Faith - the Pagan Years

So, we move on...

Married life continued, pretty devoid of spiritual leanings, beyond spurts of fear and doubt, until after my son was born. I was continuing to harbor a great fear of hell and a doubt in my own salvation that I could not shake. I felt sure that I had either never actually been saved, or that I had lost my salvation, largely through abandoning or leaving behind a church family when I married my ex. I was sure that had been an act of rebellion, at least in a spiritual sense. I don't want to belittle or deny the love I felt, and still feel, for my ex. I married him because I loved him. That is an essential fact. But as in all human endeavors, there is so much more to it, all knotted up in a variety of motivations. Love was the major motivation. But it wasn't, in retrospect, the only one.

Another reason I married, then, was fear and a kind of age-based desperation. I was 27 years old. He was the first person who had ever asked me to marry him. I thought he might just be my last chance. I wanted company, stability, to be settled. He was stable and settled, for the most part. We got along well, never ran out of words... it was comfortable.

Another reason may have been that spiritual rebellion I mentioned. I knew I didn't want to marry the pastor's son, or the preacher with hopes of going to New Guinea... and I thought they may be my only other chance. I was, at the time, unwilling to wait upon God and His will for me in this area. I was afraid. So, in choosing to marry, I essentially chose to turn away from the family of God. Thus my fears and doubts about my own salvation and eternal possibilities.

Now, I'm not sure if you've noticed this... but much of my life has been fear based. Perhaps all of it. ?

Any way, after my son was born, I continued to have a deep and overwhelming fear of ending up in hell. I struggled with this. It seemed so unlike a God of love, who would sacrifice his only child for the likes of 'me'... to also be a God who could just as easily condemn His own creation to a place of never-ending suffering. I mean, I could understand a God who punished us for our own good, who used suffering to bring us back to Him, who allowed bad things to happen, in order to bring us home. I could understand a God who let us walk away from Him, giving us over to our own free will. But a God who would, at some point say... time's up, no more chances... well, even that I might understand. But to add to that the wrath that must be part of condemning a soul to never-ending suffering, with no chance at relief? That just doesn't sound like love to me, and so I had a lot of difficulty reconciling a God who loves me, with a God who could exact such a payment.

Then one night I had a vision. I was laying in bed with my infant son on my chest. And I felt sucked in... and so incredibly small. I knew I was in the presence of God. He was so awe-some and BIG. And he was Love... After a time, God asked me a question. He asked me if I could ever imagine anything my son could do that would cause me to cast him off For Ever. I could think of no such event. God said to me then, that He loves me in the same way that I love my own son. If I, in my imperfection, could never cast my son aside forever, how could I imagine that God could do the same to me? He told me to not fear Hell, and be in peace.

That vision has had a profound effect on me... and, perhaps because it's just *me*, not always in good ways. For one thing, it was, and still is, difficult for me to reconcile Christianity (at least the teachings I understand to this date) while completely denying the possibility that Hell is for people too.

This dichotomy led me, eventually, to Paganism, kind of.
I came to believe that God could reside in many forms, and that God could reside in His creation. I never fell to actually worshiping the creation, as some Pagans do. I came to worship the Creator. I never stopped believing in Jesus or the Spirit. My understandings of them became entwined in Pagan ideas of multiple gods which I meshed with the Catholic belief in a Tri-une Godhead. My rituals, celebrations, "spells" and such, though timed to the waxing and waning of the moon, and to the solstice's and equinoxes of the sun, were my form of prayer and worship of the Creator. Nothing more nor less.

Recently, though, I've begun to realize that this takes away from God in ways that I am no longer comfortable with doing. Prayer and worship should add, not lesson, eh? In trying to come to terms with a God who could be both loving and righteous, in an attempt at creating a faith that was encompassing 'more' than I felt Christianity allowed, while thinking I could somehow keep the 'good parts' of Christianity, like love and heaven, while rejecting the righteousness and hell aspects, I was truly deceived into believing that my faith was 'more'. In reality, I was making my God less, somehow. And in the process, likely making myself somehow less, as well...