Wicca, Me, and Salvation

Been quite a while since I've posted on here, and kinda figured I would give people some form of an update on how things have been going with me. I really wish I would post on here more often it's really nice for me to get somethings that go through my bipolar mind out and into the open.

I am now officially about 90 days away from getting out of the military which to me is a good thing. I am done with this experiment of military service, and ready to move on with the next stage of my life. Which I am hoping to have some of it almost finalized by time I leave California. I will post it on here as soon as I can get word back on if everything is going to go through or not.

One of the biggest challenges for me in life as I think I have posted on here before is the constant struggle, day in and day out, of my past with witchcraft and Wicca. It's that time of the year, where the leaves start turning and it starts getting colder outside. My internal instincts this time of year especially as it gets closer to Hallowe'en is to just say its too hard to live this Christian life that has given me so much joy and purpose in life, and just ditch it all for the easier path of Wicca. It's really hard not to go back to, after all it's witch season right?

I am going to touch on this more here than I have ever before because again, it helps me to be able to put fingers to keyboard and get things like this out. I hate myself for this constant struggle that I am in. There has been many times I have questioned God about why me? Why am I the only one that struggles greatly with this issue? Why no matter how hard I try to stay with Christ, I also seem to stumble and fail and sometimes even find myself thinking about going to a Wiccan ritual? Why me?

There was almost a decade of my life that I spent in Wicca. I had some really good times in it, but at the same time I had some really really dark times. There was many an occasion that I swear I have felt pure evil, and trust me when I say this it is not a fun time when that happens. It truly scared me to the core of my being when I swear I was in the actual presence of the demonic.

The stumbling block for me always tends to be that its the easier path in life. After all, humans try to take the path of least resistance right? It's easier for me to say, believe what you will there is multiple paths to divinity than for me to actually preach the truth, and that is that there is only one way and that is through Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Its easier to live by a code of ethics that simply states "An' Harm Ye None, Do What Ye Wilt" then to live a Christ-like existence. The bible says that we are to emulate Christ in all that we do and say, but man it's so hard to do sometimes.

Right now I am almost at a loss of what to do. I know what is right and righteous and true, but how can I, someone who for almost a decade cursed the name of Jesus, ever hope to be saved. How am I worthy of the love of God? How am I worthy to be called His son?

I'm not worthy of it, plain and simple, no one is. It is by grace that I am saved, through faith in Christ Jesus. The faith that God the Father sent his own flesh and blood, think about that for a second, Jesus is God's own flesh and blood. Could you send your own child to die for an entire people who aren't worthy of your love? I know I more than likely couldn't do that.

But the Father did, sent Jesus to die on the cross so that you and I can be saved. He sent Him to die so that we may no longer be slaves to our sin. That right there is so powerful. That is the ultimate display of love for those who are not worthy of His love.

That simple message right there, is why time and time again even though I may stumble and fall, is what keeps me picking myself back up and following what is righteous and true. I have been through a lot these past couple months. Everything from going to an alcohol rehabilitation program to where I am today finding out that I am being medically separated from the military because of my bipolar, and the one constant throughout all of it has been the fact that I have a God who loved me so much, that He sent His son to die for me.

I am sorry if you couldn't follow my train of thought with this post. It is 12:30 A.M. and I haven't slept in over 48 hours. I just had to get this off my chest. I am hoping to be able to post on here more often now. As I said earlier, writing things out tends to help me somewhat get my thoughts in a logical order to me.

For now, your humble servant,

xtan.goth

Just some random thoughts from going to a church this weekend

It has been a minute since I have posted on here, so I wanted to post something, anything. I went to a church this weekend. I was coming from a local club and hanging out at an all night diner with a couple of my friends out here. This church is right down the street from this goth club after much debate amongst ourselves at the diner, we decided to go to church when it had its service this morning at 10.

First thing to know, we were still in our club clothing and had been up the entire night, so we probably were looking like the living dead. This is my first time going to a church in about 3 months, and I think same with my friends.

At roughly 9:30 this morning, I know we were out in the daylight, we paid our for our coffees and food, and started to walk towards the church. This all ties into this blog because it was an ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America). I don't want to start a flame war amongst Synod's of Lutheranism so I will leave the name of the church out of the matter.

As we were walking towards the church, you could feel the looks starting. "Who are these freaks?", "What are they doing here?" etc. We persisted because they weren't coming from everyone, only a select few of the older people. So we get into the church, and everyone stopped. I think expecting us to catch fire, I take off my cowboy hat which I customarily wear almost everywhere when not in uniform, and we find a seat towards the back of the church, yeah I know traditional lutherans here. The service starts...

