{"id":6029,"date":"2011-11-01T01:10:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T06:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=6190"},"modified":"2011-10-22T18:31:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T23:31:16","slug":"pagan-theology-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2011\/11\/01\/pagan-theology-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Pagan Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guilt<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Samhain this year our group will be putting on a ritual themed around the idea of atonement.\u00a0 Not the \u201cfeel bad, please forgive my rotten mess\u201d kind of atonement, but the idea of reviewing the past year, our actions, and their effects in order to see what we can do to affect our fates in the coming year.\u00a0 In structuring the ritual I began to realize just how closely aligned atonement, review, contemplation, actions, effects, and other items normally associated with all these bad ideas of \u201csin\u201d and \u201cguilt\u201d are closely aligned with the Pagan concept of fate.<\/p>\n

For Christians all these ideas are very closely linked through the idea of punishment.\u00a0 You do the crime you do the time, unless you are forgiven.\u00a0 For Pagans it\u2019s more of a weaving together of our past actions with how we plan to act in the future.\u00a0 The future is always dependent on the past and its interpretation, and if we seek to know the future we need to understand our past and what we did and what effects we caused. \u00a0This balance between understanding the past, and figuring out how we are going to act in the future, seems like a very good subject to think about at this time of the new year.<\/p>\n

But first, lets talk about sin and guilt.\u00a0 Oh dear, I\u2019m already feeling bad I brought all this up\u2026<\/p>\n

Within the religions of the book, sin, punishment, unworthiness, and just general low self-esteem seems to be the rule of the day.\u00a0 Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy day of atonement is an example of this tendency toward a focus on sin and forgiveness of sin that occupies these religions.\u00a0\u00a0 A person can commit many different \u201ccrimes,\u201d from those against god to against man, or even the laws of the church (or people).\u00a0 These transgressions are tied into your fate through the idea of punishment.\u00a0 If your sins or transgressions are not somehow forgiven or made up for, then you can expect bad things to happen to you either in the coming year (Judaism) or for all eternity (Christianity, always upping the ante).<\/p>\n

In modern religious interpretations of these concepts sin becomes guilt and unhappy feelings.\u00a0 Guilt.\u00a0 If the threat of some sort of supernatural punishment fails in the face of modern science, then feelings of hurt and unworthiness can easily substitute.\u00a0\u00a0 If the religious cannot make you scared of punishment, at least they can make you feel bad about yourself and your actions.<\/p>\n

Ultimately I believe this is a form of bullying.\u00a0 Actions or thoughts that are not illegal, or even potentially harmful, are used as reasons to exclude individuals as \u201cbad\u201d or not worthy of belonging.\u00a0 Bullying is a way to exercise power, and guilt for actions that are not harmful is an easy way to accomplish that.\u00a0 One of the worst examples are the attempts to make homosexuals feel shame or guilt for being who they are.<\/p>\n

Modern Pagan religions categorically reject any concept of sin, or even guilt, as a motivator for behavior or our relationship with deity.\u00a0 We don\u2019t offend against the rules of the Gods and Goddesses, though we may offend them [1].\u00a0 Often this rejection of sin and guilt seems to be a visceral reaction to the pervasive use of these emotions as a way to bully those who don\u2019t conform to the norm into behaving themselves.\u00a0 People who are raised in homes where disapproval is a pervasive way of interacting can feel joy and relief in a religion that rejects the entire concept.<\/p>\n

A more fundamental reason for rejecting the idea of sin is that there is no sin in the world.\u00a0 There is harm, there is suffering, but they are part of a balance of natural laws that provide for joy as well as suffering, for pleasure and pain.\u00a0 Only when you step outside of the context of the natural world, into the realm of transcendent \u201cPlatonic\u201d ideals do you find fault independent of harm.\u00a0 There is harm, and hurt, and things that are to be avoided, but none of those things are somehow \u201cagainst\u201d the world.\u00a0 It would be as if your left arm were against your right one.\u00a0 It does not make sense to categorize good and evil as opposites in continual battle, rather they are manifest traits of what it is in the world.\u00a0 That, of course, does not justify embracing evil that does harm, but at the same time we cannot categorize as \u201cevil\u201d things that do no harm but are disapproved of.<\/p>\n

