A bridge too far
Prior to my recent life changes, Conservative Swede and I were having a discussion about the merits of Christianity as it pertains to the preservation of the West and the various extant European ethnicities. Swede suggested we go back to our ethnic gods and I've finally gotten around to giving a short answer as to why I disagree. The answer is short because its late and I'm going to try to actually sleep.
The reason I have no desire to going back to worshiping Thor, Odin, and the various other Germanic gods is that I don't see how they can make me right with the true and living God, YHWH, who is described in the Bible. I find no evidence that Thor, Odin, and all the others exist and that they intervened in history to redeem elected men and women to be saved from their sins. I don't particularly know the truth claims of Thorism or Odinism, but I find the claims in the Bible to be true in that they agree with what I see around me, to wit, that man is a fallen, sinful creature, that there is a God from whom morality flows, and that as a good God, He must punish evil. To paraphrase the Heidelberg Catechism, we either pay for our sins ourselves through eternal punishment of body and soul in hell, or someone else must pay for them for us. No mere creature can make the satisfaction for our sins. Question 15 of the Heidelberg Catechism goes on to ask, "What kind of mediator and redeemer, then, must we seek?"
Answer: "One who is a true and righteous man, and yet more powerful than all the creatures, that is, one who is also true God." Scrolling down to question 18, we read, "But who now is that Mediator, who in one person is true God and also a true and righteous man?"
Answer: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is freely given unto us for complete redemption and righteousness."
Did Thor and Odin accomplish what Jesus accomplished to redeem "all that the Father (had given him)?" No. Do they even exist? Certainly not.
As to the charge that Christianity is bad for preserving one's ethnicity because it is a universal religion for all races and ethnicities and not an ethnic expression, I agree in part. Christianity is universal in that sense. But looking back on the history of Christianity in Germany and the rest of the West, I find no evidence that because of it, all European peoples decided to let hostile foreign people (Muslims) move to their country and begin stealing (through welfare) from them and giving up all sense of self preservation. As I wrote in my post, self defense and the sixth commandment, self defense is a duty implied by the Bible's moral law. By extension, self defense of one's people is mandated by the just war theory formulated by various Christian and non-Christian thinkers. Moreover, earthly rulers have a God-given duty to preserve their people, "for their counsel stands under God's final judgment," as the minister reminds us in his prayer every Sunday morning. Letting hostile foreign peoples move in, rape our daughters, and steal our tax money is hardly governing in the fear of God's final judgment, correct?
Lastly, I don't recognize any Thorism or Odinism in the Germany I saw a couple of months ago. If anything, the pagan Roman gods were much more visible, even in Heidelberg castle, which overlooks the chapel where the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism preached. Without Luther, Ursinius, Melanchthon, Beza, Calvin, et al, my ethnic history doesn't interest me very much. From my survey the histories of pre-Christian Germany and other northern European countries, we were all running around acting like idiots prior to Christianity. The Vikings were killing one another when they weren't raising hell in France and other northern European countries and the Germanic tribes were doing the same. Though Christianity was used by the Scandinavian and German rulers (esp. Charlegmagne) as a unifying political force, at least it kept us from offing each other in record numbers and got us to start making and inventing things on our own rather than stealing them. Also, such unification halted the progress of Islam into Europe (under Martel's Christian kingdom) - much to Hitler's dismay, I might add.
Of course, I'm writing all of this in a spirit of friendliness with ConSwede, but when I write hastily I tend to be blunt and undiplomatic. It's also history through my lens. Men of goodwill may disagree.
PRCalDude
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Reader Comments (5)
Is the argument about how to save the West and the civilized world or how to save ethnicity? Ethnicity will mean squat if the ungodly muslim hoards over-run the civilized world. Is the question about which 'god' is the most warlike? (My only dealings with Thor was in the comic books.) I don't see anything within the doctrines of Christianity that would prevent the West from defending itself from islam, since if we gave islam 100% free and unchallenged access to everything they want - Christianity would cease to exist and Christianity does not exist to see itself destroyed. Our problem is we have grown complacent in both our freedom and our service to the One True Living God. Europe seems weary of war at all levels, not realizing that just because you ignore something, doesn't make it go away. The curse of God is upon us now because 'one enemy puts to flight a thousand of the Lord's people' instead of the other way around. islam is ignored at your own peril and especially so now that it's on the move. The West will lose and is losing because we are dancing around the subject.
Is it war? Who is the enemy? Kill them en masse until they surrender. Take what they have. It ain't gonna happen. The West has a collective yeast infection.
Looking at all this eschatologically, I'm wondering if islam isn't the coming one-world religion.
The discussion was over how to save one's ethnicity and should we give up Christianity and start worshiping our organic, ethnic gods because they will be better for preserving the same. My interlocutor, suffice it to say, is not a Christian, but is also not hostile to Christianity like most of the Amren/MajorityRights crowd these days.
Your "service to the true and living God" point seems weird to me coming from a Reformed background. The West is not Old Testament Israel under the theocracy and the Law, so technically, we never did and never could serve the "true and living God" as Westerners. We could do so in our private religion, but I don't believe God deals with any nation today according to the blessing/curse scheme under which Old Testament Israel operated. I think our biggest problem in the West is a lack of plain old testicular fortitude. But half of the population of white people (the SWPL/whiterpeople crowd) simply refuses to have any common sense or self-preservation instinct or any eye towards the future of the civilization they leave to their children, if they have any.
Speaking of low-T, you've gotta read this. What utter drivel coming from a typical media whore. He deserves his monthly alimony burden.
In a way, I'm happy that things are going as they are. Most of the low-T beta males simply don't reproduce and live a life of misery to the shrews they enslave themselves to because of their low-T/femininity.
Your "service to the true and living God" point seems weird...
Yeah, I see what you mean. That was a reference to not having Thor as our god. Not service in the OT sense. I don't want to imply that we are under OT service ideas. I do think there is a cause and effect due to national sin but that it is not related in the same way as OT Israel. Sin running rampant in a country sets off some sort of cascading failure.On a small scale even tho' the 10 commandments don't apply to me, I can still get shot, get STDs, lose everything I've got, from not heeding the advice. I don't keep the '10 commandments,' which irritates some people when I tell them. Christians who are real big on the 'keeping' part don't know their Bible and don't understand that there are 613 commandments that you have to keep if you start down that road. I'd much rather have grace than law. Even tho' I attend a Baptist church, you and I don't disagree on more than 1 or 2 things and they aren't major.
Thor and Odin certainly exist. They are demons.
When we remove our core religion from our culture we remove the core of our culture. Religion is what defines the boundaries of the unknowns and gives us a common purpose greater than ourselves. This is why Islamic culture continues to advance, while Christian culture appears in decline. It is not Christian culture per se that is declining but people in the culture giving up their core beliefs for the more nebulous and undefinable ideologies of secularism or pluralism, etc.
Ethic gods at least represent a core ideology, but the problem is not religion so much as the secular rejection of religion.
The problem with ethnic gods that are not the True Living God is they are often watered down and mixed with other ideologies thereby losing their core.
Fortunatley the True Living God is not controlled by our human religious follies so those of us who follow Him have hope, while others are losing their hope.