Testimony of Steven P - Series of bumps in the road to finding religion

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.(Rom 5:1-2)

 

My life has been marked by a series of bumps in the road to finding religion. Indeed, I never thought that I would be writing a Christian testimony. But I wanted to let people know that no matter how difficult their religious path seems, never stop trusting in God. You will be led in the right direction if you keep your heart open, and trust in Him.

 

I grew up in a Presbyterian household. My parents were not too strict with matters like letting us boys stay up till all hours, etc., but religiously, I felt they were quite strict. In those early years, my life centered on going to church, reading the Bible (even if it were a children's version), and having little Bible studies with my parents and two older brothers. I caught on to this way of life at an early age, for when I was about five, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be a priest (despite the fact that Presbyterianism has no priesthood). All the early doctrines made me feel very safe and secure; that Jesus loved me, that I'd get to spend eternity in heaven with my family, and that I could read His words whenever I wanted to. This security really changed as I hit the teenage years.

 

Very early on in adolescence, I began to read a lot of books on Christianity, and began actively listening to sermons that I would go to hear three times a week—or more. I read how there was not only a heaven, but also a place called hell to which even some so-called Christians may go. I became extremely scared when I heard this! I talked to my pastors about it on a regular basis, and worried that I was not "saved." They said, "Well, were you sincere when you prayed to God to save you?" My reply was usually, "I certainly want to be!" They would reply, "Maybe you don't have enough faith." I lived my life till I was about eighteen in this fear that though I followed Jesus, I might not be saved. No one bothered to tell me that it is God's grace that saves; not the amount of my faith.

 

I tried everything I could to convince myself I was saved. I learned Hebrew and Greek, and even tried witnessing to a few people. I even wanted to go to seminary. "If I can only do this; if I can have enough faith; if I can translate this part of the New Testament; God will save me." That became my cry of hope. I know that it sounds pretty ridiculous, but when everyone is telling you that only a very small minority will get into heaven, that can have a big impact on a kid. I was too embarrassed to tell people I was a Christian because I didn't understand what Jesus did for me—how could I when everyone was basically telling me it wasn't enough? And that I was home schooled and even went to a Christian school my senior year didn't help. For everyone emphasized that we humans are puke in our angry God's eyes, and if we doubted for an instant, we were going to spend eternity in a lake of fire.
This fear rather quickly turned into anger not only at my teachers and pastors, but God Himself. I was also furious at the fact that I was being held accountable for Adam's sin. "I didn't do anything wrong! Why should I have to be held accountable for what he did?" It all began to feel unjust. I also found emptiness with trying to live up to a moral code I knew I could never keep. For no matter what I did, it was a sin. I didn't experience God; I only kept a bunch of commandments humans had made me follow. No one told me that God doesn't expect us to be perfect. He wants us to, but He can change our hearts. I later learned that while it takes but a second to become a Christian and to be saved, it takes a lifetime to become like Jesus. I only later learned that God is patient. Instead, I was told, "You're sinning, you're not sincere, you have to earn God's favor and work till you're dead to keep in His good graces." With teaching like that, I wanted to get out of this religion as quickly as I could.

 

Now also, when still very young, I developed a fascination with ancient cultures, especially the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian. I also looked a little into the occult. I dabbled, got scared a few times, so I didn't bother with it again for years. Even so, I read my first book on the occult in my elementary school's children's library (!) before I was even old enough to read most of the words on the page. Though I had a great interest in the occult, I suppressed that interest as best I could so as not to "give Satan a foothold."
By the time I got to college, I was spiritually weary. I was tired of worrying about salvation and pleasing a seemingly unappeasable God, and tired of putting up with the hypocrisy of other Christians. I was tired of my parents controlling certain aspects of my life under the auspices of "honor your father and mother," and I was sick of the televangelists telling everyone that they're going to hell. In fact, I was flipping through the TV channels in a friend's apartment my freshman year in college, and saw a televangelist holding up a picture of a little Jewish girl who had recently died. He said, "This little girl looks so cute and innocent, yet she is screaming in the depths of hell! She is screaming for her mother to come save her, but she will never receive comfort! I don't care how young you are, if you don't accept Jesus Christ, you too will scream for your mother!" That did it. I had officially had it with Christianity. I wrote a document that I have since lost, but in it, I declared my independence from God. "Any God who makes you love Him or choose eternal punishment is no God at all," I remember writing. "He is a rapist. For that is no love at all; it's rape." With those stinging words, I became an atheist.

 

I literally lost my mind for a while. I committed as many sins as I could so that in case there were a God, I would make Him as angry as He had made me. I slept with every woman I could get my hands on, and dumped the girl I was dating—a devout Catholic—to live a life of licentiousness. I read The Satanic Bible. I knew I could never be a Satanist, but I certainly agreed with what the book had to say. Hate everyone, destroy all remnants of God, and be as selfish as humanly possible—to me, that was life. I got madder and madder at a God I no longer believed in, and people around me began to notice a change for the worse in me. I was always hot-tempered; but now, I wanted to destroy everything in my path. A lot of people became very scared of me, for I made myself to look very unapproachable and mean, but that false toughness was a façade to the inner turmoil I was experiencing. An account of all I did in that time would be too long, and emotionally upsetting for me to disclose. But it was a life of sex, violence, and hate.

