Mrs. C and I have been watching Vikings Valhalla, which is a pretty interesting show on Netflix. It takes place during a very fraught time for the west, as Christian and pagan forces were vying for control of the lands around the North Sea.
One character, Olaf Haraldsson, is a convert to Christianity, and a pretty evil fellow. The writers (not unexpectedly) seem to rejoice in any opportunity to make the pagans look good and the Christians look bad, and Olaf provides a lot of material.
In the episode we watched last night, Olaf was in Russia, and an Orthodox bishop met him at the docks, blessed him, and told him to continue his important work (trying to bring Christianity to the pagan lands).
[While the show does have some actual historical characters, it’s not meant to be historically accurate.]
The viewer doesn’t know if the bishop is aware of Olaf’s bad deeds, but it got me wondering whether the bishop would bless Olaf even if he did.
Think about it. Christians are being slaughtered by Vikings. Western civilization is in peril. There are some blood-curdling quotes from these times where people spoke of dead bodies filling the cities, the roads, and the countryside, and wondered if Christianity was going to survive.
In that situation, maybe you want to promote the “Christian” guy even if he’s a cruel bastard.
This brings up a long-standing debate among Christians. Some would say that it’s precisely through suffering that Christians conquer and that supporting some rascal like Olaf to stop the slaughter is the wrong way to go. It’s better to die as honest men.
That’s easier to say when you’re living a peaceful, affluent life, and not watching people you love getting slaughtered.
I’m not taking sides in that argument, just pointing out that the show brings the question into sharp focus.
For Christians, this is where scriptures like Proverbs 3:5-6 become invaluable.
I watched the whole The Vikings series from some streaming service. It was originally on the History Channel or something like it…
Saw so many parallels to our day:
1) they’d just leave the baby out to die of exposure if it had a defect
2) human sacrifice (sort of goes with 2 … I mean, so many are happy to allow abortion through the third trimester)
3) orgies and drugs …multiple partners…male and female
4) was this character named Loki. Just wanted to kill all the christians he could. Only time he got personally bothered was when he killed a Muslim.
5) christians didn’t seem to be particularly christian–happy to go along with a corrupt leader as long as it was to their benefit