Pagan rites were heavy with blood rites, killing of
virgins, u-name-it! Most forget how bad it was!

I’ll try to argue out this point when I next post on Girard, and I’ll be interested to see what you think…

Ironically, covetting is essentially what the US is founded upon. The “keeping up with the Jones’” or “one-upmanship” si what this capitalistic/consumeristic economy is based upon. To espouse an abandonment of covetting at all levels is tantamount to heresy in our society. And unfortunately, this consumerism is also the principle export of the US (as opposed to Christianity). We have a long way to go towards acknowledging the divine as a model for human perfection, rather than what we possess in relation to others. And yes, I would wholeheartedly support the fact that the latter is actually Satanic. Sounds harsh, but there it is (and I’m just as guilty as the next consumer at times).

Locally, an Emeritus UBC Anthropology Prof. as a
practising Christian, for me, seems to bring more
comparative order to this discussion, when he gave
our Newman Association a lecture on precisely this
topic, in essence saying:

- all discovered past civilizations had some form of
“religion” without exception, proving a quest for
transcendence beyond ourselves, that there is
“something” out there, above us! (This atheistic
authors always ignore in their attempted failed books
against theism, against god!)

- all such religions converged on commonalities! They
did not go out and create their own wheel, so to
speak!

- most such religions within their rites, “point” to
traits which later came into existence once
Christianity came into existence! Things like
a surrogate victim who had/has to die, virginity
of a relational female, blood rites and blood letting,
vicarious one for the many, and so on!

- this same convergence phenomenon, this sameness of
discoveries, C.S. Lewis specifically zeroes in on in his own masterpiece “Til We Have Faces.” In it, he traces the history of human mythology to its maturation point within Greek mythology, showing how
it prefaces in expectation due to its structural
content, what later came into being in Christianity!

Anyway, God is not dead: He is just screening His calls! And most of the time He doesn’t answer because
of His workload!