Pagan World

That’s the first thought that popped into my mind last Saturday. We’re living in a post-Christian world. A pagan world.

Me and the little ones were running errands and I stopped by a new library in a town I was unfamiliar with. The town is very upscale, very wooded, but off a main highway and only six or seven miles from my house. The library appeared quite new, perhaps only fifteen years old or so. There were display cases on the first floor, a very modern, kid-friendly children’s room, and a long spiral staircase up to the second floor where all the nonfiction is housed.

We were up there when I passed by the reference librarian. She was clicking away on her PC. Middle-aged (meaning, my age), short dark hair, a very professional and business-like outfit. As I passed by her, though, I did a double-take. I looped around and passed her again, inconspicuously, to verify what I saw out of the corner of my eye.

She had a big circular tattoo on the back of her neck. Two, two-and-a-half inches in diameter. I’m not sure exactly what it was of, but it seemed to me to be some sort of Buddhist symbol. I did have a short phase in the 90s where I explored Zen Buddhism, and this symbol seemed like the ones I recall from the books I read. It was either that or some sort of spiraling labyrinth.

That word, pagan, was the first conscious thought to rise up in my mind.

Anyway, I went to the very back to check out the 900s. History. Looking for something weird and funky (but not tattoo’d) to jump out at me. I found a book that claimed to list the “1,000 days that changed the world.” I took it off the shelf and decided to put it to the test.

First off, the authors use the whole BCE / CE thing that I sort of mock, here. Sometimes that’s disguised anti-Christian sentiment, sometimes it is a legitimate if foolish attempt at “scientific” objectivity. I turned to the front to scan the table of contents. If you’re a Christian, as 85 percent of us profess to be in polls, there are two possible “days” that had the greatest effect on the world: the Nativity and the Crucifixion / Resurrection. I decided to see what the authors say about these days.

Thankfully, the book was arranged chronologically as opposed to order of importance. If the latter was the case, I’d expect to see the Nativity at around page 185 and the Crucifixion / Resurrection at page 107. Instead, I flipped to “c. 30 CE” and read what they had to say about the defining event of Christianity.

I had to stop after the first sentence. Unfortunately, I have to paraphrase, but the author began by noting the “disappearance of the body” from the burial tomb, and described how “many came to believe that Christ had rose from the dead.” Ugh. To be most charitable, it’s just plain ugly in its clinical objectivity. To be slightly less charitable, it’s a slander to me and millions others like me, and our beliefs.

Again the word pagan resonated in my head.

As my two-year-old daughter says, “Welcome to America. This is smicky.”

But there’s hope. There is an oft-trotted out observation that I try to remember when confronted with such intelligentsia-driven agenda. “We are a nation of Indians governed by Swedes.” India is often described in polls and the like as having the greatest percentage of spiritual believers; Sweden is likewise noted to be one of the most atheistic societies on the planet.

“We are a nation of Indians governed by Swedes.”

That’s smicky.