 

Now there was an occult bookstore in the downtown area of the city I was in. When I first walked in, I was taken aback by the strong smell of incense. The two people, a Kufutu healer and his native American wife, who worked there (actually, there were three, but the third left around that time) were extremely friendly, and I soon confided in them about my troubles. I told them I liked the Satanist point of view of hating everything in the world, but I still yearned for something other than hate. (I didn't like the idea of Satan— real or imaginary—and I could never be a Satanist. Plus, I thought the movement was rather silly, but I enjoyed the words of Anton LaVey. Still, all that hate began to make me physically ill.) For hate quickly exhausted itself in me. The woman brought me a copy of Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. I read it as quickly as I could read anything. I also bought a copy of Modern Magick, but I found I could not use it effectively since I could not bring myself to say the names YHVH, Adonai, or even Gabri-el. They reminded me too much of Christianity. I bought many more books, and read up on everything I could.

 

Soon, I felt Wicca was for me. No salvation, no hell to be saved from. Just you and the Earth. I liked that. It was very nice and peaceful, and it was what I needed at the time. I finally was able to indulge in my life long interest in the occult, and I never tired of what I could discover. But I felt Wicca to be too nice, and I didn't like that whole idea of "the Gods are what you make Them to be." So I searched more; this time, not through magic or spells, but through philosophy.

 

Two years had gone by, and I was now a junior. I was beginning to calm down a little, and for the first time in years, I wanted to know if a God really existed; if so, I wanted to know Him...or Her. I don't know what prompted this desire; all I know is it came at the right time, and set the stage for the greatest time of spiritual exploration in my life till then.
I was in the park on campus, and I asked myself, "What is God?" I knew that God could not be confined to heaven, for that is too limiting. So, I thought, if God exist, God must be everywhere, but not separate from His Earth. I had been taught this as a Christian, but never understood what that meant. For if God be everywhere, one can experience Him any time one pleases. I soon became a "panentheist", not to be confused with "pantheist." A pantheist believes everything is God. A panentheist believes God exists in everything. I began reading some non-Christian mystical works (that wound up being based off of Christian mysticism) that talked about how God created the world to be as a veil for Himself. For how else could we know the majesty of the invisible if it were not made manifest? This led me to a deeper question: does God care for me?

 

I was studying geology at the time, and we had been studying the great "hows": this is how plate tectonics works, this is how humans evolved, this is how mountains are formed. But we never hit on the "why." My teacher was not a Christian, but he believed that a great mind had formed all these things. So, I began to see God as a great mind—a sentient force in nature, if you will. But I also noticed how orderly things were, how the green grass is so beautiful as the sun hits it, and how intricately designed humans are. "Surely a God who did not care would not take the time to be as careful as He seems to be." Now I saw God as the sentient personal force in nature. I began to sense God's presence everywhere, and I needed to make sense of it all. So I turned to Hellenic Reconstructionism for the answers, having looked in many places first.

 

Hellenic Reconstructionism is the revival of the ancient religion of Greece. Like all things, I approached it skeptically, but soon fell in love with it. I'm of Mediterranean descent anyway (Italian to be exact), and so the fit was a perfect one. But I hated the myths; I felt that they were belittling of the gods, and I felt that they were taken too literally by the masses. I really found my home with Greek philosophy. Especially Plato. This set the stage for my return to Christianity.

 

In philosophy, the gods are not real; but they are symbols for natural phenomena as well as symbols for divine truth. In other words, Zeus may send rain from the sky, but that rain falling is also a symbol of how the gods provide. But even deeper, most of these philosophers believed in one god, To Hen (The One, in Greek). They were essentially monotheists. I felt very comfortable with this idea, and I never saw the gods as separate "plastic" entities, but as aspects of The One (a concept expounded on by the Hindus). I was also studying Greek pagan mysticism, and about this time, became the president of the pagan organization on campus.

 

This mysticism basically centered on getting in touch with the One God, going beyond the "gods" to The One they all represented. I began various ancient mental and relaxation exercises, and over the course of a month, I began to feel very close to God. Indeed, I felt I experienced Him on a personal level; and this, constantly! I soon felt enraptured in love, and I kept praying, "To Hen, may You lead me to the truth, whatever it may be." I began to write pagan praise music, and even wrote a cantata for baroque orchestra. Nothing I did felt separated from the love of the One; till one day, I had the first of two visions that changed my life.

