A SOFT PAGANISM

 

Last week, when Pope Francis was visiting the country of Hungry, he used a new image while speaking to religious and clergy leaders. He warned of a ‘soft paganism’ shaping the European culture.

 

When Christianity arrived on the scene in the first centuries, they viewed all other people as pagan, that is, as people who worshipped the wrong or non-existent gods. There was a line that divided those who worshipped the one true God in Jesus Christ and all the rest. 

 

We come out of a history where we assumed that everyone believed in God and was eager to follow the teaching of the Bible. If there were people who were hesitant about believing they played a very low profile.

 

There also was no room to discuss the possibility that many people felt indifferent towards a religious faith. Life as going well for them. Why the need to serve a higher power?

 

By using an old noun to describe the current situation means that we are recognizing that many people may have a very comfortable life style and have wonderful human values, but live their lives as if the divine was superfluous. Simply put, the core values of the Gospel and the central person, Jesus Christ, does not matter. 

 

In this understanding of being a pagan means that the divine does not really matter to my life.

 

Now, those who claim to be the followers of Jesus Christ and walk on his path are being challenged: does my religious identity actually make a difference to my life or am I just going along with the motions?

 

It is very healthy to be challenged along the way. It makes us sit up and claim ownership over our religious beliefs and live out their impact in our daily life.

 

It means reclaiming that God has asked us to take off every seventh day for prayer, thanksgiving and worship. It means taking this time off for rest and recreation; all the while trusting that God will provide. There is a weekly rhythm to our life.

 

It means learning to live the Sunday Eucharist where we take the teachings of Jesus, week by week, and apply them to our lives in family, our work and in the larger Canadian society.  

 

And it means growing in sensitivity to the poor right around us. Too often people are forgotten who are suffering and in distress. When our heart is in harmony with the heart of Christ, we

 will be moved to care about others: the lost, the least and the last.

 

When we use the adjective ‘soft’ beside the noun ‘paganism’ we see that we could be saying all the correct Christian words but actually be living by very secularistic values. We may be a very fine human being but what moves us are just human values.

 

Christianity is not doing nice religious things but being shaped by the values of the Gospel. Our lives then become a living testimony to the reality of God. Pagan can mean just going through the religious motions.

 

This needs a lot more reflection on the part of our Christian people but naming a weak following of the Gospel as a ‘soft paganism’ is very challenging.