| A Pagan's Path (part 2) |
| With high school also came the beginning of critical thinking. I learned how to think on my own and how to examine a hypothesis in a logical manner. I had been drilled in the defense of my faith by my parents, pastor and teachers and had been shown the weaknesses of other Christian beliefs based on Biblical reference. All non-Christian faiths were excluded from my instruction as unworthy of consideration. In spite of the years of instruction, however, I began to notice holes in the unified theology I had been taught. I wondered how the Bible could be infallible when it contradicted itself in several places. I asked my father once if God would doom to Hell all those who had not heard the message of the Gospel. Once I began to understand the concept of eternity, I wondered how a loving and just God could sentence a person to eternal punishment for anything we could accomplish in such short lives, even the most vile offenses. I asked these questions and was once again given weak explanations and admonishments not to doubt God�s plan. I soon lost hope that it could make sense at all and frustration took over my adolescent mind. I had been taught that compromise is the equal to outright rejection. Once I realized that I could not uphold the �holiness standards� I decided to toss the whole religion. If I was going to spend an eternity in Hell, I wanted to make sure I experienced every sin I could possibly squeeze into my remaining years. I joined the Navy to get away from my hometown. While in the Navy I participated in a bike stealing business (actually my idea); I tried every drug I could get my hands on; I bartered sexual favors for booze and rebelled against any and every authority figure I could, even when it was obviously in my best interest to cooperate. During those turbulent two years, I became addicted to nicotine and alcohol and nearly got hooked on crack. I also succeeded in getting thrown out of the Navy. In my last days in the Navy, I had an emotional meltdown, tried to beat a man to death and was put on suicide watch. I began to realize that I needed God in this life, not just in the next. As a child in the Pentecostal church I had spoken in tongues, witnessed divine healings, and felt the power of God as a very real and unmistakable presence. I longed again for that personal experience of divinity. After a couple abortive attempts, I realized that I could not go back to the religion of my childhood. I still had the same philosophical and emotional problems that drove me away in the first place, so I began to look elsewhere. Most Christian denominations have lost all, or nearly all, of their spiritual roots. The others were watered down versions of my past, so I started studying non-Christian religions. I soon discovered many commonalities between other major religions and the parts of Christianity that made sense to me. I began to think that all religions are humanity�s attempts to connect with God, no matter where they originated or how they practiced their individual rituals of worship. That is when I decided to search for the beginning of religious expression, to find the root of all we know about God. That search led me, eventually, to paganism�nature based religion. |