The most evil of all world religions, Christianity, has ruined the lives of so many human beings. I can barely even imagine the damage that was done to whole nations and civilizations. But now I will compare the changes of life in two places – the Americas and Lithuania. I have chosen pagan Lithuania as an example because that is my homeland. The early religion there was very interesting with its strange early customs and ways of worship.

So, first I’ll start with Lithuania. Up to the year when Christianity was fully established in Lithuania, the native Baltic people had their own pagan faith. This religion had evolved naturally, as the people tried to explain the meanings of the sun, moon, stars, thunder, and other aspects of nature. They thought that all these things were controlled by gods like Perkunas, Zemyna, Laima and Gabija. The monotheistic Christian idea of one single great deity – God - was totally alien to the Baltic people.

Mindaugas, a Lithuanian king of the XIII century, converted to Christianity because he hoped to win the favor of the large European kingdoms and so protect his country from the Teutonic Knights. These Knights supposedly wanted to make all the ”heathen savages” into Christians, but in truth, they actually wanted all the treasure and land of Lithuania.The final conversion of Lithuanian people happened when the Lithuanian Duke Wladislow Jagello became king of Poland. In order to receive the throne, he had to swear to make the heathen Lithuanians into good and proper Christians. So, in 1387, he arrived to Vilnius and with some Polish priests and bishops converted all the Lithuanian people. According to legend, King Jagello destroyed the sacred oak forests and the sacred ever-burning fire, and killed the pet grass snakes of the people. I can’t imagine how the pagan priests let him do this, since this is sacrilege. Well, I think that this whole conversion thing was unfair. The local people must have been unhappy about their new Christian religion. It’s not that easy to suddenly believe in a single almighty god after you’ve been honoring many great gods for hundreds of years.

But the conversion of the Indians in the Americas was much, much worse.

First of all the conquistadors conquered central and South America. They destroyed the many heathen temples and over the ruins were built churches and cathedrals. The entire way of living for the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs was changed. They had to pray differently, they were made into slaves…

As for North America, similar things happened. For now, I’ll tell only about the missions in California.

When the settlers from Europe came to California, they built special missions owned by “padres”, or priests. To these missions they took by force all the Natives that they could find. After being converted they were taken to rooms with living conditions that were worse then those in a cattle pen. And every day, men, women and children were forced to work in awful and backbreaking conditions. Many died every day. The “padres” said that at least the Indians should be converted before being killed, for “God might forgive their sins of believing in heathen gods, and that they might enter into heaven”… I think that’s so silly! The “padres” preached that God is supposed to be kind and merciful, and he’s supposed to despise unnecessary killing and murder. But I sure can’t see this in the “God” that the people from the Old World believed in.

Even thought I’ve only mentioned a few examples of the evil that comes from Christianity, the results were similar everywhere in the world. In my opinion, Christianity is a pretext to conquer, to kill, rob, and eventually destroy innocent people.