MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Sun, 01 May 2005

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]

/Asatru | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 5/4/2005 13:34:34
Lickona wrote

Life is indeed good.

Mr. Haxton, I don't say I think the world is a bad place, I say it's not paradise. By this, I mean it's not the best place - that there is a better place. The world is a good place - this is clear from experience (it's so good that I have to remind myself it's not paradise, after all), from Scripture ("God saw that it was good"), and from theology (God, being essentially good, cannot create evil, so creation must be good). My own life is rife with blessings, it does not at all suck. Nor do I seek to make it suck. I do, however, seek to embrace suffering. Suffering is not a good in itself, and I don't say that it is. What manner of God wants us to suffer? One who suffered for us. Christians believe Christ is God, and that His suffering and death were redemptive for humanity. Christ says in the gospel that if we are to be worthy of him, we must take up our own crosses - that is, we must bear our sufferings for His sake. St. Paul says that we "make up in our own bodies what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" for the salvation of the world. We join our sufferings to the redemptive work of the cross. Suffering is not sought out for its own sake, but for the sake of conforming ourselves to Christ, for our own sakes and for the sake of others. That does not make suffering "natural and right," but it does make it worthwhile.

On 5/4/2005 17:38:55
Dave H wrote

Well...

That's a start! And before I go further, let me say that I'm honored to have the subject of this article leave a comment on my humble efforts at commentary, and that I certainly mean no disrespect to you personally. That being said, I still believe that Christianity (and I'll stick specifically to Christians here, so as not to confuse the issue) holds at it's very core that suffering is the natural course of life in Midgard. I can offer several instances of evidence for my views from "standard" Christian theology. First is the doctrine of the redemption - mankind, in the Christian view, is irredeemably sinful without the intervention of God, specifically in the "passion" (suffering) and death/resurrection of the Christ. I would say that being inherently and irredeemably sinful constitutes a good start towards a life of "suffering", not to mention that the central figure of the redemption is, of course, the suffering Christ. And apparently I'm in pretty fair company in my amateur exegesis: the late pope issued an encyclical entitled "On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering" in February of 1984, which pretty much spells out the central role of suffering humanity in the Catholic scheme of things. And without getting into a debate about how an omniscient, omnipotent god who created the Universe could have avoided creating (or at least being responsible for) evil, I think you'll agree that in Christian theology the world is a mere way station for humanity - as you point out, "it's not the best place - that there is a better place". This is, I believe, the crux of our disagreement: I believe that Midgard (this world) is in fact the best possible place for mankind, and that it is where we are supposed to be in the grand scheme of things, and that, while other realms may exist, humans are transitory in them, if they pass through them at all, and that this world contains our manifest destiny. To some extent, this could be viewed as the classic disagreement between the optimist and the pessimist. The former (Heathen) sees the glass of water as half full, while the latter (Christian) sees it as half empty. And sometimes it's hard to tell we're actually looking at the same glass! I was mistaken to characterize Christianity as seeking suffering for it's own sake. As you so aptly pointed out, Christians seek it for their fellows and their gods, not as an end unto itself. Although I also believe that if you look at the issue through my glasses, you'll see how I would've very easily slipped into that error of ascribed intent. Thanks again for your insightful comments. Be well, Dave H.

:: Categories ::

agriculture
asatru
copywrongs
humor
musings
politics
technology
index
haxton.org

:: Search ::

:: Blogroll ::

A Mindful Life
The Accidental Smallholder
Austro-Athenian Empire
Cauldron Born
Center for a Stateless Society
Dances with Ewes
Dispatches
egregores
Hardscrabble Creek
Honk & Helen
In Siberia
Laudator Temporis Acti
Lorrie's Livejournal
Masson's Blog
MyAppleMenu
NoNAIS
Notes on Religion
Numenous Thoughts
OrangeGuru
Overlawyered
Prophet or Madman
rogueclassicism
Sugar Mountain Farm
Thud Factor
Universe of Discourse
Wildhunt Blog
within the crainium

:: Archives ::

←December→
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

:: Site ::

Contact Me

MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

lunar phases

Unless otherwise noted, all original
work on this site is licensed under a

comment...


Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.

Name:
URL:	(optional)
Title:	(optional)
Comments:
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time