A Scot Is Born A Scot A Christian Decides To Be One There Are Untrue Christians

The other day, when I pointed out that the brutality of Christian medieval Europe lacked at least one feature that made the brutal pagan European cultures worse, human sacrifice, I got someone's pinafore in a twist.  I pointed out that any brutality done by those nominal Christians would have been in contradiction to the very teachings of the man they revered as divine, no less a figure than the only Son of God.  That isn't something you can say about the brutality of paganism, warfare and brutality, human sacrifice were part of pagan religion, just those things which made it so popular with some of the most brutal of the Nazis, Himmler, for example.   For those who go all romantic about the Yule, the SS under Himmler were real big on celebrating the "Jule"  there was a special ceramic, the Julleuchter, candle holders created as an award for members of the SS who participated in Nazi celebrations of the Yule, the candle symbolic of the "undying sun" which was apparently, to be associated with Nazism as well as the little yellow star we enjoy.

I have seen identical "Yule lights" sold as neo-pagan holiday items and as decorations on pagan websites, some of them also, neo-Nazi webites ("Heathern English" is one, though I will not post a url for a neo-Nazi website.) There is even an apparent pagan revisionist who  includes a cross and a star of David along with the SS lightning bolts and other Nazi symbols.  I'm not sure of his motives but I doubt they're honest.

It was all part of the promotion of paganism which the Nazi hierarchy were pushing to be an eventual replacement for Christianity, as was, in fact, the pseudo-Christian, "Postitive Christianity" in which everything would be redefined because the original contained such anti-Nazi facts that the man who was held to be the second person in the Godhead was a Jew, all of his earliest named followers were Jews, the morality taught by Jesus was the direct and absolute opposite of what was taught by Nazism, etc.   That a number of those pushing paganism were atheists, such as Alfred Rosenberg, who saw it as something the simple people needed as they were turned into atheists and Nazis rather demonstrates my point.

The Nazi substitute for Christianity, "Positive Christianity" is also useful to refute the line used in the hate mail this post is inspired by,  "No true Scotsman".   There is a problem when applying that pat phrase to what I said in that you can be a true Scotsman by simply being born a Scot, you can be a perfectly good Scot by that simple fact no matter what course of conduct you take.   It's a matter of biological heritage.  You can't say the same thing about Christianity, which is not biological but is based at its rock bottom foundation on belief in the teachings of Jesus. The extent to which you follow those is the extent to which you are being good at practicing Christianity, of "being a true Christian" if you will.  The extent to which you violate and contradict those teachings is the extent to which you are being an untrue Christian.   Someone who followed the Nazis' "Positive Christianity" was in no way a true Christian.

That many such have pretended to be successful at being Christians is something which is, as well, a part of the Gospel of Jesus.  Over and over again he noted there were and would be people who professed their belief in his teachings only to prove by their actions that they don't.  He said there would be false prophets who led people astray.   The Gospels show that Jesus wasn't under any illusions as to that, it would also be false to his teachings for anyone professing Christianity to not admit to it and to question, critically those who profess their Christianity especially when their actions are radically in opposition to the moral teachings that define Christianity.

You would never say that someone who insisted on doing their arithmetic wrong was a "true mathematician" you wouldn't say that someone who, despite their having a doctorate in Biology, denied the reality of evolution or the scientific method was being a "true scientist".   Like science, Christianity is something that you adopt as a conscious choice, it's not something you're born to.  You can't say that even a Scot who betrays Scotland isn't a true Scotsman, their parents determined that at conception.  You can easily say someone isn't being a true scientist or Christian because those choices are entirely in their own hands.  That phrase in that context should be put away because it is especially ill considered.  That it seems to have been the biology teacher, P.Z. Myers who has popularized it among atheists is especially revealing of his lapse in analytical rigor, he's had a number of those.