AW! Epistles
From Chrissy Bachmann
Abstract
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
First of all I wanted to say that I have spent the better part of the day looking at your website, and I am thoroughly inspired. The things that you, and I assume a number of other writers, have written have been heavy in my mind for quite some time. It is good to know that there are others out there who think as I do on this subject. I don’t think anything really surprised me in reading through your site. I wonder how many emails you get involve some "pious" Christian chastizing all of you for your views. Personally, I admire your freedom to say and feel as you do, because as you, I feel much the same way… eeriely, identically the same.
I have always been a bit of a freethinker, only now have I come to realize that I’m pretty much classified as a "non-believer". My biggest complaint, that the Judeo/Christian God is a cruel one. People justify the hateful cruelty and indifference as "God works in mysterious ways". Bah. If God truly loved us, why doe she appreciate the suffering so much? Jesus, seemed to be basically a pawn causing more confusion than clarifying.
When I would pray I would pray hard, reverently, I would be sincere and sacrificing, and where did my prayers go? Nowhere. Some say "God listens, but sometimes the answer is no." My response, "Why is the answer ALWAYS no?". The insult I get handed to me is "You must have faith." Faith in what? I have faith in myself, but my faith in God has plummeted really fast.
I went through a divorce recently. It was an agonizing abusive marriage of 7 years. I would lay awake at night and pray for a sign, pray for help, keeping faith. The only one who came through for me was me. I made my decision, I was the one who had to take action. I went through hell. Many attribute my sudden strength with God answering my prayers… I don’t, I had to step in when praying became pointless… nothing but wishful thinking and falsely placed hopes. To pray to hope is to do nothing but lay down and waste time waiting for things to happen for you. I refuse to allow my life to slip away simply because I’m supposed to be a blob at the mercy of a Cruel God who deems me so unimportant that he can’t even allow me simple relief from the terrible pain I’d had to go through.
What of all the suffering in the world, all the crime and hate? People say that that’s not God’s doing, its man’s. Looking at it in this light, if a mother sees her child being stabbed to death violently, does she avert her eyes and ignore it? Then how can God… who presumably loves us? What of Mary? Someone said that I should pray to her, she’s a woman, she understands women’s issues better. Unfortunately, those ears seems to be as deaf as that of God’s and Christ’s. So who is there?
I want to think SOMETHING is there, but what it is I don’t know. You profess Nature. I’m more and more inclined to believe that. I’m not the kind of person, after this experience with the Christian deities, to go off replacing them with Pagan ones, for me they are about as plausible as the Christian ones… .one deaf ear to another. But I am truly becoming more of a child of nature than of anything else. Thanks for the great site. I’ll recommend it to anyone with questions, and to anyone who cannot see past the thick veil of their closed minded Christian beliefs.
You write in your web site:
They have a purely emotional picture of Jesus quite unrelated to anything the gospels relate about him. The truth can only be that Christians do not read the gospels or the scriptures. Otherwise they would know that they were talking nonsense in almost everything they say concerning Jesus and God. People are brought up as Christians and taught kiddy stories about Jesus at school and Sunday school. They never turn to the bible as adults, probably because they have better things to do and read, but that leaves them with the kiddy image they were first given.
There is a point here that I have been arguing for quite some time. As children people are bombarded with all the terrifying religious mumbo jumbo. Being originally a Catholic, I learned as a little girl that I was worthless… unworthy… nothing, a sinner. I could not in good conscience ever raise a child to believe that. We live in such a contradictory time… .we are worthless in religion, and yet in the secular world we "are someone". So which is it? Worthless or worthwhile? No wonder children grow up to be criminals.
Quite frankly, I don’t think that the majority of Christians read the bible, nor do they strive to understand it… .and to question… .*gasp*. I am thankful to have the gift of a probing mind. I pity those who blindly follow without thought, for it is a far bigger crime to have a brain and not use it than to think freely.
