One of the things that most visibly sets me apart from other pagans(once you get beyond the "Luciferian" confusion) is the fact that I am vocally opposed to the Abrahamic faiths. As always, I must immediately clarify that I am not the enemy of any given Christian, Jew, Muslim or Mormon, I love all of humanity, even if sometimes they disgust and enrage me. Rather, I am the enemy of their God. Of course, the individual mortals who are likely to whip up some of that disgust and rage in me will tell you that anyone who does not worship their God is His enemy... and that is the very first of my reasons.
In the Bible as I know it, it's never exactly said outright(or if it is, I've missed it), instead it says over and over in a hundred ways that if you do not absolutely devote yourself to God and doing His will with every word and thought, then you are weak and will fall into wickedness. Moreover, in other places(or sometimes the same place) it states that you must already be wicked and prideful if you don't immediately embrace God on first hearing of Him and His works, obviously there could be no other reason not to embrace such a loving and nurturing father-figure. In the Qu'ran it says it much more plainly, "God is the enemy of the unbelievers."(Sura 2:98)
Of course this leads to something I mentioned in my first article wherein I tried to define some of my personal path, which is the feeling of superiority through group-allegiance. All non-believers are the enemy of God, and therefore the enemy of His children. Of course, in some places in the Bible(I am by no means even remotely as familiar with the Torah in its original form, nor the Qu'ran) it also says things like "Love thy neighbor"(Lev 19:18) and "Judge not lest ye be judged,"(Matt 7:1) not to mention "You hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye."(Matt 7:5)
But as I've said before and will continue to say, these passages are the sort that any fundamentalist, evangelical, or really anyone else who claims to be a faithful child of God can easily forget or decide is trumped by things like "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"(2 Cor 6:14) Which is one of the milder ones, but exactly the kind of thing that can, in the mind of a believer, justify discrimination in the workplace or at school. From there it starts to get less pleasant, with other passages like:
"Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed."(Exo 22:19)
"Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel."(Deu 17:12)
"Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." (Exo 34:12-14)
"If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people."(Deu 13:6-9)
And here is where the average Christian apologist will say something along the lines of "That's just the Old Testament! After God sent His son down to die for the sins that were only wrong because He said so in the first place, it was from then on all about love and forgiveness!"
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." -Jesus (Matt 10:34-39)
"But Ash!" some might say, "That's just Jesus telling his followers to throw their children out of their house or disown their parents(conflict with the Fifth Commandment, by the way) if they don't convert to Christianity!" Well fine then, how about:
"But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them--bring them here and kill them in front of me."(Luke 19:27) Still, some apologists will wail, "You're taking that out of context, you're trying to trick us by using our own book, just like we've been warned!" Well of course you've been warned never to trust what a disbeliever tells you, that's part of any cult indoctrination. As far as context, this is the ending of one of Jesus' parables, and no matter what context you put it into, it means "kill unbelievers." If you twist it into something different, you should start next on how Leviticus says that homosexuals are supposed to be taken to death metal concerts, not actually put to death. And the point still remains that it's very easy for a preacher to get up in front of a group of people, whip them into a furor, and repeat that line by itself, or the whole parable for that matter, and incite hate of The Other in them.
But I'm getting off-track with listing all those examples(There are more if you choose to look), my core point still remains. The holy scripture of the Abrahamics can be read by one with a loving and open mind, and they'll find loving and open messages, but many who read or preach it are more concerned with their self-righteousness as part of that group-allegiance and making sure that all those of their group feel the same way so that they do not start to question some of the many, many hypocrisies intrinsic to their faith. So, let's talk about those who God's children are meant to view as enemies, here are a few:
Every Wiccan in the world, most of whom follow the tenet of "An it harm none, do as thou wilt,"(The Wiccan Rede[short]) or some variation thereof as a core belief. (As opposed to Christians, who rarely repeat the golden rule aloud in my experience, except when they're telling other people not to be cruel to them, and I've only ever heard someone leading a congregation mention it 3 or 4 times in all the church services I've attended throughout my life)
For that matter, all Pagans who follow the Right-Hand Path and accept the tenet of not doing harm.
Taoists and Buddhists(often the same thing, but not always), most of whom are practicing pacifists.
Native Americans who dare to cling to their ancestral traditions.
Steve Wozniak
Linus Torvalds
Carl Sagan
The Dalai Lama
Gandhi
Members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
These are the people who God and His son have declared to be Their enemies. The faithful will argue that these people are the ones who have chosen to be God's enemies of course, and they can immediately be taken off the naughty-list if they just hand over that "precious gift of free will" then bend knee, beg forgiveness, and devote the rest of their life's actions, words, and thoughts to the glorification of God, begging again for forgiveness whenever they stray into loving their wife more, thinking the sexual thoughts their whole body and brain was wired for, or any of the other thousands of sins outlined in the Big Book of Rules.
I do not hate the Christian, the Muslim, or the Jew. I hate their God for telling them they are superior to others because they've chosen to give up their free will to Him. I hate their God for telling them that, at best, they should shun anyone else, at worst kill them, with all manner of pestering, lectures, derision and threats inbetween. I love you my brothers and sisters, and I hope someday you will reclaim your free will, and judge other people for yourself based on their hearts and their minds, rather than feeling contempt for them simply because they don't belong to your group. But I hate your God, and I always will. Not because I am wicked, not because I am deceitful, not because I am full of pride and wrath... But because He is.
Oh, and by the way, since in the minds of some this is all heading toward another great Holy War(This last month is an excellent example of how some people positively drool at the prospect of armageddon)... I'm fairly sure of which side I'm on, the side that doesn't pick fights with pacifists, and the side that doesn't advocate rape and slavery.
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."(Deu 20:10)
I will close this particular post with another old quotation, though this one is unsourced. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Except, in this case, "The enemy of my friend is my enemy."
I remain Ash the Free Man
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