Everything I Don't Like Is Pagan

I am from an Armstrongist background. Armstrongism is a fringe Protestant group split off from Seventh Day Adventism. There are a few pillars which the system rests on: doomsday prophecy, Saturday Sabbath, Old Covenant legalism, a couple other points, and finally the belief it and it alone is a super-exclusive system revealed by God to the mind of Herbert Armstrong (through various sources like his time as a Minister in the COG7 church, the Watchtower Society publications, the Mormons, the book "Main Kampf", and G. G. Rupert's material, to name a few).

Being "the one true church" practically requires Armstrongism to attack other systems. This means anything Armstrongists are are not familiar with, anything foreign to the every day humdrum of modern push-button, leisure life, is assigned the status of "pagan"? In politics, the sentence, "everything I don't like is...", usually ends in something like "a Nazi" or "Communism". But in Armstrongism, it's "pagan".
I don't like Christmas. It's pagan!
I don't like the Trinity. It's pagan!
I don't like Chronicles of Narnia. It's pagan!
I don't like Proctor and Gamble. It's pagan!

Take for example this comment we got from "Larry" some years ago on the "Nimrod's Birthday Was January 6?" article:

"If anyone believes that Christmas, Easter, etc. Are not pagan look up where there orgin comes from. Question. Do Rabbits lay eggs. Is there a deer that fly threw air. These things are all based on a lie for little children to believe and once they even understand it they grow up believing that is ok too tell a lie. Then by doing this you only get closer thinking well its ok to tell a little white lie. Does God say it anywhere in the Bible it's ok to tell a white lie. What does this tell are children can you blame them for telling you a lie sine you teach them several every year. And all these things have a Pagan origin. Think about it."

Translation: I don't like these things, and deer can't fly, so it has to be pagan.

Now, Larry meant well in his heart. I get it that people are naturally uncomfortable with the unfamiliar. It's just how we're wired. It helps us survive. But going from "I'm uncomfortable with that" to "it's pagan" is a huge leap. It takes a personal preference and elevates it to a truth claim.
"I don't like that" = personal preference.
"It comes from paganism" = truth claim.

What do truth claims require? Evidence. And what evidence are we given? Either none at all, or 9 times out of 10 it's garbage. Hokum. Fake. Some old trope from the bottom lefthand corner of the Internet. Larry gave good advice, "look up where there origin comes from". So, we did. Many times. One example is the post Larry commented on.
Over the years, As Bereans Did has tried to dig into the claims and see if they have merit or if they're garbage. We have tried to test claims against the best available information. What have we seen over and over again? What we were told is "God's truth" was actually false. What we were told is pagan was actually not. The claim was bad and build on bad information. Every time I think we've looked it up to death, something new appears, like our recent articles on Samhain.
And we aren't the only ones. Our friends over at the God Cannot Be Contained blog also have great material along these lines. I recommend "Are You Giving Thanks to Ceres or God?". Makes some interesting and relevant points!

It doesn't matter how many magazines and booklets make the claim, and it doesn't matter how many sources are cited if the sources are wrong. No court case was ever won where the legal defense started with, "My brother-in-law at the trailer park told me..."

We have two options with bad information: either it was ignorance or it was a lie.

Morally, it's far better to be ignorant than a liar. At least you can admit your fault, eat a little crow, grow from it, and try to never make that mistake again. I've had to! How can I ever forget the king's feast of crow I consumed when I told my mother I had been wrong all those years while I was in Armstrongism? I bet my entire life on that from the time I was old enough to make a decision for myself until I was 36. And I was wrong.
I am not at all recommending either ignorance or lies. If you have a choice at all, then choose to be accurately informed. But even so, better a Vegas-style buffet of crow over ignorance than to intentionally deceive.

Decide for yourself. Which is it - ignorance or outright lies?
When Armstrongist publications to this very minute parrot known falsehoods -- claims that have been known to be false, in some cases for centuries?
When they distort the past, including their own past?
When they willfully misrepresent the claims of other systems to attack those straw men?
When they make repeated claims about the future which fail to come about - and sometimes do it "in the name of and by the authority of Almighty God"?
So which is it?

They have every opportunity and resource in the world to be accurate, yet they refuse. When those publications aren't even trying to be truthful, not really, but their errors are called "God's truth", which is it - ignorance or outright lies? If we call it ignorance, then it is willful ignorance. If they had an opportunity to correct themselves but refused, that betrays purpose and intent. It is willful! Like when Dave Pack gets the timing of Christ's return wrong ...for the 927th time. At what point does willful ignorance cross over to an opportunistic lie? Do the willfully ignorant not lie to themselves? Yes. Does sharing that with the world in hopes of finding a few who will agree and provide some affirmation make it any less a lie? No.

