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Those with christian backgrounds

The Neo Nerd

Well-Known Member
ryynänen47;1573219 said:
I agree with you Tao. I believe most of Christianity is fear based. Believe in this book/church/doctrine, or you'll go to hell. It is the ultimate protection racket!

When you look at all the deistic religions most of them will have some form of hell. It's kinda hard to keep your members in check without some form of punishment for misbehaviour. You cant be made to pay in life, telling someone they will be punished during their life is a measurable occurence and when it doesnt happen the whole divine punishment is disproved which wont help you control the members of your religion. The threat needs to affect the afterlife which is immeasurable and therefore unable to be denied.

The more power the religion is looking for over its members the more emphasis they will put on this afterlife punishment.

-Q
 

tavthe

Abysmal Stargazer
One of the issues with which I found the greatest amount of contention was the Catholic teaching that both unborn babies and suicide victims go to the same place - I think they called it purgatory. How could someone who never had the choice and someone who made the choice be on par with one another? One remains ignorant while the other one enacted their free will. If free will is ours to savor, why would we be punished using what is supposedly our most divine gift?

But even after I spent several years as a Pagan, there were remnants of my belief as a Christian which lingered along with me. There were things that I was taught, which I do not believe to be incongruous with my Pagan beliefs - esp. my regard for Christ. But much of my regard for Christ is more closely aligned with the teachings from the gnostic gospels.
 

enchanted_one1975

Resident Lycanthrope
Not long. I tried to combine Christianity and Wicca at first, but it just didn't make sense. I would say that once Wicca found me Christianity lasted less than two months with it.
 

Rainbow Mage

Lib Democrat/Agnostic/Epicurean-ish/Buddhist-ish
I was wondering for those of you who were brought up as christians how long did it take you to stop thinking that you might be going to hell? Well not hell excatly but to....get past what you were taught & move on with something that's a completly different.

I never suscribed to the idea of hell, because I thought it was ridicilous that a loving God would torment someone forever. The Episcopal Church does not teach the fundamentalist version of hell, hellfire and brimstone. You can be in hell here if you have no communion with god.
 

sol_mas

Spiritual Investigator
Even as a Christian I don't think I believed in the hell they talked about. It doesn't make much sense to me, that our Creator would 'banish' us from it forever.

sm
 
I started into Paganism when I was 14...and struggled until I was at least 19. I threw out more of my Pagan things in that time just because I thought I was going to hell. Now, I feel I am secure with what I believe, and my beliefs doesn't include hell.
 

Dezzie

Well-Known Member
I grew up a Mormon... I'd say I finally changed when I was 14 or 15. It was a couple years after I got Baptized. The main thing that was hard was saying anything to my Father at the time. He was still hardcore into the religion so it was a little scary for me. When he changed his belief to Wiccan it was a lot easier. Come to find it... he didn't care about my change in thoughts. :shrug: It felt great when he agreed with me.
 

Ahanit

Active Member
I was taught that My brother is more worth than I, And so I saw that this christian religion was a lie.....

And than I got a Picture book about Kemet as present. And I knew that in a World of many gods must be the truth...

To young for open rebellion but old enough to Questioning Christianity...
It was before I came to school

My aware and more Open path to the Paganism and Magic began with 14, not in Front of my mother, but with other people in School..
 

Venatoris

Active Member
When I learned about indulgences I kinda closed the book on the issue altogether. The whole concept seemed invalid after that.
 
I was raised catholic, my dad is a life long catholic (and pretty loose about it) My mom was jehovus witness but converted to catholic to marry my dad.
I think I was about 14, I asked (my mom) why I had to eat fish every friday during lent. All she could say was "because". I responded "because why?" all she said was "because that's what cathoilics are suposed to do". At 14 I could figure out that just means she dosn't know.
Some time latter I got into a argument with her about the meanning of some bible story, after holding my ground she hit me with a bible severl times. I lost any belife in god ( the christian one) after that, what kind of loving god would allow that to happen. What kind of god would force me to be sick from eating greasy fish every friday.
Later I started practicing satanisim (laveyan), mostly hopping my mom would find out. The magic part of it was nice because I now felt I had some control in my life. Mostly I just wanted to **** my mom off.
It never did that and I found I needed somthing more. I remeberd people I had met in the past that were wiccan. So I looked into that since they were usualy the nicest people I had ever met. I liked that it's not set in stone, and I really liked the Idea of respecting others belifes so long as it causes no harm to others.
 

