One of the things that drew me to the Pagan faiths after realizing that Christianity was no longer going to work, was the stronger emphasis on experiences than on what is written down in a book. While my Protestant faith had placed a great deal of value on experiences of God, in the end those experiences had to be vetted by the Bible. When God seemed to do or say things that didn’t fit the book, they had to be thrown out as invalid. I think that limited what could have been huge revelations about the Christian God and his place in my life. In the end it felt limiting to a being that was supposed to be unlimited. It was also my experience of other Gods that helped me to realize that, while I do think the Christian God is a God, he is not the only one, as I had been raised to believe.
I understand that a person who believes that deities are separate and complete individuals from themselves would want to be sure that what they experienced was not self-manufactured. Hence, there is a great need to collaborate with an independent source like a book in the Christian faith. I no longer view the divine as separate from myself. I will be the first to tell you that I am perfectly willing to say that my experiences of the divine Gods could be nothing more than brain chemistry. I would then add that Love is the by product of brain chemistry and is made no less powerful and moving because of that fact. Experiential faith allows me to plumb deeper into a relationship with those beings, as well as with myself. Experiences are the ghosts in my machine, that animate my faith and spiritual life.
This is why the doing of religious activity instead of right belief has such a strong push in many Pagan faiths. ADF makes it very clear that we follow orthopraxy and not orthodoxy. It is right actions and deeds, not doctrines, that influence my views and understandings of the Kindreds. My direct experiences of these beings informs my faith, and others are not required or even asked to believe the same way. I allow that others can and will experience relationship with the divine in a different manner than I do. I experience relationship with my husband in very different ways than other who know him. This is how it should be. I act different toward a stranger and probably come across as a much different person than I do with close friends. Why should I expect anything different from the Kindreds, who are also individual personalities?
I understand that a person who believes that deities are separate and complete individuals from themselves would want to be sure that what they experienced was not self-manufactured. Hence, there is a great need to collaborate with an independent source like a book in the Christian faith. I no longer view the divine as separate from myself. I will be the first to tell you that I am perfectly willing to say that my experiences of the divine Gods could be nothing more than brain chemistry. I would then add that Love is the by product of brain chemistry and is made no less powerful and moving because of that fact. Experiential faith allows me to plumb deeper into a relationship with those beings, as well as with myself. Experiences are the ghosts in my machine, that animate my faith and spiritual life.
This is why the doing of religious activity instead of right belief has such a strong push in many Pagan faiths. ADF makes it very clear that we follow orthopraxy and not orthodoxy. It is right actions and deeds, not doctrines, that influence my views and understandings of the Kindreds. My direct experiences of these beings informs my faith, and others are not required or even asked to believe the same way. I allow that others can and will experience relationship with the divine in a different manner than I do. I experience relationship with my husband in very different ways than other who know him. This is how it should be. I act different toward a stranger and probably come across as a much different person than I do with close friends. Why should I expect anything different from the Kindreds, who are also individual personalities?
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