Christo-Paganism

[Gho the Girl]

Nines19

gemherbal

i think its oxymoronic and insulting

What is, insulting to who, and why?

probably the Christopagan part.

Insulting to, possibly either or.

I think that's bologna *says it "bow-log-nah"*  

[Fiddlers Green]

gemherbal

i think its oxymoronic and insulting

I personally find the term Pagan fairly insulting. My faith was the predecessor to the official faith of an empire that was old when Romulus and Remus were licking at a wolf. silly Romans.  

[TeaDidikai]

Do folks who are practicing a path that has you in both pagan and Christian circles have an opinion about the behavior of those on either side that bash the other?  

[rmcdra]

The Palm Tree Garden forum tends to be very critical of the New Age movement.

The Episcopal Church I attend doesn't speak about other faiths, though my bishop is not fond of other faiths. I think he's on his kick because he want to preserve "the orthodoxy".

Alpha & Omega will make remarks about "dead gods" once and a while, but we do recognize that the Christian path is just the only path we can personally testify about.  

[Nines19]

TeaDidikai

Do folks who are practicing a path that has you in both pagan and Christian circles have an opinion about the behavior of those on either side that bash the other?

Bashing both ways makes me seriously cringe, and sometimes will end with me actually leaving the group.

I have heretical enough beliefs that Christians who bash other faiths will generally offend me just as much for being "different," intentionally or not. (That or it may degenerate to them trying to convert me to their "obviously superior" beliefs if I try to argue with them.)

And the pagans-bashing-Christians bit almost always includes generalization that lumps me in with a handful of hatemongerers and child molesters, which obviously grinds at me because for one, I'm not like that, and for two, the general amount of Christians aren't like that. Although, of course, when you try to tell them this it's, "No, because all the Christians I ever met hated pagans and told me I was gonna burn in hell, so all Christians must be like the ones I know." They like to source Teh Brning Thymes as well, and/or, "Teh ebul Xtians drove our paganism underground in Europe!" and/or other such historical revisionism (if not outright lies).
At one time I seriously had someone tell me, "I hate all Christians because in their Bible it tells them to kill witches, and I take that as a declaration of war." I got my a** out of that site damn quick. (That was actually back when I was irreligious.)

As a general note, the pagans that I have known to be hateful towards Christianity have also been largely ignorant of Christian faith and often totally ignorant of the various Satanic religions as well.

(...I have more to say about pagans bashing Christianity because I haven't really been in any Christian groups until quite recently and I've yet to experience bashing of pagan faiths. The one group I'm in right now that's bashing anything seems to be focussed on Judaism, which is ticking me off as well but probably irrelevant to the topic.)

Neither group of bashers seems to care very much for intellectual honesty, in my experience.

(Sorry for the long response to the short question, heh.)  

[Gho the Girl]

TeaDidikai

Do folks who are practicing a path that has you in both pagan and Christian circles have an opinion about the behavior of those on either side that bash the other?

I think Christians that bash pagans are forgetting what Agape means.

I think Pagans that bash Christians can be judgemental.  

[Collowrath]

TeaDidikai

Do folks who are practicing a path that has you in both pagan and Christian circles have an opinion about the behavior of those on either side that bash the other?

Not a particularly strong one. It's disappointing to see Christians forget so easily their commandment to love their neighbor - the fact that it becomes political so easily here in the US is the bigger problem; getting them to understand they can hate all they want, in their own homes.

Pagans bashing Christians to me tends to come with a sense of the nonsensical and a good bit of irony. The bashing tends to come in the same breath as whining about how oppressed pagans are. I tend to ignore it until something blatantly wrong comes up.  

[Ainwyn]

Fiddlers Green

Okay, here we go...
We view Jeushua as the recent incarnation of Anhur.
That is why our mystics, watching for signs that Anhur writ in the night sky to show us the way in the darkness came from Persia to attend him.

We know his teachings of love and kindness to be the words of the creative/compassionate/warm/light half of the cosmos creating pair. We offered him shelter and attended his wisdom during his long years in the East. Our "testimony" of him, regards that time.

We react with either bemused humour, or vicious outrage, that Shem and his lot have laid claim to him. Especially as his message is so contradictory to what Shem has told his followers in the past. Oh, and he really didn't have the traits that Shem's messiah was supposed to. I am wiling and able to post my One of These Faiths is not Like the Other Ones rant if anyone wants. Some may find that it takes something of a dim view of Shem and his git. Well, it does. Ask at your own risk.

The simplification of it looks like this:
Judaism: Law based religion that endorses killing (under specific circumstances... demands under some) and meta-genetics.
Christianity: Faith based religion that encourages love, forgiveness, and universal access.
Islam: Law based religion that endorses killing (under specific circumstances... demands under some) and has very strict conversion rules.

