The struggle for the European Soul: Paganism v Christianity

**~~Wanderer~~** · 04-24-2020, 12:08 PM

OP, how can you speak of choosing a religion? Is truth a choice? There's no such thing as "my truth" or "your truth"; there's only one truth.

Being a Christian means serving the living God who created all things seen and unseen. And this is the testimony that God has given us - that He has raised Jesus Christ from the dead, as the Scripture had prophesied. That we should seek after Him, if per chance we might find Him, though He be not far from us all. Through Jesus Christ God will judge the world in righteousness, and each will be judged individually. It doesn't matter what someone's ancestors believed or practiced.

The gods of paganism? What are they? The works of men's hands - that's what pagans worship.

The blood ties that you speak so highly of are really not that strong. You make them to be more than they really are. Bitter differences can exist even among family members, and even more so within races or ethnicities. Jesus said He came not to bring peace but the sword, and that there would be family members divided against one another due to the gospel. The love of God shared spiritually among His children who are in Christ Jesus is stronger than anything of this world - whether blood ties, or nation, or culture, or ethnicity, etc. Those things are temporal, of this world. But the things of God are eternal.

I was raised Catholic, myself. Became an atheist at age 14. But then when I was 28 the Lord found me. I stay far away from Catholicism. I know it quite well, as I was actually quite a staunch Catholic at times when I was 12-14. God adopts His children; He doesn't hire them. Catholicism and Orthodoxy preach a form of righteousness by works. But as the Scripture says, for if the inheritance be of law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. God blesses His children not because of works, but because they're His own children, through Christ Jesus who paid the full price for their sins through His death, burial, and resurrection.

**Methuselah** · 04-24-2020, 12:15 PM

Such a good post! I personally grew up in Methodist and Pentecostal churches as a kid and never had big issues with my theistic Christian views until finishing High school, not like i had all the answers, God just made a lot of sense to me and i was like "if purely naturalistic processes can't explain us i go with God rather than disbelief even if there are many different interpretations of the Bible". I also had highly educated people in my family who were some sort of theists so this probably helped me as well. It was easy for me to see the beauty of the nature and stuff even before learning more about natural sciences. I did eventually end up really questioning my Christian faith and the fact that i grew up around bunch of young earth creationists didn't help this at all. But i never gave up on my faith in God. Something always kept me very spiritual. It's such a great feeling when you know all things are meaningful. The older i get the more i appreciate this feeling. It's a huge part of my creativity and motivation.

I don't personally think our existence can be explain by naturalistic processes only. The way people popularize science these days is just perverted. It kinda started with people like Laplace, he presented everything as mechanical and not related to divine. Newton wasn't happy with this type of thinking at all, he was actually stressing about his laws explaining divine out of the picture. Today we know that even if we might explain a huge part of observable cosmos and certain laws of nature, we can't explain our origin, since the concept of the Big Bang came in to the picture and we now know that our universe is expanding. We don't even know what caused the Big Bang yet people talk about quantum fluctuations as some sort of magic tricks building universes just like that. We just don't know. It seems plausible to believe that we are in the midst of eternity of some kind, some sort of extremely fine tuned bigger picture and many modern scientists regardless of their views seem to believe in such a thing. The nature of this eternity is a secret if we want pure facts, because our universe is the only one we can study really. Are we part of the multiverse or eternal cyclic models? If not (cyclic models seem to have a lot of issues for instance) how the universe came out fine tuned by chance? Here God makes sense because you literally need God in order to get our universe by one chance, even if this feels as God of the gaps- type of explanation. These are the huge questions and from a scientific point of view we don't know the answers, but you simply don't get anything without a cause and working laws of physics which seem to break down by the way if don't want to throw the singularity away. So nihilistic claims about our universe popping out by random chance out of pure nothingness without guidance is pure fantasy. Same goes for our existence, we might have a humble beginning but not without a meaning and working laws of physics/ fine tuned universe expanding. Materialistic thinking is not only leaving people empty, it just simply doesn't work, this of course doesn't mean that any specific religion is true, it just means that us being tetris minded and thinking about everything around us as just movement of matter (something what was common to present in Soviet Union for instance) is not gonna help us to solve the deepest questions. Science should be agnostic, but a lot of the people popularizing science are hardcore atheists including bunch of media, they take their own interpretations as the only solution and present it as the only logical way of thinking. I'm not saying we should believe in fairy tales, but some sort of higher power literally is one good explanation for our universe. I don't see it being worse than other abstract solutions including borderline scientific models like multiverse/ cyclic models. People just seem to have some issues with God since a lot of harm has been done in his name. People also can get quite nihilistic when going through harsh staff and the problem of evil and suffering is one of the biggest theological problems even for religious people. But laughing at God just like that is often emotional, not rational.

I wish you all the best fella! I'm kinda in the same boat as you, but what i have learned is that surrounding myself with positive people and meaningful things from good reading and healthy lifestyle has been always very helpful from a spiritual point of view as well. I do pray and try work out as much as i can and to learn from people wiser than me. Trying to stay away from hedonistic lifestyle and nihilistic attitudes, since these are spiritually very destructive. God talks to humble hearts very often. Been reconnecting with good reading like C.S. Lewis, Kierkegaard and Tolstoy. A lot of great minds were some sort of theists so it's very easy to find very good reading on all kind of topics where spiritual themes are also discussed. Spending more time in nature when there is a chance to do so. Maybe you can also find a good church with a good community too? A place where your takes on the Bible can fit and be respected. We need each other after all and dealing with big questions alone is not always that healthy and beneficial. Sometimes we go through that as well tho.

**Óttar** · 04-25-2020, 01:48 AM

Originally Posted by Senpai

I want to embrace something that feels right, and maintains some kind of power. Orthodoxy is really the only one that holds power enough to change politics right now in certain areas, but as you could imagine, it doesn't give me that sense of tribal community. I think I will be visiting an Orthodox church in the Summer along with a Catholic church, and maybe a few others to really get a broader glimpse into the inner workings.

If I were you, I would convert to Catholicism. There are 'Eastern Rite' churches that are in communion with Rome, that basically maintain an 'Orthodox' liturgy. For me personally, I can never accept the god of the OT. To boot, I find certain aspects of Catholic rhetoric to be intellectually dishonest. I am slightly sympathetic to the 'gnostic' Marcionite heresy, but I digress. While Tradition is certainly important, there are simply too many theological and social issues for me to be reconciled with the Church.