51. Why Pagans Aren’t Perfect (IV)

We can’t have a perfect world of peace and justice. Justice requires enforcement of the standards we approve; peace entails acquiescence in things we deplore. Each is good, as far as it goes, but they often point us in different directions. We can have some of both, in a proportion we may happen to fancy, but that’s hardly perfection. Injustice and war are fated to always be in the world.

If you find that conclusion intolerable, please note that it’s only in the last couple of centuries that anyone has ever thought otherwise. For almost all of human history, it’s been assumed that contention and exploitation are endemic to politics, and that eras of general concord and equity are (1) rare and (2) only the result of extraordinarily wise governance combined with great good fortune. Ideal societies existed in romances and satires; nobody looked for them in the real world – until recently.

The ancient Pagans – being polytheists – expected strife in politics, as elsewhere in life. Homer’s Gods and Goddesses, for Their own reasons, first incite the Greeks and Trojans against each other, then reciprocally kill off the mortal heroes on whichever side They disfavor. Yet such is the power and beauty of these erratic, petulant Deities, that humans can’t help worshipping and loving Them. We can’t please Them all, alas, and Those we slight will probably be our downfall. It’s called Fate.

Translated into rationalistic political terms, this world-view suggests that while there are many possible goods we could pursue politically, they most likely won’t all be consistent. At the very least, they’ll need to be prioritized. And it’s probably inevitable that the goods we’ve chosen not to emphasize will be problems in the long run. Perfect political solutions aren’t to be found.

Plato evidently had a very different attitude, but he wasn’t a typical Pagan. And even he admitted his ideal state was destined to decay.

The early Christians also took a jaundiced view of mundane politics. Augustine spoke of two cities, the earthly and the heavenly. Christians live in both, but the former only governs their brief sojourn on the material plane, while the latter is concerned with the Eternal Salvation of their souls. The heavenly city is good in an absolute sense, but the earthly city isn’t. Rome’s wars may have ultimately brought peace to the world, yet they resulted from a lust for domination, which is a sin – and those who seek their glory in this world, won’t be rewarded in the next.

Indeed, Augustine notes that it’s sometimes God’s plan to give political power to bad people, so the rest of us will be chastised for our transgressions. It’s therefore futile to think of saving the world through politics. Christians should obey the rulers God has set over them, and otherwise live the gentle life scripture enjoins.

Yet there is, for Christians, a vision of something far better– a time, according to Revelation, when God “will dwell with … his people, and … will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” This will be God’s doing, not humanity’s, and will only come after a series of titanic conflicts between angels and demons – still, it gives Christians something to look forward to. All of the sufferings of the past and the present, will be fully and permanently redeemed.

Over the past few hundred years, intellectuals in the West have largely stopped believing in the Christian God – while, however, doing their very best to hold on to this comforting faith in a final transformation of the human condition for the good. Divine intervention no longer seems possible to them, so they presume human wisdom will be enough. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, with their confidence in the progress of science, laid the basis for this attitude. The utopian social theorists of the early 1800s carried it further. And then came Marx.

The socialist revolutionaries of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries imagined that the multifarious ills plaguing humankind could all be ascribed to one cause, the capitalistic economic system, and could therefore be eliminated in one radical blow. The fatuity of this assumption has been sufficiently demonstrated by recent historical experience, but a watered-down version of the transformative Marxist idea still infects the progressive left – and substantially contributes to the Manichaean, all-or-nothing mood pervading the American political landscape these days.

Don’t get me wrong – I know plenty of Pagans who voted for Bernie Sanders, for what they considered to be very good reasons, based on their spiritual convictions. Yet there could be equally good Pagan reasons for voting otherwise. So far as I can see, one of my co-religionists could consistently embrace any of a wide range of positions on the left-to-right political spectrum. Our Pagan spirituality doesn’t so much affect what we believe politically, as the spirit in which our beliefs are held.

There are many truths in a polytheistic universe, and Pagans know it isn’t easy for them to co-exist. We’ll fight to uphold our values – but we know others will fight just as hard for theirs. We don’t expect everything will turn out the way we want it to. There’s no perfection in politics.

Blessed be.

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