Did anyone ever consider that maybe, just maybe, Christian people are fully capable of inventing new, ridiculous things all on their own? Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, medieval Christians did not absorb every last thing they did from defunct pagan societies 1,000+ years prior? I've shown over the years that some things are demonstrably pagan in origin. I've never denied that. It happened! (I reject "once pagan, always pagan". It's anti-Biblical.) But that really is the minority of things. Want to know what I believe is the "most pagan" holiday of the year? No, not Halloween. Not Christmas. It's New Year. It goes to show you, Christians have invented - all on their own - quite a bit of absolutely nonsensical things.
Think about it. Christians are capable of reading one book and coming up with 45,000 different denominations from it. I think they've got sufficient imagination for the task.

I get it! Some of those things are just weird. They are! How could Christians come up with silly, infantile things like kissing under mistletoe, or hunting rabbit eggs, or Adventism? How could Christians come up with a fat guy who flies around delivering toys down chimneys? Why would Christians call a tradition after Yule, like the Yule log, if it wasn't from Yule? Sure seems pagan to me!
Well, there's the problem right there. "Seems" and "Is" are entirely different things. It doesn't matter what we think; all that matters is what actually is. And if there's one thing I've hammered away at since 2008, it's showing the thing everyone just knows is true is rarely actually true at all. There are definitely some details to history that we all need to be aware of before we judge, and most of us were never told those things, so we make exceedingly poor judges.

This isn't a matter of doctrinal viewpoint we're talking about. If you say you believe in soul sleep and provide some verses to explain, I could say I disagree but I see how you built your case and we can discuss. But if you say Christmas Trees are really Nimrod Trees and everyone's a pagan pagan pagan, then there is nothing to discuss because it's completely fake. It's unsupportable. Made up. A lie. Yet, year after tiresome year, there we go hearing this same story. Christmas is coming up fast, and I bet we'll hear it again this year.

Larry the quote guy up there, he just wanted well enough. He warned about the moral failures in little white lies. OK. I hear ya. I know where his motivation came from and I genuinely appreciate it to a point, yet ... he called specific things pagan which are actually not pagan. So, that's a little lie too.
Whoops.
Gonna talk, "Does God say it anywhere in the Bible it's ok to tell a white lie," while telling a white lie? That has an appreciable effect on one's credibility.
(I don't mean to pick on Larry. He's just got the misfortune of being my example for this post.)

To go around "enlightening" people about how they really need to know some absolutely false claim, and that faithful Christians are really demon-worshipping pagan enemies of our Lord because of it, is not something I would recommend. You see, there's this little thing called the Ninth Commandment. You know, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I take a very different approach to the Ten Commandments now than I used to, but I still find there are good lessons in them for all people. Making the shortcomings of our sinful nature plain to us is one of those legitimate uses of the law. Bearing false witness against your neighbor is to judge them falsely, and to judge your neighbor falsely is to condemn yourself. The entire business is a violation of the New Covenant law of love. The only way to be counted as righteous and forgiven is to be faithful to the Covenant you are in. "Righteousness" is a covenant word. Can't maintain that if you're violating the Covenant, now can you? No. So, it might be a good idea to just stop and think things out.

Which is the worse offense: to condemn yourself by falsely accusing your fellow Christian, or to participate in an old tradition with uncertain origins? I think Paul answered that one in Romans 14.

Don't like trick-or-treat? Don't go! Don't feel comfortable with Christmas Trees? Don't have them in your home! Hate pastels and eggs and bunnies? I sure do! Nothing says you have to have them. If it's wrong for you then it's wrong for you. Don't do it. Your faith is between you and your Lord. Please keep in mind your faith is not between someone else and their Lord, though. Let them stand before their Lord because their Lord is able to make them stand.

I urge you - avoid the false accusations, backing up your claims with misguided opinions and ridiculous nonsense from known charlatans (like Alexander Hislop for instance) - or worse still, backing them up with nothing at all - and repeating lies told by Peddlers of Paganism whose real intent is just to fleece people like a sheep anyway. There's money to be made in these false accusations - like spiritual arms dealers, condemning people for fun and profit. As if there was no way to make lying even worse than it already is.
Avoid these things. That's my advice.

I pray God bless you and guide you to Himself, dear reader, this day and always.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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