eccentricjdo

Eclectic Intelectual
It all began less than five years ago when I noticed that the Bible and the churches were inconsistent in their views on the occult, for example divination is forbidden, yet the Jewish high priest was given the Urim and Thummim (Lights and Perfections), which were divinitory tools, and ordered to use them in consulting Yahweh. Fortunetelling was also forbidden, yet there were so many prophets predicting the future. The reason the Jewish priesthood outlawed the occult became obvious to me: it was a political move, as the theocracy couldn't stand to compete with others who were offering much the same services. Obviously, if the biblical writers that early on had ulterior motives, then the Bible is neither innerant nor infallible.

I also noticed the pagan ritual forms which are thinly veiled in the forms of church services (especially Mass) and exorcisms.

As for Jesus' Twelve Disciples martyring themselves for what they claimed to be true, I am sure that most leaders of psuedoreligions ("cults") would gladly do the same. After all, had the Twelve recanted, their followers would have turned against them, killing them as brutally as any Roman executionor.

Lastly, the ability to perform miracles does not prove one's exclusive divinity. Feats such as curing the sick and the insane, healing the disabled, walking on water, materializing after you die, is all quite plausible through magickal means.

Searching for the religion that most closely matched what I had personally experienced and already believed, I realized that I was, and am, neo-Pagan.
 

AuroraWillow

Druid of the Olive
Probably less than a day.

I was raised Catholic, however I never latched onto the concept of Hell or that you needed to believe in Christianity to avoid it.

Once I found Paganism, I realized I already believed in it, so there was no reason to fear Hell.
 

hansolooo

tolerant
It took me minutes to believe hell wasn't real, but years to really get over the psychological damage it did to me, still does to me at times. I was always a very nervous child and developed MAJOR issues all because of this doctirne. Suffered from ocd, anxiety, depression, the works. All because I thought half of my family ended up there and I would be there someday.
 

poseur

Member
At times I still fear hell. Generally it is due to a fear of physical death or harm, rather than any spiritual peril.
 
I am still struggling to this day to believe what I believe and not listen to the little voice in my head going "your family would be sooo disappointed if they knew that you have strayed from the faith."
 
I was wondering for those of you who were brought up as christians how long did it take you to stop thinking that you might be going to hell? Well not hell excatly but to....get past what you were taught & move on with something that's a completly different.

Say what you will about christianity, but one cannot deny how uplifting it is to worship with others who share and confirm your beliefs. I have no one who shares my beliefs, no one to worship or participate in ritual with. I can hold feasts and parties under the pretext of Samhain or Solstices, but the spirituality has to be kept to a minimum if I want my peers to participate.

QFT.

To be honest, sometimes I still worry about Hell. … I am still in the process of casting off old Christian ideas. Strangely enough, I am very comfortable in RCC churches and do go to mass occasionally. It makes more sense to me than the Calvinist ideas I was raised with.

I started into Paganism when I was 14...and struggled until I was at least 19. I threw out more of my Pagan things in that time just because I thought I was going to hell. Now, I feel I am secure with what I believe, and my beliefs doesn't include hell.

It took me minutes to believe hell wasn't real, but years to really get over the psychological damage it did to me, still does to me at times. I was always a very nervous child and developed MAJOR issues all because of this doctirne. Suffered from ocd, anxiety, depression, the works. All because I thought half of my family ended up there and I would be there someday.

I am still struggling to this day to believe what I believe and not listen to the little voice in my head going "your family would be sooo disappointed if they knew that you have strayed from the faith."

I really admire the openness and honesty of these responses.

I had a reasonably vibrant Christian faith when I began seeking the Goddess. My reason at the time was that it had occurred to me that people might be communing with the same divine reality under different names, and that if this was true it was the height of blasphemy to disfellowship others for what was essentially a cosmetic difference. I wanted to know the truth, and felt that the best way to do that was to take the plunge and go see for myself. You can’t do that in a library or from an armchair; you have to get personally involved. I reasoned that, if God is Love, then he would protect me from ultimate disaster.

