When I was a little kid in Episcopal School, my teach showed us an illustration of a blood sacrifice, and told us how very lucky we were to be saved by Jesus- because before Christ, heathens needed to be very careful to do everything right. She said that if heathens ever sinned they needed to do these elaborate sacrifices in atonement, and if we were still heathen we would spend all of our spare time atoning for our mistakes, and wasn't life so much better now that we could just have faith in Christ and know we were all good and saved.

Almost three decades later, I find myself oriented strongly with the pantheist neopagan (i.e, heathen) worldview, and I've come to appreciate an entirely different side to this childhood lesson.

As can be expected of any community, especially one built on building a personal narrative in the subjective (personal relationship with the universe around you, God, whatever...) despite the huge diversity of heathen practice I've witnessed, a strong and common thread is always the duty to strictly mind ones behavior. Intentions don't make the person, behavior does as the mantra goes, and the idea that there is any thought or idealism which could possibly save you from the consequences of your own bad choices is considered eminently childish and profoundly unwise.

As I've come to terms with how savagely the culture I was raised in has been mislead to be violent, ignorant, and predatory, time and time again I see the doctrine of salvation by faith put up by apologists to blind folks from the natural empathic awareness others have for their behavior and its consequences.

I've come to understand how the doctrine of salvation by faith actually cripples adaptation- teaching people that holding right-though (mantras of the right ideas) is somehow sufficient and withholding from them the basic awareness of their behavior and it's consequences necessary for simple social adaptation.

If there is a beast subverting American Christianity, it is their certainty in their worldview at the expense of their awareness of their actions that is being exploited to do so. Salvation by faith (idea) alone is a poison pill of thought which leads it's victims to a learned helpless despair, as they can never understand why the folk who think 'right' like them, always have the bad stuff happen to them, without every being to understand the cause and effect at play.

It's actually pitiful, as in I wish I could help these people...