All about even more of the theology.

[kiya]

Today I am feeling very dwojwierny.

I find myself very, very uncomfortable when I see other pagans expressing hatred or contempt for Christianity and/or Christians. It leaves me feeling like . . . like I'm in a room full of people telling Polack jokes.

I wind up feeling that I should understand this. That . . . I'm one of the set of people who should understand this. That this is one of those things that I should be able to extend sympathy for, that this sympathy is almost an obligation upon me as a fellow pagan: that I'm expected to freely commiserate about the iniquities of the Christians and the invalidity of Christianity.

Or at least hold silent when someone sees fit to bend my ear about their contempt, and nod and smile at the hate.

I feel that somehow, because I recognise that pagans are, in many ways, one of those Persecuted Minorities, and because I am one, I should somehow be there, be available, be a healer or at least an ear for those people who need to rant about the Perceived Oppressors and the Hypothetical Majority. Because I'm One Of Us.

Except that I'm also One Of Them.

And even when I was just One Of Us, I never understood the hatred.

I've been through the "you don't have a real religion" arguments. I've been through the devils-and-demons crap. I've dealt with the ignorant, the arrogant, and the hypocritical. I've encountered the sort of evangelical Bible-worshipping nightmare that seems to be the default image of what Christianity is for a huge number of pagans.

And I've met secular Christians, and contemplative Christians, and converts, and raised-that-way folk, militants who want to make it rightfully clear that everyone is welcome in their church, and Christians who won't talk about their faith with others because they don't want to deal with the hate -- because in observing the people around them, they've come to the reasoned conclusion that many of the people they associate with are too blinded by the cross to look at them fairly.

I wonder sometimes if my differing experience is because my parting from Christianity at a child was a no-fault divorce with no alimony paid on either side.

Or, alternately, if I'm from another planet, or an alternate dimension, or something, such that all of the truly despicable Christians have always been somewhere I was not.

I see hate. And I see ignorance. And I see contempt.

And I feel that somehow, I am supposed to listen to this without comment, without correction, with no more than acceptance and understanding. And, if I am by any chance bothered by being subjected to it, I am expected to forgive.

But understanding is too much to ask of me. I find it very hard to understand why a faith so many people have left has such a hold on them to compel such continuing investment, such continuing vitriol. I find it hard to understand why the sweeping statements and then, when someone objects, "Oh, I wasn't talking about your kind."

And forgiveness is very, very hard.


There are times I just want to shout, "Jeranonek! I'm a gods-be-feathered Jeranonek! Take your fucking Polack jokes, fold them until they're all sharp corners, and. . ."

Or just cry.

Or just cry.


(While the current tune as mentioned is, in fact, something I consider a hymn, it is not stalking me; it is a large part of why I am writing this entry.

No more turning away from the weak and the weary
No more turning away from the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
Not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there will be
No more turning away?

)

Comments

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I find it very hard to understand why a faith so many people have left has such a hold on them to compel such continuing investment, such continuing vitriol.

Some people, on leaving a bad [romantic] relationship, or even a good one that has ended badly, deal with it by hating the other party out of all proportion to whatever crimes they have committed, if any. (And when I say some people, I mean, of course, me.) I'm not sure if it's useful to you to have it pointed out that it's not only Christianity that inspires this sort of breakup-reaction (whether because you already noticed that, or because it's just ... not useful), but that's all I got.

It does put an interesting spin on attempts by early Christians to explain the Song of Songs away as, not erotica, but a metaphorical representation of Christ's love for the church, or God's love for its people.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It does put an interesting spin on attempts by early Christians to explain the Song of Songs away as, not erotica, but a metaphorical representation of Christ's love for the church, or God's love for its people.

Actually, it's both erotica *and* a metaphor for Gds love for Its people.

[kiya]

Perhaps ironically, one of the early drafts of this thing -- which took me like three hours to write and a lot of "No, that's all wrong" and deleting the entire thing back to the Polack jokes -- included an "I don't know if it's because some people need to hate their ex after a breakup."

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Just as data in the "you're not really an alien" category, I feel pretty dwojwierny sometimes, too. (Lovely word, by the way. I had to look it up, of course.) I see a lot of the vitriol. I participated in it, a bit, when I first found paganism. But I think that was as much the individual in question as his professed faith. (Hated the guy. He was making cracks about another pagan, so I used that as an excuse to tear into him.) Now, though, I don't really see the point. I never see the point to holding long grudges like that, it hurts the victim far more than the supposed oppressor.

