Like feygirl, I HAVE gone to good churches. I've had excellent pastors who moved me to tears with their sermons. I've sung in the children's choir, with aspirations for the adult choir when I became of age. I was confirmed in the Lutheran church when I was in 8th grade. I've been faithful in marriage. I understand what it's like to live that lifestyle. I've studied Christianity since I've become a pagan. I've studied the Pauline Christianity, Judaism, and a bit of the Essene religion that Jesus practiced while he was alive. I've looked at the historical and the spiritual sides of it. And, also like feygirl, I found no joy in it, no peace. It felt wrong to me. I didn't find salvation in it. Nor, I might add, did I find salvation in paganism. I discovered that I didn't need to be saved. That there was no such thing as sin. That things happened for a reason, and they happened exactly as they should. I'm often confused at how Christians give Satan so much power. Pagans ignore Satan altogether.
I've already met your challenge, and, like Jesus in the wilderness, I overcame that temptation. I stepped away from the easy way out, a deity who would magically wash away all my alleged sins, and relieve me of all responsibility for my actions. A cloven-hooved scapegoat that I could blame for all my faults. My life is my own. I am God, Goddess, Perfection in all my Faults.
What would it be like for you to accept your own challenge, reversed? To step away from the idea that you aren't worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven without a fickle god's salvation, which he could repeal at any moment? How would it be for you to renounce guilt and the concept of sin, and to approach the things you do with joy? How would it be for you to no longer live in fear of eternal damnation, to let go of the idea of sin and hell? And who says you can't? The Bible? Preachers? Why is the Bible more authoritative than the Torah, the Koran, the teachings of Confucious or Anton le Vay? Why are preachers wiser than the Dalai Lama, Buddha, feygirl, or me? Who made that decision?
I hear so much fear in your posts. It pains me to see people living in that kind of fear. You desire my salvation. I say I have no need to be saved.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Continued
Date: 2004-07-09 01:36 am (UTC)I've already met your challenge, and, like Jesus in the wilderness, I overcame that temptation. I stepped away from the easy way out, a deity who would magically wash away all my alleged sins, and relieve me of all responsibility for my actions. A cloven-hooved scapegoat that I could blame for all my faults. My life is my own. I am God, Goddess, Perfection in all my Faults.
What would it be like for you to accept your own challenge, reversed? To step away from the idea that you aren't worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven without a fickle god's salvation, which he could repeal at any moment? How would it be for you to renounce guilt and the concept of sin, and to approach the things you do with joy? How would it be for you to no longer live in fear of eternal damnation, to let go of the idea of sin and hell? And who says you can't? The Bible? Preachers? Why is the Bible more authoritative than the Torah, the Koran, the teachings of Confucious or Anton le Vay? Why are preachers wiser than the Dalai Lama, Buddha,
I hear so much fear in your posts. It pains me to see people living in that kind of fear. You desire my salvation. I say I have no need to be saved.
"To be forgiven, we must first believe in sin."
And I don't.