Growing Up Christian in a Family of Pagans

I grew up in a family where many of the members were pagan. Different members operated in different areas and levels of paganism, most of it in the occult. Some of them went to the regular mainline Christian churches and taught Sunday School and others went to the pagan churches. Yes, you read that right, they taught Sunday School in the regular Christian church. They didn't see anything contradictory in doing that while also practicing their pagan beliefs. I grew up in those mainline Christian churches.

I became a true Christian believer when I was a very young child and was also called to the mission field when I was still quite young. I was never ever interested in pursuing the pagan ways of my family, even though it was something that had been passed down through the generations, because I'd seen and heard Jesus early in my life and He was all that I could see and hear.

He was all that I ever wanted. My family didn't understand how I could be so serious about Him to the exclusion to everything else. I guess you could say it's the same as being monogamous to someone you're so in love with that all you see is the one you love.

One would take me with them to their psychic seminars, other pagan places and chase me around trying to
read my horoscope to me. I don't mean that little thing you find in the magazines and newspapers. I'm talking about the multi-page one that has your planets, houses and moon risings. Yes, I know I'm not saying this right because that's all I heard as I was running out the door.

Another was reading my palms, telling me what they were seeing and hearing, following the horoscopes in the magazines and newspapers and saying that if I was going to church and was "good' that that was good enough to be Christian. Needless to say, I no longer fit into my family and it was very difficult. It's still difficult today, because they don't understand that we aren't going in the same direction. They think that we are all following the
same thing when we're not and they keep trying to get me to go in their direction when I'm not going to.

Even though this made things complicated for me with my family, it actually helped me when I'd lived with converted hippies in the 70's and have worked in the kitchens with Rainbows during their gatherings in the 2000's. I have a certain sensibility or sensitivity because of my upbringing, I guess, that has helped me connect with some of them.

In this article I'm listing some of the main differences and disagreements between Christianity and Paganism:

1. Christians have one God, Jehovah or Yahweh(YWH), whereas pagans often believe in a god and goddess within a framework of pantheism (a dual personality of a single godhead), duothiesm(two absolute opposites) or polytheism(two main gods among many minor multi-deities), or no god.
http://www.answers.com/topic/wicca

2. Christians believe that man is made in God's image and is the inheritor of His divine nature which includes His supernaturalness, whereas pagans tend to see their deities in their own images, natural and symbolic of aspects of the human or created nature.

3. Christians understand God to be the Creator and finisher of all things. Many pagans tend to see mother earth to be the creator and sustainer of a cycle of life.

4. Christians recognize Jesus as the Son of God, born of a virgin, lived as a man, and died and was resurrected from the dead, capable of saving us from our sins and from eternal death in hell. Some pagans don't even recognize Jesus and others may see Him as God, but as equal with their other deities. They see many ways to be correct to follow. We, as Christians, see Jesus as the only way for salvation and to God.

5. Christians believe in birth, death and resurrection from the dead to either Heaven or to hell. Many pagans believe in reincarnation in a continual cycle of a series of lives. Most of them don't believe in Heaven or hell as Christians understand them to be.

6. Christians believe in salvation from sin whereas a lot of pagans don't see themselves to be in sin, don't consider there to be sin, but that there are different individual choices and values. They often don't recognize there to be a satan as the Christians do. They see the universe to be complementary opposites rather than opposing opposites of good and evil as we do.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_2000/pagan.htm

7. AsChristians we base our lives and walk on the Word of God which is found in the Bible, that it's our responsibility to obey what is written to the level that we understand. Pagans don't have just one text or set of beliefs that they follow. They believe that their actions are of their own choosing and of their own responsibility.
http://www.allaboutspirituality.org/paganism.htm

Sources:

http://www.answers.com/topic/wicca

http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_2000/pagan.htm

http://www.allaboutspirituality.org/paganism.htm