My parents still look at me kinda sideways when I mention Tarot, or any of the other stuff that I picked up when I was pursuing wicca. I think my dad would still love me to go to church with him. I think I get something valuable from both of them, and would be poorer for having to choose.

[kiya]

It's a terrific word, isn't it? I found it when I was researching Slavic paganism.

The little information I've gotten about the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity so far suggests that in a lot of ways that are important to me it's significantly different than the West. I should fish out the Pelikan books and go through them when I'm done with Dirt, Greed, and Sex.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I am *so* with you. I never know what to say when people start in like that. Just quietly move away from them on the bench....

[griffen.livejournal.com]

even when I was just One Of Us, I never understood the hatred.

I'm trying to get past it. I really am. But it's not easy. I was raised in the Catholic church, and spent a few years at the Crystal Cathedral (which is about as far off from Catholicism as you can get, but it's every bit as heavy-handed) between the ages of seven and twelve, until my mother had a crisis of faith and came back to the church of her childhood.

In both churches I consistently got the message: "Christians are BETTER THAN any other faith. We are the only ones who are RIGHT. Anyone else is GOING TO HELL." Sure, that might not be what Robert Schuller teaches with his "God loves you and so do I" message, but his Sunday School teachers weren't as enlightened, and I was in the Sunday School.

I spent many years afraid of God. I spent many years afraid of anyone who wasn't "just like us." When I'm afraid, I get angry to protect myself (as I'm sure everyone who knows me has seen). And I built up a lot of resentment and a lot of hair-triggers and hot buttons around the entire subject of Christianity.

It's hard to get past that kind of indoctrination. I hear "I'm a Christian" and the first thing that comes to my mind is not kayre, but the priest who told me and my ex-husband that unless I was confirmed in the Catholic church, he wouldn't permit us to get married (even though that that is *not* a Catholic doctrinal requirement, as I found out much later!).

What comes to my mind is not halibut, but the Sunday School teacher who painted a gruesomely loving picture of the agony waiting for anyone who didn't give their heart to Jeeeeee-zuz (I was nine) and scared an entire classroom of fourth-graders into crying fits, and didn't see anything wrong with what she had done.

What comes to my mind is not my father, who is a good and gentle man, but Pat Robertson telling America that it was pagans and gays who were really responsible for what happened on 9/11/01.

What comes to mind is the woman in my Microsoft Word class from this past quarter who took it upon herself to bring tracts and Bibles to class and pass them out to everyone during class time, and when I said "no thank you," to get up in arms about it and tell me I was going to hell.

What comes to mind is my ex-mother-in-law guilting my ex-husband into doing so many things connected to their faith, including turning the guilt on me to go through confirmation classes, even though I was really not sure about it.

What comes to mind is those same classes where every question I asked about the "whys" of Catholic doctrine was answered with "We do it that way because that's the way we do it," which is one of the biggest non-answers of the century.

What comes to mind is the priest who told me in confession when I was fifteen that the fact that I'd been raped meant that I'd committed a mortal sin, "because you must have tempted him or he wouldn't have tried it," and refused to give me absolution.

What comes to mind is people excusing God for doing terrible things to his people and his son, "because he's God."

What comes to mind is a stack of unanswered questions and past wrongs.

Yeah, I'm still angry about it. Yeah, it's hard for me to get past it.

And I'll do it on my own time, and pushing me to "get over it" will make it take that much longer.

I have my reasons for being wary of Christians. I haven't been shown nearly enough examples of "good" Christians to get past those reasons yet.

I still have good reasons to be afraid.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Every group has its extremeists. The vocal fringe. The one-true-wayists. You've seen it on alt.poly -- the posters who think they have all the answers and want the world to know, but who are not representative of the majority of people there. I see it in fandom -- the woman who wore her Starfleet uniform to jusry duty every day is not typical of SF fans. You've probably seen it in other groups, too -- not every trans* person is a high-camp drag queen/king, for instance. Not every pagan is the Brtish Gilderoy Lockhart lookalike who claims to be a god and king of the witches.

But the extremes get the attention. They're loud and they're unusual, so they draw the spotlight. So that's the image people have. You have almost certainly encountered more good Christians than you realize. The bad ones are the ones that stand out, in part becaue they're he ones that make a big deal about it. THere's a book -- I haven't read it yet, but I just read an interview with the author. It's called When Bad Christians Happen to Good People. Might be worth a look. The interview may be on The Door's site (http://www.thedoormagazine.com).