Nor do can we characterize something as evil because it violates some rule.\u00a0 First, there are no rules, just natural laws that everyone operates under.\u00a0 Second, the Gods and Goddesses have better things to do than fiddle around in our affairs, like tending to their own.\u00a0 As the great Father and Mother they expect us to behave ourselves, but they don\u2019t manifest and punish us if we don\u2019t.\u00a0 The world will take care of that for them.<\/p>\n

Theistically we would say that dark and light are manifest visions of the Lord and Lady, both of them embodied in different Gods and Goddesses who represent all manner of good and ill.\u00a0 Our Gods and Goddesses are not exclusive in their goodness, some Gods and Goddesses manifest the darkness as well.\u00a0 War, pain, suffering, selfishness, greed, power, hunger, and more are all embodied in various Gods and Goddesses within each tribal tradition.\u00a0 While we are not going to be super best friends with these Gods and Goddesses, we respect their power and can call on them to give us some of their authority, power, and decisiveness.<\/p>\n

So, for us, sin is a meaningless concept, and we mainly seek to avoid doing harm to others because that itself is a good way to live [2].<\/p>\n

But is there a Pagan form to the idea of rectifying bad results from the past.\u00a0 A friend of mine would say this is \u201cowning your own shit.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0If you have caused harm, or done something wrong, then understanding that you have done harm, and \u201cowning\u201d it or accepting that it is part of you, if fundamental to a Pagan ethic.\u00a0 From a theological perspective this means that we are applying the idea of \u201cas above, so below\u201d to the idea of transgression.\u00a0 If good and evil coexist in the world, and within the Gods and Goddesses, then they also coexist within ourselves.\u00a0 We are both good and evil, we have elements of both in all we do.\u00a0 When we own our actions we admit that we have done harm and, hopefully, seek to set it right.\u00a0 That is a form of sin, and atonement.<\/p>\n

This is different from the Christian concept of sin. Instead of seeing that inherent capacity for doing harm in all of us as \u201cevil\u201d we see it as \u201cnatural.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously common sense, ethics, and much federal and state law would say that we should try and not act on our evil natures.\u00a0 But we accept that it is within us and not somehow an alien that must be rejected.\u00a0 And, because it is part of us, we don\u2019t need to be forgiven for it, we need to acknowledge it and do right in spite of it.<\/p>\n

Who would we ask for forgiveness from anyway?\u00a0 Dagda has his own problems if the tales be true, and Morrigan would merely laugh at the insignificance of our problems.\u00a0 We need to be fully responsible for both sides of our natures, and not lean on the Gods and Goddesses to somehow save us from them.<\/p>\n

Pagan atonement comes from changing that which we were, and growing into that which we could be.\u00a0 If we can change, and everything that She touches does change, then we can seek to change in ways that make our lives, and the lives of those around us, less hurtful, better.\u00a0\u00a0 Reviewing our actions in the past, living with our shit for a while, can show us what we have done, and to whom.\u00a0 This can be actions that have caused harm to family, or to the world.\u00a0 No one who lives in this country, or has the ability to read this column, has done no harm.\u00a0 We have all harmed the natural world, we have all caused harm in many ways and places we may not even know about.\u00a0 What we consume leaves less for someone else (I\u2019m talking to you: guy ahead of me in line for the new IPhone).\u00a0 \u00a0Instead of forgiving it away we should be thinking about how to fix it.<\/p>\n

Pagan atonement means not asking for forgiveness but rather asking about fate.\u00a0 What is our fate if we continue to do harm?\u00a0 What will happen to us in the future if we continue to do what we are doing?\u00a0\u00a0 Will harm come back to us (maybe, like, threefold?)\u00a0 Can we change that fate by changing our actions?<\/p>\n

Fate, of course, is more than just \u201cwhat\u2019s going to happen to me in the future?\u201d\u00a0 Fate, in the Northern traditions, is a much more complex subject.\u00a0 It is the weave of the world, the relationship between all that exists and time.\u00a0 It carries us along as it carries along the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 This idea of fate as the underlying fabric of everything in the universe means that fate affects everything and everything we do affects our fates, as well as everyone else\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