 

Well, it wasn't really a vision; more like a really intense day dream. I was just sitting one day reading, when suddenly, I felt myself being thrown into hell. I saw the Father standing over me saying, "You rejected My Word and My Son! You have chosen this!" The sky was black, and all I felt was the heat of fire. I was terrified, to say the least. I longed for my good feelings I had had with my experience with what I thought was the Divine. I longed to feel loved again, but all I felt was fear.

 

I lost a lot of weight. I hardly slept. I was about to graduate college, have a birthday, but I was miserable. I said, "Why is this coming back to me? Why do I feel so condemned?" I tried to explain it all away. I began to think about Jesus, too. But not in an orthodox way. "He was a great man," I would say. I had read The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess and I felt I had Jesus pinned down to nothing more than the Jewish version of the Greek Dionysus myth. And I heard a song that posed a question I could not answer, the first line of the song being, "Who is this King of Glory…?" I knew, but I didn't want to admit it. Besides, I was having too much fun, too much sex, too much of everything I ever wanted. I didn't want to think about repentance. So I went to see a pastor friend of mine. I told him what was going on, and he asked me a very simple question: "What did Jesus Christ do for you on the cross?" I just sat there, dumbfounded. (Now I really couldn't sleep.) I struggled with this question so much. I also kept hearing a voice in my head saying, "Read the first several chapters of Romans." I heard this over and over. So I got a Bible and began reading Romans.

 

It didn't take too long. Up until this point I had been saying something we've all heard too often that we should not say: I am a good person. After reading a mere few lines, I knew this was not the case. (It was thundering outside, and the rain was pouring down. It was as if God was purposefully being dramatic!) I read, and read, and felt more and more condemned. I read how we can't reach God by our own works— like I had been trying. I was hopeless! I felt so convicted: I knew I wasn't good. Now I began to fear. I feared God's judgment that Paul described. I wanted a way out of this judgment. Then I had a bona fide vision.

 

I saw the Father, coming towards me. He was huge, and he came to me and said, "I am sorry, Stephen, but I must punish you for all you've done. You've sinned, and the end result of sin is death." I began to cry out, "No! No! I don't want that!" He continued, "You're far from me; a few mystical experiences don't get you off the hook. I'm sorry, but this is how it must be." I felt more fear then than in my entire life. He drew closer to me as I pleaded, "Somebody, save me!" Then I saw a man step between the Father and me. He held his hands up: "Don't touch him. Punish me instead; mine are the blows." I was in shock! Then I looked down, and saw that the Man had holes in His wrists. I knew exactly Who it was Who had come to rescue me. He turned to me and said, "All you have to do is believe." That really perturbed me. "How can I?" I shrieked. "I have spent the last four years trying to disprove You! I could never have belief enough to save myself." And He smiled and said, "I know. That's what kept you from Me all these years. It isn't about how much you believe. What I did on the cross was enough. All you have to do is accept, for My love is greater than any hindrance you could have." With that, I fell to my knees, and said, "I accept." The Father and the Son vanished, and I knew I was forgiven. Then I felt almost a pain strike me; I felt like someone had died. I had that feeling you get when someone calls you and says, "Someone has died," and that person ends up being someone close to you. I lay on my bed for a very long time, unable to move. All I could do was thank God.

 

Why had Christianity not worked for me when I was younger? Because I felt that I had to believe enough, or have faith enough. The real Christian message is accepting what God did for us on the cross. If we had to believe enough, we'd still fall short. Besides, that's just another work. But if we accept what Christ did, that is salvation. You're called; all you have to do is say, "yes." (And for once, unlike when I was younger, I have no shame in telling people I'm a Christian. After all, if you can go four years with telling people you believe in Zeus, saying you believe in Jesus Christ isn't so bad.) Also, I have resigned from the Pagan club of which I was president. Few of them know I am Christian, for I have only told a few. But for those I have told, I am glad to have had the opportunity to show what happens when you pursue truth.

 

For a while, the old habits crept back in. I began to doubt my salvation. But I know that it is God's grace that saves; not the amount of my faith. Salvation is so simple we fear it. For we are taught that if it's too good to be true, stay away from it. I have learned that we're not saved because of our faith, but through it. Now I see how great God's gift of grace is!
That is my testimony. Now, for the Pagans…

 

Scott Cunningham can only tell you so much; your "spirit guides" can only tell you so much; the futhark can only tell you so much. If you want to know truth, ask the Divine. I'm not going to say you're going to hell, nor am I going to mock your practices. I was one of you once! But I will ask that you pursue the truth. A. E. Waite may have gotten things wrong as much as Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John could have. You can't rely on humans to feed truth to you; we too often mess it up. But you can rely on the Divine. If you are on a spiritual journey, pray to the Divine to lead you to the truth, and don't resist when you find it. Pagans are supposed to have an open mind; open yours up to where the Divine truly leads you; not of your will, but of His. After all, wouldn't it be better to follow God than your own mind, which could lead you astray?

 

by Steven P. at exwitch.org