My friend Cat is a pagan. I don’t understand the draw to that religion but then that should be expected because I’ve found my religion and I’m very comfortable with the relationship it affords me to my God. I don’t understand the draw to Islam or Hinduism either. I’m sure none of the practitioners of any of those religions understand the draw Christianity hold over me.
What got me thinking about this is something Cat said the other day. She was lamenting as to how some people she knew were into paganism for the power it promises to bring the practitioner. Evidently there are spells or prayers in her religion that can be used to bring wealth and power and other things. She felt that instead of looking for what paganism can do for the believer the believer should be looking at what they can do to please their god. She then saw the parallel with Christians that are Christians just so that they can go to heaven when they die. Shouldn’t Christianity be practiced just to please God? Going to heaven is just icing on the cake.
While I can’t understand the draw of paganism for people I have to wonder if for many it wasn’t just because they didn’t like the hypocrits that they associated with Christianity. At least that seems to be the reason I’ve heard from many of the pagans I’ve been associated with. That’s also the reason given to me from many people I know who were brought up in a Christian culture but rejected Christianity for Islam, Buddhism and even Hinduism.
In all of our seeking, regardless of the name of the religion, what we are seeking is God. Being the monotheist that I am I have to look at all Gods actually being The One God so aren’t we all just seeking a relationship with God? Okay, some of us claim to be seeking humanity because there is no God but for a minute just drop the semantical argument we could get into over that and just work with me. We seek out God to serve God. Right? But some of us seek out God to be served by God. People are people. With all of us being seekers and we know that there are hypocrits among us seekers, why would any of us expect the followers of one religion to have any less than another?
Basically, what this boils down to to me is that if we want to go to heaven, if we want power, if we want wealth and we are looking to religion to supply that to us then we have to give up that want, whatever it is to attain it. If you want to be served you must first serve others without a desire to be served. If you want to attain wealth you have to give away all you have. If you want to get to heaven you must be willing to crawl through hell in service to your neighbor to get there. Yeah, people are people but Gods are Gods and Gods are there to be served.
Yeah….
yeah.