I discovered that She is real, and good rather than the demonic spirit that fundamentalist Christianity would have people believe. Nevertheless, the old tapes in my head did not go away for years, and would resurface from time to time and have to be dealt with. I grew up in an abusive environment and there was a lot of fear in my personality. It crops up in many ways and venues; I can really relate to hansolooo’s reference to OCD. Dealing with fear has been one of the principal challenges of my life; and coming to know and love the Goddess and leave the Christian faith behind me is, to me, a wonderful success story in that regard.

Celtic Ravenwolf spoke of the lack of spiritual community in Pagan circles, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. But all of you who shared deeply from your experience on this thread are the kind of thing that’s often missing: genuineness, openness, lack of posturing and pretense. Thank you for sharing. Reading your posts has been an uplifting experience.
 
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Klaufi_Wodensson

Vinlandic Warrior
My story is as follows:

I was raised in a Catholic home. Up until age twelve I was fine with it. When I reached that age, I started to doubt, and question. Things weren't making sense to me, and this so-called loving God started to seem more malevolent. So I looked into the other side, and this was Satanism. I became a Satanist and was one for a few years. People here on RF might have known me as ApostleOfLucifer before. After I got through that rebellion stage and stopped trying to be "dark" and such, I looked into Germanic Paganism. And I suddenly felt the call of the Gods, and felt the Pagan spirit rising through me. That's how I knew it was the right religion for me. I stopped worrying about hell then. When I was a Satanist, I still believed in God, and always thought, "What if I'm wrong? I'll burn forever."


Now when I think of that question, this is my answer. I'll have to quote Radbod of Frisia.

"Then I would rather live there [Hell] with my honourable ancestors than go to heaven with a parcel of beggars ."
 

Rainbow Mage

Lib Democrat/Agnostic/Epicurean-ish/Buddhist-ish
I was wondering for those of you who were brought up as christians how long did it take you to stop thinking that you might be going to hell? Well not hell excatly but to....get past what you were taught & move on with something that's a completly different.

When I was about 14 or 15 I pretty well knew hell was BS. I examined the nature of the god I'd always been taught to believe in, a good loving and kind god, and realized hell is completely incompatible with that. As for being Christian, that took me much longer to get past. Some might say I still am Christian because of the Gnostic part of my mixed beliefs.
 

RobGelber

RobGelber
Hell was never a big deal for me. As a Seventh-day Adventist, hell wasn't a big deal anyway since the church doesn't teach it's eternal. It's more like if you aren't in good with Jesus, then all of your bad karma catches up with you at one time and you hurt to pay for it, but then once your bad deeds are paid for you just cease to exist.

I've been a Christian, then a philosophy-oriented agnostic, then a Christian again for awhile, then a paganish eclectic wiccan type, though I still integrate aspects of Christianity and eastern stuff too. It never made much sense for me to believe I was personally going to hell. If you're a Christian, then make friends with Jesus and get on the grace trip. If you're not, then why believe things that are Christian?

With other aspects of the religion, it took quite some time. Prayer to the Christian God, Bible study as a contemplative exercise, faith, church - all of these things were important components of my social and psychological practice. It took awhile to figure out other ways to fill these areas of my life.
 

RobGelber

RobGelber
Hell was never a big deal for me. As a Seventh-day Adventist, hell wasn't a big deal anyway since the church doesn't teach it's eternal. It's more like if you aren't in good with Jesus, then all of your bad karma catches up with you at one time and you hurt to pay for it, but then once your bad deeds are paid for you just cease to exist.

I've been a Christian, then a philosophy-oriented agnostic, then a Christian again for awhile, then a paganish eclectic wiccan type, though I still integrate aspects of Christianity and eastern stuff too. It never made much sense for me to believe I was personally going to hell. If you're a Christian, then make friends with Jesus and get on the grace trip. If you're not, then why believe things that are Christian?

With other aspects of the religion, it took quite some time. Prayer to the Christian God, Bible study as a contemplative exercise, faith, church - all of these things were important components of my social and psychological practice. It took awhile to figure out other ways to fill these areas of my life.
 
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