I was never raised very religious but always brought up believing in God and Jesus. I don't like organized religion because of all the hypocritical rules telling you what you can and can't do or what is good/evil. This is why I'm so interested in following a pagan path, but something is nagging at me and I don't know what to do.
Am I being hypocritical or untrue to the path I've chosen if I still have that belief in God in the back of my mind? Being pagan means not believing in the Christian God right? I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm doing something wrong and don't know where to start.
I guess I'm a little confused as to why you want to be a pagan if
you're not sure what it means to be a pagan, but I'll try to asnwer
best I can.
"Pagan" is an incredibly generic word. It was coined by Christians to
denote non-Christians, although in practice Muslims, Jews and sometimes
Zoroastrians are also often excused from the term. Everyone else is
"pagan," ancient Romans, modern Hindus, etc. Most of those people do
not call themselves "pagan". They find it derogatory.
Neopagans, however, have embraced the term. This includes people like
Wiccans and Druids. This still includes a wide range of religions, so
you can't really summarize the specific beliefs and practices of
"pagans" or "neopagans."
As far as God and Jesus are concerned, there are plenty of people who
believe in them while having a problem with organized religion. Many
of them still call themselves Christians. Some of them don't call
themselves anything. Not having a name for your beliefs is still
perfectly acceptable! And simply not liking organized religion does
not make you a pagan.
Most pagans do not believe in the Christian God. If they did, they
would be Christians. However, there are some people who call
themselves Christo-pagans which might be of interest to you. They tend
to have strong Gnostic leanings, which is another term you might want
to investigate. They tend to have a different spin on Christianity
than is traditional, and often value additional books that did not make
it into the Christian Bible.
Q of the D: Christianity and Paganism
12/31/2009 03:13:00 PM | Question of the day, Wicca | 2 comments »
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I myself am a literal polytheist and do believe that there is a Jewish God and maybe even a Christian Christ, but i don't accept their universality. I find many pagans tend toward a pantheistic view of gods like Dion Fortune put forward in the quote (sorry if I mutilate it) there is one god, one goddess and one initiator which I think meant she had a Hindu like conception of all gods being manifestations of one truth.
I don't think there's a problem with Christo-paganism frankly. The gods will speak to you if you listen and the ones you're meant to worship will make themsleves known to you.
I just wanted to clarify a point:
believing in something more or less means acknowledging its existence. It does not necessarily include worship/following etc.
For example: I believe in almost all Gods. Including Yahweh. However, I only follow a handful (the Greek Pantheon) as I either don't know enough for the rest, or they are unrelated to me or I have known them in the past and have rejected their call/request (Yahweh).