no official creed and no way to enforce one. Most of us draw upon the mythology of European cultures because ours is still a "white" religion for the most part, but we will give equal respect to Hindu, Shinto, Native American, and African deities.

But we become uneasy when dealing with Christian deities because most of us have escaped from Christian upbringing. We have no trouble pointing out that Christ is a dying god, a sun god, a vegetation god. He is a classic in those patterns. But we are uncomfortable working with Gods as they are expresed in Abrahamic tradition.

Some of us can see the sky god and the volcano god in the father part of the trinity. Those of us who have studied that far even recognize the Assyrian bird goddess in the Holy Spirit. But what about Satan?

We are always quick to point out that we have no god like Satan. And that is true. If we believed the same things Christians believe about their gods than we would believe that theirs is the one and only true God and that all other gods are deceptions perpetrated by Satan to lure us from the one true God. If we believed that we would be Christians.

The Christians believe that their God is the one true god they also believe that he is totally good, the personification of goodness if you will. The Hindus have no such pretensions about their gods. Of course gods are good and demons are bad but demons can do good and gods can do bad.

If gods really had the power to influence their believers you would think that Christians would be better people than Hindus, more virtuous, more at peace with themselves and their world. But they are not. Being religious, that is believing in some faith and practicing it can improve your health and well being but it does not seem matter what religion you practice.

My favorite example of this was a study done on Satanist. The sort of people who become Satanist, hostile outcasts with limited social skills, tend to improve by being Satanist. Being part of a working group improved their social skills and self esteem. In practice worshipping a god of good does not make one good and worshipping a god of evil does not make one evil.

We call Satan a Christian god. They do not call him a god but we use a different definition of god. If you want to know about the god Christ you ask a Christian. If you want to know about Buffalo Calf Woman you ask a Sioux. If you want to know about Buddha you ask a Buddhist and if you want to know about Satan you ask a Christian.

We say that Satan is a Christian god because Christians keep his lore and they believe in him. Christians believe in Satan sometimes even more than they believe in their God. More people believe in Hell than in Heaven. We say that Satan is a Christian god because Christians have elevated him to only slightly lower than their high God. They have tried to put Satan as far away from God as possible. At the same time attributing to him vast powers. "But to those who were not theologically sophisticated, while Satan was frightening and powerful, so was God. They understood well enough the continuum of good to evil that the Bishop referred to, but they were far more interested in the continuum of strong and weak--that was the one they lived with day by day. And on that continuum, they were weak, and God and Satan and the Bishop all were strong."(Card, p.279)

Satan is the shadow cast by Christianity's light. Because they claim to follow pure good they will always be followed and tormented by the pure evil they drag behind them. We (Neopagans) do not work with that continuum, all of our gods are foreign and ineffable not good or bad. The question of good and evil is another essay in itself for now let us say that the nature of our gods is so foreign to our nature that we can not know if they mean us good or ill. But this saves us the Christians dilemma.

Christians claim that their God is both all powerful and good. When a Christian survives some disaster with only the loss of one limb they have a tendency to thank God for saving their life forgetting that by their own philosophy their God is responsible for the disaster occurring. I personally would stay far away from a god who would cut off my arm and want me to thank him for not cutting off my head as well. But Christians call this Good.

Works Cited
Brin, David. "Otherness" Bantam Spectra:New York, 1994.Buy it from Amazon.com

Card, Orson Scott. "Speaker for the Dead" TOR: New York, 1986 Buy it from Amazon.com

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