I'd like to read it, and more about the whole Jeushua/Anhur bit as well, if you're up to it smile PM me if you don't want to post it here. Thanks!  

[Aino Ailill]

Ainwyn

Fiddlers Green

Okay, here we go...
We view Jeushua as the recent incarnation of Anhur.
That is why our mystics, watching for signs that Anhur writ in the night sky to show us the way in the darkness came from Persia to attend him.

We know his teachings of love and kindness to be the words of the creative/compassionate/warm/light half of the cosmos creating pair. We offered him shelter and attended his wisdom during his long years in the East. Our "testimony" of him, regards that time.

We react with either bemused humour, or vicious outrage, that Shem and his lot have laid claim to him. Especially as his message is so contradictory to what Shem has told his followers in the past. Oh, and he really didn't have the traits that Shem's messiah was supposed to. I am wiling and able to post my One of These Faiths is not Like the Other Ones rant if anyone wants. Some may find that it takes something of a dim view of Shem and his git. Well, it does. Ask at your own risk.

The simplification of it looks like this:
Judaism: Law based religion that endorses killing (under specific circumstances... demands under some) and meta-genetics.
Christianity: Faith based religion that encourages love, forgiveness, and universal access.
Islam: Law based religion that endorses killing (under specific circumstances... demands under some) and has very strict conversion rules.

I'd like to read it, and more about the whole Jeushua/Anhur bit as well, if you're up to it smile PM me if you don't want to post it here. Thanks!

I'd also be interested. ^^  

[TeaDidikai]

Hey Fiddler, you're welcome to post it here.  

[rmcdra]

Okay who was Yeshua as a historic being. Probably a Jewish Mystic who had some form of gnosis and realized what was important and wasn't important within Judaism and basically created his own mystical tradition using Judaism as its foundation. Because of how radical and revolutionary his teachings were, especially how empowering and freeing they were to those of lower social states, some saw these teachings as dangerous to the state of Rome. He was later killed as a rebel since his teachings were a potential threat to the ruling powers at the time.

To preserve the process of reaching Yeshua's mystical state, lists of his sayings were compiled, and later a series of myths were written describing in a series of symbols and hidden meanings how one could reach a state of "Christhood".

How I understand him Mythically depends on the Myth presented and in which sect of Christianity we are speaking about. I understand him in Traditional Christianity as part of the Holy Trinity, fully God, fully human. I understand him in Gnostic Traditions as the serpent in the garden of Eden and as the one who came again to deliver the good news of reminding us who we are. Each of these myths are true when taken into the context of their teachings.  

[Nomad of Nowhere]

I think Jesus was a man. I realize this might smack of bashing my former religion, but that was actually Judaism.

I recall it was Tea who said that you could verify divine contact in part by making sure that the traits of the deity in question matched the traits portrayed or written down in their respective culture. Yes, this was for individuals, but does Christianity appear to pass that test?

Not that I'd bring it up at dinner, but everyone else just assumes the Jews were wrong. You can't agree with everyone. =/
If there is a deity behind the religion, I'd suspect some other god, perhaps Ahura Mazda as was suggested earlier, who does bear him some likeness on some issues. Then again, maybe Christ signifies no more than what John calls him in 1:14- the Logos.  

[TeaDidikai]

Nomad of Nowhere

I think Jesus was a man. I realize this might smack of bashing my former religion, but that was actually Judaism.

Yeshua has yet to meet the standards applied to the Messiah. ~shrugs~

Quote:

I recall it was Tea who said that you could verify divine contact in part by making sure that the traits of the deity in question matched the traits portrayed or written down in their respective culture. Yes, this was for individuals, but does Christianity appear to pass that test?

Christendom passes the test easily if it isn't YHVH that Yeshua is an incarnation of.

Quote:

Then again, maybe Christ signifies no more than what John calls him in 1:14- the Logos.

Ah- but then, you have to examine what Logos is. twisted  

[o sunflower king]

...Christopagansim? -scratches chin in a scholarly way- Very interesting. I think I'll lurk here for a while.

 

[rmcdra]

TeaDidikai

Nomad of Nowhere

I recall it was Tea who said that you could verify divine contact in part by making sure that the traits of the deity in question matched the traits portrayed or written down in their respective culture. Yes, this was for individuals, but does Christianity appear to pass that test?

Christendom passes the test easily if it isn't YHVH that Yeshua is an incarnation of.

I wonder myself if the name YHVH was just used by Yeshua to describe and express something that was for a lack of a better word, "higher" than YHVH. I don't know possibly an early form of Henotheism, like how Gho described in his pathways thread?