Thus Pagan atonement is more than just simply trying to review our past and minimize harm in the future.\u00a0 Rather it is a process by which we examine our lives, and prune or shape that which drives us away from the Gods and Goddesses and increase that which drives us toward them.\u00a0 Things that drive us away include hurtful actions, thoughtless work, and diminished expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 Working for and with others for a better world, walking gently on the environment, and loving as hard as we can expand our spirits into the realm of the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 Our spirits are of the same spark as the Gods and the Goddesses but we have a long path to travel to reach them.\u00a0 Every now and then we see who they are and what we can be when we arrive on our journey.\u00a0 When we love, when we are gracious, when we have joy in the natural world, we can see where our spirits are going, we can see our fate.<\/p>\n

Pagan atonement allows us to examine who we are, what we are doing, and what we need to do to reach the other side.\u00a0 What have we done that increases our spirit, and what have we done that decreases it?\u00a0 That is the real question for atonement, to ask how we increase in spirit until we join the Gods and Goddesses in the dance of life.<\/p>\n

There is no sin in any of this, no feeling guilty because of who or what you are.\u00a0 The need to feel guilty as a way to push us toward the good is a trivial force compared to the reward that comes from becoming closer to the Gods and Goddesses, increasing our spirits until we can see their realms clearly, until we can hear their words and touch their hands.\u00a0 At that point we will be without need of forgiveness, and we will be fulfilled without anyone\u2019s mercy.<\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0 But what about the potential for very real trouble when we call or cross the wrong entity, or when entities that exist come into the world and our lives in ways that are harmful?\u00a0 I would argue that this is essentially no different than what happens with corporeal entities (family, friends, strangers) that come into your life.\u00a0 You may end up offending some, becoming a target of a nasty individual, or just get mixed up with bad people.\u00a0 If the Gods and Goddesses are entities with personalities and attributes just like what we have, you would expect those kind of reactions from them.\u00a0\u00a0 But what I would contend they don\u2019t do is pass judgment on our behavior based on a set of rules and regulations, and then punish us for our transgressions.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0 Elsewhere I have argued that an essentially humanist set of arguments makes the most sense when considering Pagan ethics.\u00a0 A perfectly good ethical system can be derived from a deep respect for life, the right for conscious beings to make their own decisions, and the idea that we all need to get along and work together, amongst other ideas.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to introduce deity in order to develop an ethical system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guilt For Samhain this year our group will be putting on a ritual themed around the idea of atonement.\u00a0 Not the \u201cfeel bad, please forgive my rotten mess\u201d kind of atonement, but the idea of reviewing the past year, our actions, and their effects in order to see what we can do to affect our fates in the coming year.\u00a0 In structuring the ritual I began to realize just how closely aligned atonement, review, contemplation, actions, effects, and other items normally associated with all these bad ideas of \u201csin\u201d and \u201cguilt\u201d are closely aligned with the Pagan concept of fate. For Christians all these ideas are very closely linked through the idea of punishment.\u00a0 You do the crime you do the time, unless you are forgiven.\u00a0 For Pagans it\u2019s more of a weaving together of our past actions with how we plan to act in the future.\u00a0 The future is always dependent on the past and its interpretation, and if we seek to know the future we need to understand our past and what we did and what effects we caused. \u00a0This balance between understanding the past, and figuring out how we are going to act in the future, seems like a very good subject to think about at this time of the new year. But first, lets talk about sin and guilt.\u00a0 Oh dear, I\u2019m already feeling bad I brought all this up\u2026 Within the religions of the book, sin, punishment, unworthiness, and just general low self-esteem seems to be the rule of the day.\u00a0 Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy day of atonement is an example of this tendency toward a focus on sin and forgiveness of sin that occupies these religions.\u00a0\u00a0 A person can commit many different \u201ccrimes,\u201d from those against god to against man, or even the laws of the church (or people).