Mark Green's Atheopaganism Blog

This week, Christians are celebrating their belief that someone rose from the dead, and—for unclear and not entirely logical reasons—that they are therefore absolved of a moral stain they believe they were born with.

I do not subscribe to any of that.

I don’t believe in original sin. I don’t believe in life after death, much less heaven and hell. And I certainly don’t believe that a human sacrifice has any pertinence to the moral character of anyone other than the people doing the sacrificing…and in that case, it’s a negative.

I don’t find the Christian moral argument to be persuasive, and I find many of the values that are supported by their mythology to be toxic and destructive: formulas for cruelty and judgment and unhappiness.

I believe in joy. And kindness. And equality. And wonder. And reason. And loving stewardship of the Sacred Earth.

Not in blind obedience to an imagined god. Not in sexual shame and morbid, obsessive guilt. Not in people being small and cowed and dictated-to, but rather to their unfolding in the fullness of all the magnificence they have the capacity to be.

And certainly not in the idea that appealing to some long-dead (if ever alive) sacrificial figure can “absolve” a person of responsibility for their behaviors.

Suffice it to say, “Happy Easter” strikes me as both grating and an oxymoron.

Many Pagans, too, fall into the error of subscribing to the idea that following death, there is “rebirth”. It’s easy to make this mistake by watching cycles of annual plants and deciduous trees.

But there is no rebirth. There is only life. And then death. And then another generation of life.

This is your life. Your one, sole, precious and glorious life. 

Atheopaganism is about joy, yes—but it is also about reality. It is about finding joy in reality. No pretty delusional stories. No kidding ourselves.

It is about opening ourselves to the glory of this. Real. World. Challenging and exquisite as it can be.

So live it, friends.

Happy Spring!