Been a while but

I felt the need to find a safe place to express my thoughts.  I've been on Yahoo! Answers for the past week answering questions about Paganism and Wicca.  The process is infuriating.  Dealing with everything from fundamentalist Christians that answer Pagan questions with "repent or go to hell" or "turn your life over to Jesus", to very un-Wiccan-like Witches that feel because they know more than someone that makes them better.

I e-mailed some lady that was giving very rude and condescending answers to people that have genuine questions about our faith.  This woman had the nerve to tell me I was threatened by her and I was wrong to call her out.  People like her piss me off.

Man I got so upset from seeing so much bs on this site and nothing being done about it I put up my own question "Why do you feel the need to continually shove YOUR God down OUR throats"?  Don't you know one of those pigheaded, fanatical Christians had the nerve to report my question as ranting and got my shit deleted!  That really pissed me off.  The only reason they did that was because I put up legitimate frustrations that apparently didn't sit well with him because he was Christian and I am Pagan.

Anyway some lady posted up a question about how to accept her daughter being Pagan when she raised her to be Christian.  There were some ignorant answers (from Pagans and Christians alike) but one really stuck out there for me even though he didn't really answer the question lol.  He posted something from another web site that I in turn put up below along with the link to the site.

I'm only going to post up the first five but the link is above in case anyone wants to read the rest of it.  This guy makes some compelling arguments.  Things I never even thought about.  To be honest I wish I could have the patients to sit down and read the Bible to find all this stuff out for myself but as it is, I can't get past the mob mentality thinking when I try to read it.

In my heart I honestly wish it were easier for people to stop criticizing and tearing down others because we are different.  Differences are good.  If everybody was the same this world would be a very boring and dreadful place.  Maybe I should make a movie about that. 

Thirteen Reasons Why Jesus, If He Were Here Today, Would Be A Witch

By Carl McColman, author of Embracing Jesus and The Goddess

No single one of these reasons prove the Witchiness of Jesus, but taken as a whole, they make for a compelling case!

1. Jesus criticized the hypocrisy and legalism of the religious status quo, and chose to embrace an alternative spiritual path. (Matthew 23:1-36)

In Jesus' day, the religious establishment included the Pharisees and Sadducees, dominant factions in first century Judaism. Jesus' alternative path followed the radical teachings of his mentor, John The Baptist. Nowadays, in Europe and the Americas, the status quo is mainly Christianity; the path of the Goddess - Wicca - is one of the most compelling of available spiritual alternatives. Many people who embrace Wicca have the exact same criticisms of Christianity that Jesus is said to have had about the religious establishment in his day. Hypocrisy, legalism, blind obedience of the rules to the point of ignoring spiritual values like love, trust, and freedom. These are the problems Jesus attacked in the official religion in his day, and that many Wiccans today see in the religious status quo of our time. Perhaps Jesus, were he here today, would join Wiccans in criticizing mainstream religion and trying to find an alternative way.

2. Jesus was a psychic healer. (Luke 6:19; John 0:1-12)

Luke comments that "all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them." And John recounts how Jesus made a magic healing paste by mixing his saliva with soil from our Mother, the Earth. For Jesus, healing was a central part of his spiritual identity. Witches, likewise, rely on herbal wisdom, natural foods, and psychic practices like Reiki to bring healing and comfort to themselves and their loved ones. Sadly, the Christian religion rarely encourages its followers to take responsibility for their own healing, but rather colludes with a medical establishment that keeps people passive in regard to their own wellness. Jesus the healer has much more in common with Wiccan healers than with church-going "patients."

3. Jesus acknowledged the divinity within each person. (John 10:34-36)

All he was doing was quoting the Psalms, but Jesus emphasized it: "You are gods." Throughout the Bible, Jesus uses mystical language to illustrate the essential unity between humanity and divinity. How sad that the church founded in his name lost that sense of human divinity, and has instead stressed the "fallenness" and "separation" that keeps humanity alienated from the divine. Incidentally, this is an indirect affirmation of Goddess spirituality, as well - for if we are gods, as Jesus quoting the scriptures insists, then both men and women partake of the godly nature. Implying therefore that God emcompasses both the masculine and feminine dimension of life. So the "God" whom Jesus worships incorporates both the God and the Goddess as revered by Wiccans.

4. Jesus lived close to nature. (Matthew 8:20; Mark 1:12-13, 3:13; Luke 4:42; John 18:1)

Jesus took a vision quest in the wilderness; he loved to pray in the mountains, slept in gardens, and made a point of telling his followers that he had no house to live in. Frankly, it's hard to imagine him driving an SUV or worshiping in an air conditioned church. If Jesus were here today, I suspect he would live in an ecologically sustainable intentional community, and he would advocate a sacred duty to the Earth with the same zeal with which he advocated care for the poor and the downtrodden.

5. Jesus believed in magic. (Matthew 7;7-11)

Only he called it prayer. "How many of you, if your child asks for a fish, will give them a stone?" "If you ask for it in my name, it will be done." Church-goers often see magick as a different from prayer, because prayer is timid and uncertain: "Not my will, but thine." By contrast, magick assumes that the Divine Spirit loves us and wants to bless us in accordance with our highest desires. When Jesus prayed, he prayed with confidence, not timidity. And he taught his followers to do the same. Nowadays, magick may have fancy window dressings (light this candle, recite this incantation, etc.) but it still comes down to the same thing: making a request for spiritual blessings. Jesus' vision of prayer is like Wicca's vision of magick: it is based on trust and love, unlike the prayer of church religion, which is based on fear, self-criticism and self-doubt.

13 Reasons Jesus...