Knee Jerk Reactions and Milk Religion

There are a few things that I have both very in common with other pagans, and yet completely different. The main one involves my knee jerk reactions to Christianity.

Unlike many pagans, I wasn't raised Christian but Jewish. Monotheism was still much of the reason I walked away, not to mention all the other problems with contemporary Judaism, but I don't have to get over much of the deprogramming that other pagans did/do with regards to Christianity. I don't know the words to things like the Lord's Prayer, most of my understanding about Holy Communion comes from studying the Protestant Reformation, and I only know that the Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because I randomly picked the knowledge up as a joke at my summer camp. Whenever I've felt compelled to study religions, I've always gone for something else. Christianity is so pervasive in America, I found any other religion more useful to study because I would actually be learning quite a bit more. Expand my paradigms so to speak. So, being the geek I am, lack of knowledge mostly means lack of experience. In many ways, I don't have the same issues.

But I despise being in a church.

I feel profoundly uncomfortable going to "Church." I've been a few times, twice for weddings, and a few times with a fundamentalist evangelical ex... and actually none of those were bad experiences. I feel so uncomfortable that I don't go with some friends to a local Unitarian Universalist church because they call it church. I know Jews, Wiccans, Buddhists, and Atheists there, but it doesn't matter. I have a gut reaction of "oh FUCK NO" to the mere thought of attending church. A lot of this probably comes from being raised Jewish in jointly the Bible Belt and the Midwest. Going to synagogue was actually quite a bit of a thing at my first school. Missing days because of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper wasn't common, and it was weird that I didn't eat pork and for a week each year I couldn't eat pretty much anything the school served for lunch because it always had bread somehow. Even when I transfered and ended up in the honors classes where 50% of the room would be absent on aforementioned days, the earlier lessons were still ingrained. When I started hanging out with almost anyone who wasn't from my high school, they were retaught to me in full. I've been asked where my horns are, and people have asked in a slightly nervous voice if the rumors about Jews using Christian babies blood to make matzah was true. Yeah, welcome to modern America people.

So it isn't just the attending church bit. That's probably the most irrational, as I haven't actually had any bad experiences in a church. The bigger issue and knee jerk reaction is when it comes to the Christian god(s). I use the parenthesis because Christians themselves don't actually agree on how separate Jesus (and the Holy Spirit) is from Jehovah. Some time ago I came across the term "hard polytheist" and it really rang true for me; however, I don't like claiming a term, an identity, without interrogating it a good deal.

I'm definitely a polytheist. I actually believe in multiple gods and goddesses, that they actually exist, and aren't just mental constructs, archetypes, or a part of "one big god or goddess." Fine if you do, that isn't my belief. And I certainly believed in more than one pantheon, especially as I wasn't really following any one in particular. I had (and still have) no doubt that Hela and Persephone are two distinctly separate individuals and not just facets of the same entity as interpreted by two different cultures. Where the line falls, I can't be sure. Where is the division between the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses? I don't know for sure, and unless I end up going in depth with those pantheons I probably never will because my brain power is better spent elsewhere.

There are loads of Deities throughout the world in this view. But what about Jehovah and Jesus? The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim gods may all be the same singular God, to me that is much like the distinction between the Greeks and the Romans. Where the specific line falls is not an issue. But regardless, if I am going to respect the divinity of all those gods as mentioned before, I have to come around to some acceptance of Jesus as divine.

This might seem backwards to other pagans. This definitely seems backwards to Jewish friends of mine. But, for my personal path, the only way I can call myself a hard polytheist is to come to terms with the concept that Jesus is divine and might even be a god. My brain reacted like this:

Picture of a shocked looking cat with WTF and a question mark.

My brain did not like this. I spent a ton of energy throughout my youth dealing with attempts by my Christian friends to convert me. One memorable bus ride involve me crying my heart out because of how fucked up shit was in my life, with a good friend sitting next to me witnessing to me. I didn't have the energy to get her to stop, and I didn't even have the energy at the time to think about was how if she really gave a shit she'd be supporting me and not attempting to get me to make Jesus my personal savior (that came later.) I spent most that time thinking about the fact that I was in a large amount of emotional pain due to very non-metaphysical and very serious reasons, and no Deity was going to be helpful, let alone one getting shoved down my throat at the worst time. Needless to say, I've never accepted Jesus into my heart.

Acknowledging Jesus' divinity, not an easy thing for me to do at all. I went over why I was even trying to do this in my head. I don't have to be a hard polytheist. I can be something a little less hard; I don't have to be the diamond polytheist I can be quartz, or gypsum. But no, I found a right word for myself.

"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." -Mark Twain

It was the right word, so one way or another I had to come to terms with either not living up to my own expectations or the idea that Jesus was divine, and quite probably a god or an aspect of a god. I chose to simply deal with this concept, and find a way to wrap my mind around it, hoping the rest of me follows.

As of December, I was still vacillating. When I spoke about it, I generally mentioned how I was hesitant to call myself a hard polytheist because of things like the Greek/Roman distinctions. I didn't want to get into it, because I don't like to publicize something I see as a failing. I had no logical reason to think that son of one god should be any less than the son of so many other gods and goddesses. It was simple prejudice, and a long standing grudge. Despite years of effort to not Christian bash like so many non-Christians in America, despite years of focusing on the fucked-up people and their fucked-up politics rather than blaming the religion, I couldn't put said religion on the same level as every other religion. Years of invisibility, assumptions, and oppression kept my mind recoiling at the thought of Jesus as divine in any form. Heck, there's a passage in the Talmud about stoning him to death.

Slowly, I wore myself out. The knee jerk reaction was mental, not spiritual. I had no gut wrenching aversion from intuition or instinct. It was all learned. I remembered other things than the ways I've been bombarded with "Jesus Saves." I remembered my mom recently teaching me a prayer to St. Anthony to help me find lost things (an entry in itself.) I attempted to define what makes a being a god or goddess, which I'm still working at but at each turn the answer was pretty clear: I needed to get over it already.

I did. I celebrated this not with a drink, but by telling my very Jewish friend about it, because she was one of the only people I knew who would both understand my accomplishment without judging me for not being Jewish. The hardest part wasn't the comprehension, it was letting go of the grudge. A lesson I am probably going to have to learn again as I am truly terrible about grudges.

On the other hand, I still won't go to church.

NB- I do not at all feel that any of the above sentiments on my mental gymnastics around Jesus and Christianity reflect a requirement for other hard polytheists. Your views on individual Deities are your own. Less importantly, I never expected a blog of mine (let alone one on my spirituality) to talk about Christianity and Jesus this much.