Tired of the Gods of Mainstream Christianity

January 13th, 2017

Hurry up, Seventeenth Century

I finally finished Montaigne today, with no small relief. From my standpoint as a Christian, I think he knew very little about the real nature of life, and his lengthy streams of speculation were not always pleasant to endure.

Having closed the book, I have one impression that stands out above everything else: historically, European Christians haven’t been real Christians; they have been pagans who went to church. Maybe they managed to receive salvation, but they didn’t think like Christians. They didn’t know the Holy Spirit. They were influenced much more by people like Socrates and Plato than they were by Isaiah and Paul.

From the things Dante and Montaigne wrote, I can see that they had much more respect for dead Greeks and Romans than they had for Biblical figures. They quote the ancient pagans time and again, and Dante even puts their ridiculous heathen deities in positions of power in heaven and hell. They are like Jews who revere Talmudic scholars so much they would never question them. If Seneca or some other dead pantheist said it hundreds of years ago, you can cite it as a Christian would cite scripture. You can consider the blather of the ancients to be infallible. From a Christian perspective, it should be obvious how crazy that is.

Many people hold Christianity responsible for the Dark Ages. I wonder if that’s true. I’m starting to think pantheism is to blame. People like Montaigne had so much respect for the classics, they may have been unwilling to consider new ideas. There is a huge gulf of time between the classics and the era of Montaigne, and somehow, very little important thought was recorded in that period. I wonder how many original medieval minds got shot down for criticizing Aristotle or wondering aloud whether Christians should continue promoting the homosexual predators of The Symposium.

Past authority is a great thing in some ways. It lifts you up out of the mud of prehistoric ignorance. A person who knows the classics is better off than someone who grows up with very little inherited knowledge. On the other hand, it can paralyze you. If you crucify everyone who disagrees with your moldy old books, you can expect to remain stuck in the first century forever.

Christians should never have looked to pantheists for moral instruction. How can anyone ever have thought it was a good idea? Paul went to Greece and Rome to change people’s minds, not to adopt their garbage. People who came after Paul weren’t that smart. They tried to build a Christian church on a pagan foundation.

Montaigne ended his book with a plea to Apollo, not God. Apollo is a Satanic deity. You can’t have Apollo and Jesus; you have to choose. Montaigne was a smart guy, but he could not figure that out. I would no more praise Apollo than I would praise the devil himself. For all we know, Apollo is Satan.

It’s insulting to put a thing like that in a book, when you claim to be a Christian. Jesus was tortured to death for Montaigne. Apollo was not. Jesus allowed himself to be killed so Apollo could be discredited and so his prisoners could be saved from hell. Apollo is the enemy of every Christian. How can you praise someone like that, even if you’re not serious about his existence?

Apollo isn’t a joke, and neither were Zeus, Aphrodite, and the rest of them. People killed in their names. They made sacrifices to them. Antiochus sacrificed a pig to Zeus in the temple in Jerusalem. We don’t take the pantheist “gods” seriously today, but an astonishing amount of evil has been done in their names.

I don’t like reading books that try to supply heathen solutions to our problems. I don’t have any interest in philosophy or self-help. God gives me answers that are pretty clear. I don’t wonder about things that get philosophy professors excited; who would want a person like that as a life coach? I don’t wonder about the meaning of life. I don’t wonder why evil exists. I know the answers already, and they’re not complicated or hard to understand.

Evil exists because God refuses to withdraw free will. The purpose of our lives is to give God pleasure. This is what the Bible says. I have no difficulty believing it. Next question.

Montaigne says to give in to disease and let it run its course. God says disease is a curse, and, as my own experience proves, we can be healed supernaturally. I know who I’d rather believe. Montaigne says it’s wrong to cultivate the soul and fight the flesh. Well, God calls the evil we do “works of the flesh.” God says we have to crucify the flesh. Who is right? God, or someone he created?

Montaigne says “supercelestial” thinking gets along very well with base carnality, meaning he finds people who claim to love God contemptible and hypocritical. This is part of his rationale for giving in to the flesh. Imagine if Jesus had felt that way. He would have skipped the crucifixion, and we would all be on our way to hell.

There is an ancient conflict between pagans and people who serve Yahweh. In the centuries preceding the birth of Jesus, it was just as bad as it is today. Jews in Israel wanted to be like the Greeks who ruled their country, and that meant becoming huge sports fans and participating in nude athletics. That meant exposing their circumcisions, which set them apart. Jews started trying to undo their circumcisions, and some refused to circumcise their sons. People were drawn into idolatry, and of course, that’s why the Jews remained a conquered people. Christians are infected with the Hellenism bug, too, and it still controls most of us.

The “gods” of the Old Testament pagans aren’t different from the “gods” of the Greeks and Romans. They’re the same. They’re called by different names in different countries. They’re the same “gods” the Egyptians worshiped. Nothing has changed. Today most of us don’t worship them as gods, but we live and think like pagans, so we end up at the same place spiritually.

To be destroyed, you don’t have to follow a precise formula. You just have to fail to find the one true path. Satan doesn’t care. He’s all about options.

Oh, boy. Cervantes is up next. Give me strength. The first passage alone is 269 pages. I read the whole book in college (probably), so I don’t feel bad about sticking to the syllabus and skipping long passages.

Maybe it’s not as bad as I remembered. I can hope.

Do the Roman “gods” appear in Cervantes? I don’t recall running into them. It would be nice to get away from them.

I can’t imagine living in a world without evil people and spirits, or even a world, like the post-Tribulation earth, in which they are restrained and dominated. It will be too beautiful for me to imagine. Try to picture yourself looking at a morning newspaper and not reading about crime, war, disease, and death. That’s the future, for people who believe. There won’t be any problems with Hellenism, because the beings responsible for it will be bound in hell or running around screaming in the lake of fire. It will be as if the entire universe got a delousing.

I don’t care what people think of my beliefs. I’m going to die. I’m as good as dead right now, and so are they. My death is closer to me than my birth, and it’s not far away at all. If I am criticized, it’s by people who don’t know anything, and I will be free of it permanently before very long. If I get killed for what I think and say, the enemies that kill me will be providing me with an escape from their vexatious presence and a ticket to the presence of God. That’s a win for me.

Like Jesus, I am against religious tolerance. I have no confidence in any scheme that doesn’t involve the one real God. I have no confidence in man. I don’t want to weasel around and pretend I think other religions are okay. I leave that for people like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. The fact that lost people are willing to extend a foot and rub your eager, appeasing belly shouldn’t determine what you believe or claim to believe.

I better start steeling myself for Cervantes. I think he will make me miss drinking coffee.

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