As an historian, it has always been a fascination of mine the different religious beliefs of the many different civilizations and how each one of them was "right". And then along came Christianity. So then, which one was really right? Who knows? In so many Pagan practices, ritual required reverence to nature… a shrine or worship at a natural occurrence such as a brook was paid homage to by keeping the area clean. Recently I was reading about praying to Minerva. The best thing to do to pay her respect for listening to you was to tidy up the area and pick up some of the trash. Quite frankly, when has any Christian done this? Christianity and their Jewish cousins are nothing but "me me me"… plain and simple.
Currently, I am intrigued with the Druid practices, if only I could get beyond my own Agnostic feelings. I would most likely not worship any God more than revere nature and do well to my fellow creatures be they flesh or plant. My significant other practices this, not worshipping anyone in particular, but abiding by natural law. He is probably one of the most moral and upstanding men I have ever met. Good luck to all of you in your views… you are not alone. If you care to respond I would heartily welcome further discussion.
Naturally, I am pleased that you enjoyed the website. I spent quite a while putting it together, and quite a lot of it is still only draft material. I need to work harder at it, but other things intervene. In any case, it does not seem to attract many surfers, so it must be quite a minority interest, though I get more e-mails from people like yourself who have been Christians but become disillusioned than from believers wanting to send God’s curses at me.
My biggest complaint is that the Judeo/Christian God is a cruel one.
It is a primitive, eastern idea of a supreme being. God as potentate, as tyrant, demanding to be worshipped; a megalomaniac god! Who can seriously believe this today?
"God works in mysterious ways". Bah. If God truly loved us, why does he appreciate the suffering so much?
It is impossible to believe that any God or Goddess could interrupt the mechanics of nature, whether they had invented it or not. It is even less possible to believe they would interrupt it to answer a prayer from someone like us, a tiny living mote on an inconspicuous planet somewhere in the Cosmos. Just as James Lovelock invented the idea of the Living Earth which he named Gaia (or Ge) after the Greek Earth Mother, we must think of the Cosmos as living too, and we are a part of this great living entity.
I prefer to think of it as a Goddess—just as you say, a Goddess of Nature or of the Cosmos—because it gives birth to us and keeps us in its womb. It is, of course, not sexually feminine, but it has feminine qualities above all, and no one (except a Christian) will today deny that males are adapted females not the reverse. The feminine therefore is primary (an example of the Holy Book getting biology completely wrong). The High God was initially thought of as female and was usurped from her position by the inventors of patriarchal society about 4000 years ago.
You are quite right to think we have nothing to gain by returning to old fashioned Paganism—that too was primitive—but in many ways it was superior to the cruel patriarchal gods like the Hebrew Yehouah. They introduced the selfish principle into religion and Christianity elevated selfishness to the greatest morality. There is nothing noble about personal salvation. Giving life is noble, not demanding it for nothing more than believing. If Christianity means anything, it means it as an example of personal sacrifice at no personal gain. I think Kennedy said something like:
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Take this out of its nationalistic setting and it expresses the real meaning of religion. We get our prayers answered by answering the prayers of others. Don’t ask what the Cosmos can do for you, ask what you can do for the Cosmos. What we must not do is harm the Cosmos. That will only cause us harm ultimately.
I went through a divorce recently. It was an agonizing abusive marriage of 7 years. I would lay awake at night and pray for a sign, pray for help, keeping faith. The only one who came through for me was me. I made my decision, I was the one who had to take action. I went through hell. Many attribute my sudden strength with God answering my prayers… I don’t. I have faith in myself.
Chrissy, this is the very faith that we all need. You have it. So, carry on casting off the old feelings of guilt you had from the church. You sound to be doing quite well after your difficult last seven years. It is that Inner Faith which matters and which pulls you through in the end. Pray by all means to God, the Goddess, Nature, Cosmothea, Diana or whoever you feel comfortable with, but accept that it is like meditation, a way of getting Inner Strength by awakening that Inner Faith. Prayer often does work for this very reason, not because God is listening and doing you favours. You realised that God wasn’t answering, but you did get the strength. It was there—you only had to tap it.
I refuse to allow my life to slip away simply because I’m supposed to be a blob at the mercy of a Cruel God who deems me so unimportant that he can’t even allow me simple relief from the terrible pain I’d had to go through. What of all the suffering in the world, all the crime and hate? People say that that’s not God’s doing, its man’s. Looking at it in this light, if a mother sees her child being stabbed to death violently, does she avert her eyes and ignore it? Then how can God… who presumably loves us?
