A Beginning

Where to begin?  That always seems the question, well as most children I was raised under the umbrella of my parents beliefs, which is to say Roman Catholic.  Often is the word I would use, to describe how much we went to church, my parents especially my mother were devout Catholics, and she still is to this day.  Not to cut short my dad’s place in this he also went to church each and every time, which as it is for most Catholic’s a Sunday devotional mass.  Some go on Saturday night my grandparents for example, and it was taken as if you went on Saturday night then you were not required to go on Sunday.  This seem to always strike an cord of humor with me for some reason, like playing a card game, if you played your cards right your opposites would not notice you skipped a hand.  Like it was some advantage to you to do so, or at least that was the general theory amongst my siblings and the rest of the younger crowd.  Like most children raised in this faith or belief system, catechism was a required debt on your time until the age of transition which seems to coincide with the age of a young person in the 8^th grade of school.   The way I saw it we, “graduated” from elementary/middle school into high school at the approximate same time as we did from being a, “child” with no understanding into young adulthood spiritually. To say it was a normal transition for me would be an error, I always was an inquisitive youth who as the priest said, “Ask too many questions.” More on this later, I was also pushed and I say pushed because sometimes my resistance would rise up, to no benefit I suppose since when you are a child you do as you parents wish anyway, to become what is referred to as an, "Altar boy" which is a young, "male" in my day and age, "females are allowed now" that is more or less a page boy for the priest.  He helps with the mass, serves at different church services such as funerals, weddings and the like. This was my spiritual existence until the age of twenty seven.  During this period perhaps about the age of 10 to 12, I started getting interested in pagan beliefs, I would read up on different pantheons, Greek, Egyptian, Celtic as well as some cultural practices of the deep south of Louisiana.  Being a native of central Louisiana, I was aware of the pagan practices especially around New Orleans area.  It was at this time I started to be aware of some of the pagan symbolism appearing in our, "home" church.  Apollo's sun burst behind the, "Eucharist" in our church for instance.  For those of you that are not Catholic the Eucharist is a shrine type cabinet / vessel where the bread wafers that are suppose to represent and, "be" the body of Christ reside when not being passed out to the faithful toward the end of a mass.  Graven images all over, lighting candles, burning of incense, praying with the aid of counting beads, "the rosary" all this was copied from pagan practices.  Should I also go into the many, "saints" that we would pray too? The saint over this and that much like pagan gods. Now to be fair not many of the other Christian paths use saints, in such a way in fact some claim to be saints or the living saints of God. But I digress, it was at this time I started to look more closely into all that we believe, finding out all of the religious holidays we practice also were stolen / borrowed from the pagan way of life.  Having trouble stamping out paganism from early converts, I think the Catholic church would take a pagan holiday, change the story some, and "stamp" Jesus all over it and, BOOM waalaaa you have a, "cough" Christian holiday....

Now where did I go from here you ask?  Well glad you asked, really I am get another cup of coffee we have a ways to go now, and down perhaps an even more damaging path.  You  see I started reading and studying the bible doing history research and the like.  WELL, I left the Catholic church because I considered what I was being taught and could not find it in the bible at all.  So I started looking for someone who was teaching what I was reading, Baptist, sorry nope not there, Non Denominational nope not there either.. Well I made the brilliant deduction that the Apostolic Pentecostals where preaching what I was reading...  Yes you heard me right I became along with my family, I was now Married and had two kids, this was around the age 27 afore mentioned...

Night and Day you say??  You would be most right, I went from veiled paganism/Christianity to Fundamentalist bible thumping in your face, half your front teeth missing going to church 4 times a week Christianity.. "A side note, I opted out of letting some of my front teeth going missing option"  This was a not going to a doctor, believing in God, pray for your sick child because you don't trust god if you go to a doctor type belief. I was disillusioned for a while I thought I had found those that live and believe what they where reading, boy was I wrong.  Oh they preach / scream at you from behind the pulpit, hell is hot and you going to go there unless you do this and this.  I stayed in this even became, "called of god" that is right a preacher, started preaching laying on hands you know all the good stuff.  This lasted for several years, almost cost me my marriage, two of my daughters, I have three and my sanity.  I started noticing most of the so called men of god, where not so godly I had seen more godliness from complete strangers on the side of the street.  Looking down on anybody who did not believe as they do, saying one thing allowing their kids to do another.  Politics, which to me has no place in any religion, drama using the, "devil" and stories of hell as a, "rod of fear" to brow beat the people into a type of subdued fearful submission. It was at this time that I started to question, if this was a god of love, and we were creatures of free will, then in a nut shell why was the message, "Love me, so I can love you and  don't have to kill you in a lake of fire!??" 

I left that brainwashing mind numbing experience, I was tired of being told I could never measure up, indeed I was tired of trying to follow a god who put impossible milestones and goals up before me to follow, but then was it a god or man who puts himself in the place of a god??  I went back to my books digging deeper, by this time I was well aware of the similarities of the Jesus story to existing pagan gods, deities before him. So again I questioned what was real what was not, why do we believe what we do, who made this stuff up??  What was the hidden agenda, mind control, population control, Christianity is one of the largest profit generating operations ever conceived, it rapes more money off the back of people then any other belief.  For the god who is all powerful and owns the cattle of a thousand hills and all the gold their in, he sure needed to dig deep into my pockets to support the propagation of his church.  Well, I think it is time the pastors of the world stop fear mongering the people and get a shovel and go dig up some of that gold and knock a couple of those cows behind the head for their sustenance now, instead of becoming taskmasters over the slave population of their followers.  I cringe to use the term followers, but yes some, if not most do follow blindly never rising above the murk to question why the waters are so murky...

So instead of following a religion which cannot make up its own traditions or holidays I reverted to the source of their inspiration, I became PAGAN>>>