\u00a0 These transgressions are tied into your fate through the idea of punishment.\u00a0 If your sins or transgressions are not somehow forgiven or made up for, then you can expect bad things to happen to you either in the coming year (Judaism) or for all eternity (Christianity, always upping the ante). In modern religious interpretations of these concepts sin becomes guilt and unhappy feelings.\u00a0 Guilt.\u00a0 If the threat of some sort of supernatural punishment fails in the face of modern science, then feelings of hurt and unworthiness can easily substitute.\u00a0\u00a0 If the religious cannot make you scared of punishment, at least they can make you feel bad about yourself and your actions. Ultimately I believe this is a form of bullying.\u00a0 Actions or thoughts that are not illegal, or even potentially harmful, are used as reasons to exclude individuals as \u201cbad\u201d or not worthy of belonging.\u00a0 Bullying is a way to exercise power, and guilt for actions that are not harmful is an easy way to accomplish that.\u00a0 One of the worst examples are the attempts to make homosexuals feel shame or guilt for being who they are. Modern Pagan religions categorically reject any concept of sin, or even guilt, as a motivator for behavior or our relationship with deity.\u00a0 We don\u2019t offend against the rules of the Gods and Goddesses, though we may offend them [1].\u00a0 Often this rejection of sin and guilt seems to be a visceral reaction to the pervasive use of these emotions as a way to bully those who don\u2019t conform to the norm into behaving themselves.\u00a0 People who are raised in homes where disapproval is a pervasive way of interacting can feel joy and relief in a religion that rejects the entire concept. A more fundamental reason for rejecting the idea of sin is that there is no sin in the world.\u00a0 There is harm, there is suffering, but they are part of a balance of natural laws that provide for joy as well as suffering, for pleasure and pain.\u00a0 Only when you step outside of the context of the natural world, into the realm of transcendent \u201cPlatonic\u201d ideals do you find fault independent of harm.\u00a0 There is harm, and hurt, and things that are to be avoided, but none of those things are somehow \u201cagainst\u201d the world.\u00a0 It would be as if your left arm were against your right one.\u00a0 It does not make sense to categorize good and evil as opposites in continual battle, rather they are manifest traits of what it is in the world.\u00a0 That, of course, does not justify embracing evil that does harm, but at the same time we cannot categorize as \u201cevil\u201d things that do no harm but are disapproved of. Nor do can we characterize something as evil because it violates some rule.\u00a0 First, there are no rules, just natural laws that everyone operates under.\u00a0 Second, the Gods and Goddesses have better things to do than fiddle around in our affairs, like tending to their own.\u00a0 As the great Father and Mother they expect us to behave ourselves, but they don\u2019t manifest and punish us if we don\u2019t.\u00a0 The world will take care of that for them. Theistically we would say that dark and light are manifest visions of the Lord and Lady, both of them embodied in different Gods and Goddesses who represent all manner of good and ill.\u00a0 Our Gods and Goddesses are not exclusive in their goodness, some Gods and Goddesses manifest the darkness as well.\u00a0 War, pain, suffering, selfishness, greed, power, hunger, and more are all embodied in various Gods and Goddesses within each tribal tradition.\u00a0 While we are not going to be super best friends with these Gods and Goddesses, we respect their power and can call on them to give us some of their authority, power, and decisiveness. So, for us, sin is a meaningless concept, and we mainly seek to avoid doing harm to others because that itself is a good way to live [2]. But is there a Pagan form to the idea of rectifying bad results from the past.\u00a0 A friend of mine would say this is \u201cowning your own shit.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0If you have caused harm, or done something wrong, then understanding that you have done harm, and \u201cowning\u201d it or accepting that it is part of you, if fundamental to a Pagan ethic.\u00a0 From a theological perspective this means that we are applying the idea of \u201cas above, so below\u201d to the idea of transgression.\u00a0 If good and evil coexist in the world, and within the Gods and Goddesses, then they also coexist within ourselves.\u00a0 We are both good and evil, we have elements of both in all we do.\u00a0 When we own our actions we admit that we have done harm and, hopefully, seek to set it right.\u00a0 That is a form of sin, and atonement. This is different from the Christian concept of sin. Instead of seeing that inherent capacity for doing harm in all of us as \u201cevil\u201d we see it as \u201cnatural.