Monday, June 14, 2010

Pagan Christianity

The premise: much of modern Christianity's methods, contents, etc., are actually variations of pagan themes. To be perfectly honest - well, duh. Islam is a derivative of Judaism; Jainism and Buddhism have correlations; the Irish Catholic Church has some pagan elements; the doctrine of much of Christianity in general has been filtered through either Plato or Aristotle; Christmas, Easter, take your pick of the Christian holy celebration - it's all variations on pagan festivals. The idea of the Trinity is not purely Christian, the Holy Son is not uniquely Christian, even much of what Christ taught is not specific to Christianity. One thing I will credit the LDS church for - opening me up to understandings of Christianity that parallel pagan themes. Like Heavenly Mother. Now that I think about it - duh. Not that I think their take on heavenly parents is necessarily correct - it has considerable merit. It led me to a fuller openness to the God and Goddess.

In Buddhism, there are many "dharma doors" or paths to enlightenment. No point in insisting upon one straight and narrow road that has, ultimately, split in many ways. Sometimes I think that "straight and narrow road" thing was added in protection of "authority." Like a requirement by a conqueror.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter which belief was "right" first. Should we not strive to find the correlations among beliefs rather than fight each other over who has rights to the label "truth?"

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