01 May 2005
A new hunger for faith

This article caught my eye because it so clearly shows the dividing line between Heathenry and monotheist, revealed religions. And I'm decidedly including Islam and Buddhism in that definition, as, along with Christianity, they all share one salient feature that this piece highlights: the conviction that world is a bad place, and that life here basically sucks.

By this theology, we must "walk through this sad vale of tears", suffering all the time, because suffering is natural and right. For their adherents, suffering and pain is a positive force that draws them closer to their God. They seem to see suffering as a sacrifice or offering to the Almighty.

Heathen faiths, on the other hand, view life much more positively. We shake our heads in wonder at this attitude and ask "What manner of god wants us to suffer?" Steve MacNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly has gone so far as to condense our basic philosophy into three words: Life is Good.

This is not to say that we deny the existence of evil: we realize that sometimes life does indeed suck, and that bad things can in fact happen to good people. But we don't view it as our general condition - life lived well in the here and now is our goal and our purpose. Suffering and pain are anomalies to be overcome, not the natural condition of humanity and certainly not things to be sought out purely for their own sakes.

Each day for the past seven years, Matthew Lickona has ended his morning shower by reciting three Hail Marys under a blast of cold water. He does this not because it gives him pleasure but because it doesn't. "I am hoping that this exterior tickle of discomfort will be a reminder that the world is not paradise, no matter how satisfied I feel," Lickona writes in his new memoir, Swimming With Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic , a chronicle of both the questions he has had about his faith and the joy and sustenance he derives from it. "I am hoping that the shock of cold will rouse me from my God-forgetting material stupor, and remind me to offer him, along with this brief suffering, my entire day."

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link