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously common sense, ethics, and much federal and state law would say that we should try and not act on our evil natures.\u00a0 But we accept that it is within us and not somehow an alien that must be rejected.\u00a0 And, because it is part of us, we don\u2019t need to be forgiven for it, we need to acknowledge it and do right in spite of it. Who would we ask for forgiveness from anyway?\u00a0 Dagda has his own problems if the tales be true, and Morrigan would merely laugh at the insignificance of our problems.\u00a0 We need to be fully responsible for both sides of our natures, and not lean on the Gods and Goddesses to somehow save us from them. Pagan atonement comes from changing that which we were, and growing into that which we could be.\u00a0 If we can change, and everything that She touches does change, then we can seek to change in ways that make our lives, and the lives of those around us, less hurtful, better.\u00a0\u00a0 Reviewing our actions in the past, living with our shit for a while, can show us what we have done, and to whom.\u00a0 This can be actions that have caused harm to family, or to the world.\u00a0 No one who lives in this country, or has the ability to read this column, has done no harm.\u00a0 We have all harmed the natural world, we have all caused harm in many ways and places we may not even know about.\u00a0 What we consume leaves less for someone else (I\u2019m talking to you: guy ahead of me in line for the new IPhone).\u00a0 \u00a0Instead of forgiving it away we should be thinking about how to fix it. Pagan atonement means not asking for forgiveness but rather asking about fate.\u00a0 What is our fate if we continue to do harm?\u00a0 What will happen to us in the future if we continue to do what we are doing?\u00a0\u00a0 Will harm come back to us (maybe, like, threefold?)\u00a0 Can we change that fate by changing our actions? Fate, of course, is more than just \u201cwhat\u2019s going to happen to me in the future?\u201d\u00a0 Fate, in the Northern traditions, is a much more complex subject.\u00a0 It is the weave of the world, the relationship between all that exists and time.\u00a0 It carries us along as it carries along the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 This idea of fate as the underlying fabric of everything in the universe means that fate affects everything and everything we do affects our fates, as well as everyone else\u2019s fate. Thus Pagan atonement is more than just simply trying to review our past and minimize harm in the future.\u00a0 Rather it is a process by which we examine our lives, and prune or shape that which drives us away from the Gods and Goddesses and increase that which drives us toward them.\u00a0 Things that drive us away include hurtful actions, thoughtless work, and diminished expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 Working for and with others for a better world, walking gently on the environment, and loving as hard as we can expand our spirits into the realm of the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 Our spirits are of the same spark as the Gods and the Goddesses but we have a long path to travel to reach them.\u00a0 Every now and then we see who they are and what we can be when we arrive on our journey.\u00a0 When we love, when we are gracious, when we have joy in the natural world, we can see where our spirits are going, we can see our fate. Pagan atonement allows us to examine who we are, what we are doing, and what we need to do to reach the other side.\u00a0 What have we done that increases our spirit, and what have we done that decreases it?\u00a0 That is the real question for atonement, to ask how we increase in spirit until we join the Gods and Goddesses in the dance of life. There is no sin in any of this, no feeling guilty because of who or what you are.\u00a0 The need to feel guilty as a way to push us toward the good is a trivial force compared to the reward that comes from becoming closer to the Gods and Goddesses, increasing our spirits until we can see their realms clearly, until we can hear their words and touch their hands.\u00a0 At that point we will be without need of forgiveness, and we will be fulfilled without anyone\u2019s mercy. [1]\u00a0 But what about the potential for very real trouble when we call or cross the wrong entity, or when entities that exist come into the world and our lives in ways that are harmful?\u00a0 I would argue that this is essentially no different than what happens with corporeal entities (family, friends, strangers) that come into your life.\u00a0 You may end up offending some, becoming a target of a nasty individual, or just get mixed up with bad people.\u00a0 If the Gods and Goddesses are entities with personalities and attributes just like what we have, you would expect those kind of reactions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}