Christianity vs Paganism (Jesus, Moses, Earth, mystic, beliefs)

[goldlioness]

ok before i start i am not saying all christians are like this and neither am i saying all pagans are the same.

i have just spent the weekend with a community of christian whom until monday morning i was happy to be in the company of this community. it started on the friday evening and the pressure and the mental torture did not end until 9:30 am on the monday. first i will give u some background on how i met this community.

i was seventeen and i was living in homeless shelter because i as you call it estranged from my family and i was given an hospital appoinment for an heart operation and my cardiac lilasion nurse was concerned how i was going to recover in a hostel by my self . so she arranged for me to stay with a member of her church and i stayed after the operation for about 6 months. they knew i wasnt christian and some of the younger group knew i was pagan.

i returned just this weekend to visit these christians and they told me that my relgion was evil and i was going to hell unless i "took christ as my saviour" they made me go to church against my will twice on sunday and i was so unhappy as i felt they were trying to convert me

know i understand that in the bible god says that you should only worship me because i am the true god but doesnt it also say that you must respect someone the way that you would wanted to be respected.

i did not go to to stay with these people to feel like i had travelled back to 500yrs ago to the burning times to feel i was being forced to walk away with what i believe in. one of the rules of being a pagan is not to force your views on other people and that what stopped me replying back about what i believe in.

so my question is why is there so much friction between christianity and wicca

[michel]

Originally Posted by goldlioness

ok before i start i am not saying all christians are like this and neither am i saying all pagans are the same.

i have just spent the weekend with a community of christian whom until monday morning i was happy to be in the company of this community. it started on the friday evening and the pressure and the mental torture did not end until 9:30 am on the monday. first i will give u some background on how i met this community.

i was seventeen and i was living in homeless shelter because i as you call it estranged from my family and i was given an hospital appoinment for an heart operation and my cardiac lilasion nurse was concerned how i was going to recover in a hostel by my self . so she arranged for me to stay with a member of her church and i stayed after the operation for about 6 months. they knew i wasnt christian and some of the younger group knew i was pagan.

i returned just this weekend to visit these christians and they told me that my relgion was evil and i was going to hell unless i "took christ as my saviour" they made me go to church against my will twice on sunday and i was so unhappy as i felt they were trying to convert me

know i understand that in the bible god says that you should only worship me because i am the true god but doesnt it also say that you must respect someone the way that you would wanted to be respected.

i did not go to to stay with these people to feel like i had travelled back to 500yrs ago to the burning times to feel i was being forced to walk away with what i believe in. one of the rules of being a pagan is not to force your views on other people and that what stopped me replying back about what i believe in.

so my question is why is there so much friction between christianity and wicca

Wicca itself ? Because, earlier on, you used the wider "brush" of Paganism.........

A lot of Christians, in ignorance, believve that pagan beliefs include "Devil worship" and divination (which comes under "magic" on this forum, which is a "no-no" for christians).

I would say that the main reason is because of incorrect presumptions.

[Seyorni]

It sounds like your liason nurse made a bad choice of families. Putting a medically fragile person in a psychically stressful environment is not conducive to recovery.
Did you let the nurse know that the family was of the opinion that you were evil and detested of God?

Christianity is a proseletizing religion. There are scriptures urging the faithful to actively spread their religion. Recruiting a foster family from a church can be a tricky proposition.

It also occurrs to me that there may be a semantic stumbling-block here. Wiccans refer to themselves as witches. To Christians, witches are people allied with the Devil. With some people you can explain your non-diabolic definition of this term till you're blue in the face but their own, internalized, 'ROM' definition of it will continue to taint their perception of you.

[Gentoo]

Some people simply don't know any better, they don't know the truth and have no desire to learn the truth. Like Seyorni said, you can explain that you're not evil until the cows come home, but it probably won't make any difference.

[Hema]

Some Christians say that about ANY religion - Hinduism also. I tell them that we all pray to the same God who is called by different names. However, there are many open minded Christians who don't look down on others and they see God in other religions as well. I see God in all religions (sorry if that sounded like boasting but it wasn't)....now I feel funny. **whimper**

[Quagmire]

Hope you're doing better Godlioness, sounds like you've been through alot.

Christianity (mainstream anyway) has always had a negative attitude towards nature, especially human nature.

Look at the way they adopted the image of Pan, the greek god of forests and feilds, as a representation (the most universal representation)of their devil; a bearded man with horns and the legs of a goat.

I like to point out to the christians I talk to that, according to their own book, "On the 6th day God looked at all He had created and saw that it was good".

At that point, since civilization hadn't been invented yet, pretty much all there was was nature---the earth in it's most natural state.

It was man who decided that some of it was good, some of it evil.
Exp. "And they saw that they were naked and they were ashamed". What's up with that? They were already naked before they ate the apple. God didn't seem to have a problem with it. It was man (Adam and Eve) who decided it needed to be covered up (kind of an insult to God if you think about it).

Also, some of their greatest prophets went out into nature to commune with God--Moses, Elijah---Their own John the Baptist lived in the wilderness and Jesus himself is supposed to have made a habit of going off into nature to pray.

Again, hope you're doing better and I hope this experience doesn't turn you off to christians/christianity alltogether. I've spent a big chunk of my life either on the road or on the street (homeless) and I can tell you some of the kindest people I've met along the way were christians, also some of the most unkind.

They're just people like the rest of us and everybodie's got something worth listening to, and some things that need to be overlooked.

[MysticSang'ha]

Sounds to me like you've passed your "test" with flying colors. One can't think of a tougher environment than being placed in a fundie-Christian home surrounded by the hard-core kind willing to stress you out following a major surgery.



I have differing views on these kinds of scenarios where one is subjected to enormous suffering, and I can embellish if you'd like, but if you returned their harassment with kindness......you have come out so much better.




Perhaps one of our Jewish folk might offer something if I misrepresent them, but since their religion from how I understand it believe in some form of karma, I'd heard them say when something terrible happens, they say, "Oh, good. One less debt to repay." This is quite close to how the Tibetan Buddhist view is of bad times.



From what I understand of paganism and my rather brief introduction to it - I admit I'm still quite a dummy about it - it seems to me that the spectrum of pagan practices embrace religious tolerance across the board no matter what the beliefs. I'd suggest that you use that part of your faith to strengthen your spirit and your compassion when times like this develop.



Plus, and I sincerely hope that you discover this reality in the outside world if not on these forums...............this subsect of Christianity is actually quite a minority in the entirety of the religion. We just have in the U.S. a very vocal group of folks that use banners, billboards, and scores of TV programs to their benefit to make their voices heard. The silent majority of Christians practice their faith without a lot of fanfare.




You've been through a hell of a lot. Keep your chin up.



Peace,
Mystic

[BFD_Zayl]

this thread must be watched closely, it risks getting out of hand fast. as this can be a sensitive topic. now to answer your question, it is something many people are not familiar with, and what they are not familiar with they fear. that and many pagans/wiccans who hate christians have either faced the situation you have, or claim they have lost ancestors during the burning times, etc. etc.

[Kcnorwood]

I have to admit that I've been in the same boat as Godless before I came on here all I ever heard was Christany was THE religion to believe in. Still outside of this fourm it seems to me alot of christians believe that way. I'm not picking on christiany here but it does seems that the real world could benfit from the people in here!

[Mestemia]

Originally Posted by goldlioness

so my question is why is there so much friction between christianity and wicca

Because Christianity is one of many religions to master the "You are either with us or against us" mentality.