Mankind needs ritual, communal worship, mystery, myth. We are lost without it. Paul speaks of the knowledge of the divine in the heart of everyone, and Moses warns against the inborn urge to worship the starry heavens. Every society is deeply religious. This is quite self-evident, any brief survey of history will bear this claim out. From the worship for Baal in the desert, to the reverence for Odin in the green wood, the deeply religious medieval ages, or the statist utopian dreams of the Marxists, humanity looks for a god to worship; they may not have the correct god, but have one they must. Modern man is in between gods right now, and has been for quite some time. We are deeply ‘Christ haunted’ from two-thousand years of Christian influence. This can not be overlooked. For hundreds of years some sort of church figure has baptized, married, and buried the bulk of western peoples, and this alone proves the deep imprint of the faith delivered once to the saints. Political figures, from Constantine to Donald Trump, for one reason or another, have claimed their countries as Christian nations. I am not saying that all these men were faithful Christians, or even that the bulk of them were, nor am I implying that all policies and traditions were faithful to the Christian ideal. But it is indisputable that the politics, literature, faith, and morals of most western peoples have been deeply impacted by Jesus Christ. Even those who are seeking to destroy the faith are operating within the preconditions of the Christianity. Read Nietzsche. He can not set forth his ideas without first trying to show what he thought were the weaknesses of the church. Many Christian thinkers claim that the west worships at the altar of materialism; this may be true, in part, yet the overwhelming masses of Americans, at least, claim some type of watered down, heretical Christianity. Humanity needs a myth. The combined narrative of individualistic materialism coupled with a Christian veil is our national faith. This is, however, a very unsatisfying faith. It lacks much in the way of community, ritual, and poetry; it is bland. It is anti everything that makes people human. It contains a twisted remnant of the Golden Rule of Christ, with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and the anti-traditionalism of consumerism. Christianity provides a myth (that is true), a community, traditions, and rituals. Although the modern evangelical church has borrowed so much from materialism that it is quite weak in these things. The paganism of pre-Christian days is also chock-full of these humanizing elements. There are two options: either a return to paganism or Christendom. Both provide a tradition and a community that will satisfy the human cravings for these things. But one is bloody and dark, leading to hell; while the other is clothed in light, leading to the Beatific vision. Choose wisely.
Reflective Wanderer 