A non-theological thought

[redbird]

In a lot of cases, this is tied into painful/horrible things that the person's parents did to them and justified in Christian terms. It may be easier psychologically to think "my parents wouldn't lie about this, therefore this set of beliefs made them mistreat me" than "my parents were bad people, and would have done this anyway". In many cases, the truth is somewhere in between--the parents were sincere when they defended their actions in religious terms, but might have done those or similar things anyway, and plenty of other Christian parents didn't do those things.

[keshwyn]

And I feel that somehow, I am supposed to listen to this without comment, without correction, with no more than acceptance and understanding. And, if I am by any chance bothered by being subjected to it, I am expected to forgive.

But understanding is too much to ask of me. I find it very hard to understand why a faith so many people have left has such a hold on them to compel such continuing investment, such continuing vitriol. I find it hard to understand why the sweeping statements and then, when someone objects, "Oh, I wasn't talking about your kind."

No.

(Bear with me, I'm going to do a little digression here.)
Recently, this past summer, things at work reached the point where several very bitter people were ranting near-constantly at the people who were only mildly pissy and stressed, creating a giant swamp of malcontent and ill-will towards one or two people in particular.

I got all swept up in it and stayed that way until I reached the end of the summer, got a bit of a breather, and went... "Wait, why am I doing this? -I- don't hate people, I'm just picking up everybody else's hate..."

The problem is that it's so easy to pick up the mob mentality and let it do the thinking instead of you. (General you, not you specifically, Lilairen.) Once you've let that happen, it spreads like a disease. But to -not- fight against the mob mentality means to stand in the middle of it and get waved around by the tides of other people.

And simply walking away doesn't do anything other than keep -you- from getting swamped.

There's no easy answer to this. But it's a problem I've been watching a lot recently, and I'm trying to say, when I see people I care about becoming bitter and infected with the misery of the world, "Hey, stop. Think about what you just said. Do you really want to be that negative? Do you want to let it drag you down with it?"

And that's the best I've managed so far.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I believe there are bad Christians out there, but I haven't met them. Some who are annoying -- tracts bug the heck out of me. Many who are scary in their approach, but I haven't met the ones who take it to the next level.

I come out as Christian all the time. It's very odd. In the same place where other people disclose their sexual preferences, I explain that I am happily Christian and plan to stay that way. It has been a divisive issue in some relationships. But it always feels like that when I'm talking to people who think they hate Christianity. I'm coming out. And they're shocked and surprised (well, not if they've been paying attention -- the going to church is a big clue). I'm one of them?

Yup. Perhaps you would care to expand your view of them?

[sstaten.livejournal.com]

I find the hate and the vitriol puzzling. I mean yes, I know it's there, but it really doesn't make sense to me. :: shrug :: Maybe it's the way I was raised or something, but it just doesn't make sense.

I know part of it comes from actually reading the source material (bible). Specifically the statement that the greatest commandments are to love got, and then to "Love thy neighbor as thyself".

And so I have to wonder, these folks who hate so vigorously, who claim to be good christians. (I'll leave the non-christian attitudes out of it as I'm not familiar enough with them) If they hate their neighbor so much, and are good christians.... Then they'd have to hate and loathe themselves.

And that REALLY puzzles me.

[tiassa]

I am Christian (Mormon), and I get mocked, abused, harassed, told that I'm a horrible person, and I'm going to Hell, by everyone - Christian, pagan, doesn't matter. I just figure it's part of the idea that people, when taken as a whole, and especially in large groups, are generally morons. Not that it has anything to do with their particular religious beliefs.

[senchen.livejournal.com]

Fanatics make people nervous. Cults are full of fanatics. Unease translates very easily(maybe even automatically) into hostility. Mormonism has still not managed to escape the cult stage. Who knows if it ever will; the cult/religion line is drawn not by members of the faith in question but by the observers.

[tiassa]

Wow. I never knew that I was a fanatic member of a cult. Nor did I know that my church was a cult, considering that just about everything I've seen classifies it as a religion. Thank you for enlightening poor ignorant me.

[roimata.livejournal.com]

I always knew you were a fanatic member of a cult.

Opinions, however, vary.

[senchen.livejournal.com]

What YOU know about it is irrelevant. Cult/religion status isn't something that can be determined and officiated, it's wholly public perception. Reread that last part after "line is drawn" if you are confused.