Aslaug's Axe Shed

I have noticed a trend in books, these last few weeks. It’s a trend I can -hardly- say I am against, but I am well aware that I risk my neck by saying this. It’s been quite consistent and even today, going into a single bookstore (a very, very well accredited one called Tanum…probably the most posh bookstore in Oslo) I noticed FOUR different books of this type.

I am talking about books that seriously questions Christianity’s basic tennets of existence. Don’t get me wrong, if people want to be Christians they are entirely allowed to be. Heck, I know some very, very decent ones (Tigermark, Silver Coyote, Aramis Dagaz and a number of friends of mine from my everyday life whom no one online would know if I mentioned), who understand that the ideals of Christianity are, and should be, up for debate, even if their personal faith is undisputed. But a lot of Christians out there tend to take the stance that their faith is absolute, it cannot be questioned and it cannot be debated, and that the Bible is completely unassailable, the one, ultimate universal truth and that God is behind this book, come Heaven or high tide.

Well, needless to say, I gravely disagree. I’ve always said that blind faith of any denomination is extremely dangerous, and that it’s worthless. Blind Islamic faith is leading people to tie bombbelts around their waists, blowing themselves up. Blind Christian faith leads people to abuse the earth because ‘God will provide for us, come what may’ and it’s leading to an explosive spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa because the denominations of Christianity that are prevalent there forbid the use of condoms. And these are just examples. All religions are guilty of this sort of thing if they don’t stop and start all criticism with SELF-criticism. Every single time.

Books like ‘Satan – a biography’, ‘Naughty Saints’ and ‘Jesus Misquoted – how the bible was edited and changed’ all seem to play well along with Pope Leo X’s unforgetable quote: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ’. Naturally, Leo was not the most devout Christian in the history of Holy Mother Church and he’s probably best remembered for the absurd debt he managed to aquire and for losing the theological battle against a simple Augustinian monk from Germany, by the name of Martin Luther, but the quote is still thought provoking.

I’ve taken a closer look on these books, and I may very well end up buying at least one, if not more of them. ‘Satan – a biography’ is in fact NOT satanism’s new ‘most favorite piece of literature’. It deals rather nicely with what figure of ‘Satan’ has been used for by the church over the years. ‘Naughty Saints’ depicts a very holy looking man in a Franciscan habit on the front page, he’s got a halo, angels wings…and if you look by his feet, a devil’s tail. The whole book, rather humerously presented and written, is about all the parts that the Catholic church edited out of various saint’s lives before releasing the ‘official story’ on the world. There are thieves, adulterers, usurers, and, if I don’t remember quite wrong, at least one homosexual although I could have been mistaken on that one. The last one I probably found the most interesting since it is written by an actual authority on liturgical history. He has spent several decades retracing the Bible back through the ages, revealing as many deliberate and accidental mistranslations, additions and deletions as he could. It is serious, scholarly work and his conclusion has got to be absolutely mortifying for anyone calling themselves Christians…namely that the bible has been so thorughly corrupted over two thousand years of political abuse, that it is now completely impossible to recreate what Christ actually said.

I’ll let that one stand for a while and let people consider the actual meaning of the word ‘Christian’ in relation to this.

I’ve been accused of being anti-Christian in the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am looking for, though, is a measure of self-criticism in Christianity, which very, very often isn’t there. These books are hardly going to make all of Christendom come crumbling down like a house of cards in a stiff gale, but they may succeed in getting just a few people to ask themselves questions like ‘are we really so sanctimonious?’ or ‘Do we really have a right to be so self-righteous and holier-than-thou?’. Of course, the real hardliners will instantly start flaming authors of such books, because in their sad little worlds, there is no room for ‘error’, ‘personal reflection’ or, Gods help us, ‘doubt’. Such people can, fortunately, be safely discounted as insignificant and, quite frankly, too stupid to bother with. But there are many people out there with the mental capacity necessary to understand that maybe a little reflection and touch of doubt can, in the long run, help to reaffirm their beliefs. Possibly after altering them just a little in some cases, but by and large…this might help some people realize that ‘hey…I still believe the basic -principle- of what I’ve thought all along is right’.

And maybe…just maybe…it will make a biblethumper or two stop their absurdities when they realize that they are in fact not pointing to the word of God, but to the political agendas of Church officials and monks over a period of two millenia. Just maybe.

After all…hope is a pious thing.