A god like this is a devil. Plainly, there is no god. Crime, hate and war are indeed all our own doing, but getting eaten by a lion or falling victim to a flash flood is not our fault. There is no point in blaming things on to gods or devils when they are our fault or when they are random events of Nature. For millennia, we did not know any better than animals what Nature was all about. We got drowned in floods and eaten by lions. We also ate deer and buffalo and caused floods that destroyed the habitats of other animals. Now we can see and understand what we are doing. If we do not learn lessons we shall destroy the earth and therefore ourselves.
Animals will survive and doubtless will eventually evolve back into intelligent forms. Nature will not be beaten, but the human race will—the new intelligence will not be human, of course. Surely, we have duty to Nature to stop this happening. She made us. What right have we to destroy ourselves? And the rest of advanced life on earth too?
What of Mary? Someone said that I should pray to her.
I could never understand how Christians could say God was omnipotent and the one and only god yet pray to a lesser god called Mary, or whatever saint was appropriate. This is the Christian priests having it all ways. They want a monotheistic religion with all the lesser gods of the Greeks specialising in some cure or blessing. They are just renamed Saints or virgins or angels. Originally all Christians were saints—it meant the Perfectly Holy Ones, and was an ideal to be achieved. The bishops, barons and kings soon got rid of all that to prove that we were all sinners who needed the bishops to be saved, through pagan ceremonies and meaningless blessings.
So who is there? I want to think SOMETHING is there, but what it is I don’t know. You profess Nature. I’m more and more inclined to believe that.
We have to find our peace by realising that we are already a part of the Goddess. We do not need to eat communion wafers to get communion with God. We already have it by being here. The question is: What are we to do with it? We must not harm Nature. The bell is already tolling for us. We must fight against injustice. Your success against abuse by your former husband is doing that. Yes it was a personal campaign but precedents form justice and by bearing the injustice you would have been condoning it in society. Catholic priests decry divorce because it makes people more independent of them. And the true purpose of the church is control.
Thanks for the great site. I’ll recommend it to anyone with questions, and to anyone who cannot see past the thick veil of their closed minded Christian beliefs.
A few more visitors to it would be gratifying.
In so many Pagan practices, ritual required reverence to nature… a shrine or worship at a natural occurrence such as a brook was paid homage to by keeping the area clean. Recently I was reading about praying to Minerva. The best thing to do to pay her respect for listening to you was to tidy up the area and pick up some of the trash. Quite frankly, when has any Christian done this? Christianity and their Jewish cousins are nothing but "me me me"… plain and simple.
The pagans instinctively knew of the importance of keeping our relationship with nature symbiotic, not parasitic. Christian values of personal salvation with a self centred, anthropomorphic outlook has been a disaster. It is time we got rid of it.
Currently, I am intrigued with the Druid practices, if only I could get beyond my own Agnostic feelings. I would most likely not worship any God more than revere nature and do well to my fellow creatures be they flesh or plant. My significant other practices this, not worshipping anyone in particular, but abiding by natural law. He is probably one of the most moral and upstanding men I have ever met.
You sound to be much more settled. We have to be just the same in our personal relationships: I mean symbiotic not parasitic. It is a good attitude to have to the Cosmos in general. There is a review of the OBODs sect of Druidism on the site that you might have seen. Their hearts are in the right place but they see fairies instead of angels or virgins. It is the Emperor’s new clothes, a way of demanding your obedience. You feel inadequate because you cannot see them and thus allow yourself to become enslaved doing what they say is necessary for you to see them.
When you do see them, you are either deluding yourself like the Emperor’s subjects or you have decided to join the priesthood—those defined as closer to God, the fairies, angels, virgins, devils or whatever else than the average punter. Many thanks for all this. To paraphrase a famous expression of Jesus (Mk 12:34): You are not far from the kingdom of the Goddess. If you wish, I can put this correspondence on the website.
You asked to use some of my thoughts on your web page. You may. I look forward to sharing more insights with you in the future.
