Should I Fear my Gods?

I received a comment to my post on A Skewed Vision which, because of its content, I wish to address here. Chuck asked me “Um, you have no fear of God? Will you also live forever so you never need to face your creator?” This is an excellent question, and it deserves a full and complete answer:

Fear the Gods? Why would I fear the Gods? The word religio, or religion, for the Romans, was defined as “a proper reasonable awe of the gods” and its opposite, superstition, as “an excessive fear or awe of the gods” which, as Porphyry stated, bypasses true piety, which is in turn defined as “worship of the gods in accordance with the traditions of one’s ancestors”. Cicero felt that religio becomes supstitiosa if it is infected with “new or strange rites” or if it arouses “irrational fears”. Horace asserts that superstitio is morbus mentis, that is, it disturbs mens minds in such a way that he is really going insane. And Seneca argues that superstitio involves a reversal of nature’s order.

Plutarch said that the superstitious man believes in gods who are “rash, faithless, fickle, vengeful, cruel, and easily offended.” Sound familiar? Yes, this certainly seems to describe YHWH. For Plutarch superstition is as great a form of impiety as atheism and in fact, it leads to atheism.

For that reason, Chuck, both Judaism and Christianity are superstitions.

Superstitio is like an infectious disease, a tabum, that spreads more and more; by its very contagiousness it becomes a real danger to mankind – as Christianity’s rise has proven.

As Pagans we must then utterly reject the Christian definition of superstition as “attitudes and beliefs” it sees as morally wrong in order to differentiate between “false beliefs” of “pagans” and the “true and correct” beliefs of Christianity. Whatever the hijacked terms have come to mean today, by the proper and original definition of religion and superstition, Christianity is itself superstition, and paganism, as Celsus asserted some eighteen centuries ago, is the True Doctrine – in other words, true religion.

People should not be afraid of their Gods, Chuck. A God who rules by fear is not much of a God.

To all the Pagans out there: If we limit ourselves to the language of Christianity, to its definition of such things as “religion’ and “superstition” and “pagan” – not to mention lower case gods and pagan instead of upper case Gods and Pagan to match “God” and “Christian” – we will go right where we are meant to go. As can be seen, there is a real problem with definitions. Modern scholarship, so long dependent upon a Christian paradigm, has a difficult time defining and understanding these vibrant belief systems without also demeaning and marginalizing them. By retaining Christian definitions we will always view the Pagan world through a Christian lens and we will have advanced our knowledge not at all. It is therefore incumbent upon Pagans today to take control of the language and make it their own, and return the ideas of religion, superstition and the Gods themselves to their rightful place. It is our world too, and we should not depend upon others to define and describe it to us.