G.K. Chesterton, a devout Catholic, once wrote a poem he called “The Song of the Strange Ascetic”. All stanzas except the last began, “If I had been a heathen...”
According to the poem, he would have -
“praised the purple vine/My slaves should dig the vineyard/And I would drink the wine”
“I’d have crowned Neaera’s curls/And filled my life with love affairs,/My house with dancing girls”
“I’d have sent my armies forth,/And dragged behind my chariots/The Chieftains of the North”
“I’d have piled my pyre on high,/And in a great red whirlwind/Gone roaring to the sky”
At the end, Chesterton laments the strange ascetic, the “poor old sinner” who “sins without delight”, who does “not have the faith, and will not have the fun”.
Here is a link to the entire text. It is odd that people who have declared themselves free of G-d spend most of their time and energy railing against Him. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/ascetic.html
The irony of Chesterton’s poem is that it wasn’t ONLY heathens that acted like those he described in the poem.There have been times when Christians themselves,not to mention Muslims and Hindus,acted just like heathens.
I think,however,that the sordid behavior he speaks of would have been committed with much more frequency and lack of shame WITHOUT a sense of Christian morality guided by The Bible.
And,of course,through Christ,we CAN be forgiven for our depredations.Unlike heathens.