The start with a modern praise and worship song. Cool, everyone is up and about worshipping. Then comes the church announcements, and then I guess the tradition of greeting the visitors, I should of known something was up when only a couple people came up to us to introduce themselves. I shook off this feeling because honestly I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me, mainly just from all the stories I have heard about goths showing up to church and some of the greetings that they have been given. The few people who did come up to us, were very friendly, and we were overly friendly back (don't want to ruffle any feathers). One note, the pastor didn't come up to us to introduce himself, he turned on his heels when he got back to us.

Then came more music, and then the Scripture readings. The Gospel on which the sermon was based was on Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4). The pastor then goes on to start his sermon, and I honestly think to this minute that it was directed towards us sitting in the back. He talked about how Jesus broke Jewish custom when talking to the Samaritan woman, and that we as Christians today should embrace diversity.

I just want to note something right here, this pastor was a hypocrite. He needs to practice what he preaches. Not fifteen - twenty minutes earlier he wouldn't say a word to us goths sitting in the back pew of the church, and now he is sitting up there preaching that Christians should welcome us? Who does this man think he is?

So yet again, my search continues for a church out here in California, that is a) not hypocritical and b) accepting of me for who I am not what they think a Christian is.

I am not a for lack of a better term, "cookie cutter" Christian. I love Christ with my whole heart, even though I do stumble from time to time, mainly with my past lifestyle of Wicca, and me and der_m have had a conversation about it already. But one thing I do not stand for is blatant hypocrisy like I experienced this morning.

My question for you all is this, why is it that there is such blatant hypocrisy in the Church here in America, and how can we change the modern church culture to make it more accepting and thus open to a much more diverse crowd?

xtan.goth

Question of a lifetime

Quick question for you, how many of the readers here would be willing to give their life for the faith in Christ?

It actually is something that I feel should be talked about more in modern Christianity. You hear quite a bit from people about getting back to the roots of Christianity, and going back to the ways of the original Christians. I have heard it from a couple different people I talk to that we as Christians in America need to get back to the way that the church was back then, but when you ask the same person if they would be willing to give up their life for Christ most won't give you an answer or they will try to dodge the question in general.

What got me thinking about this was the other day I was reading about Stephan. As many of you know Stephan has the distinct honor to be known as "The First Martyr". How many people do you know without a shadow of a doubt would have that type of strength and conviction to stand up for Christ like that? Stephan more than likely knew when he was brought before the Sanhedrin that he was going to be killed, and he accepted that fact. He was truly a man of God.

Anyways, trying to not sound too Evangelical I was just wondering who would if given the chance, on this very solemn topic, give up their life here on Earth for the Kingdom of Heaven that He has waiting for us.

Just a quick note...

So I promise to try and make this quick... Yeah how many time have you heard that from people, only to have to conversation last for a couple hours. This may end up one of those depending on how I get talking (actually more correctly typing). I just want to drop a quick not saying hi to all the readers and to say that I am now to co-villain in writing on this blog. Where to start, that is the main question.

I am xtan.goth, as you can probably tell by my name, I am currently serving my country in the United States Marine Corps. I have probably only a couple more months left in the military, then I start on my life outside the day to day operations of the military. I am currently thinking about going to become a minister in LCMS. I am still very big into the Goth Subculture out here in the lovely Southern California Desert, I am probably the only Christian Goth per-say out here the only other ones I know of are Pagan. Which brings me to my next topic, my past.

Up until, October of this year, I have been a practicing Wiccan/Pagan. I have spent around the last 10 years to some degree or another in the occult. Some of it in groups, and also some of it solitary. But something changed in me around August of this year. I just felt like no matter how much I did magick it just plain and simple wasn't doing it for me anymore. I just felt like there was this gaping hole in me that nothing could fill. Then I started getting into something really dark. The only way I can really describe it is Demonic. I knew it was evil pure and simple, but at the time I thought I could control it. How wrong I was. I ended up talking to a really close friend of mine about everything, and she simply started telling me about Christianity. (On a side note, I grew up in a Lutheran household before I decided to rebel and get into Wicca.) I was completely cautious about this. I had just spent almost the last decade basically knocking down Christians to some degree or another. I didn't know that he could forgive me, so she invited me to go to church with her that following Sunday. I was nervous I had always thought that they were going to basically get ready for an exorcism if they saw someone like me walking in. I was used to the weird stares that comes with wearing the clothes.

I was actually surprised when I went there, I didn't get any weird stares or anything. I felt accepted. It was that day that I decided to turn away from Paganism, and became a Christian. It was the best decision I made in my life. It was also around that time that I felt like my true calling in life was to become a pastor for the goths. Ask anyone who knows me I have become outspoken about my religious beliefs.

I am going to post again here in a couple days more on some of my past experiences with Wicca and Paganism. I just wanted to drop by quickly and say what's up, and give a brief introduction. I am also currently writing a demo for the band I am the only member of, I will post a link to the downloadable album on here as soon as I finish up on everything.

Merry Christmas and God Bless,

xtan.goth

The Joy of Painting Creation

This isn't particular to the counter-culture and its relation to faith, but this is my blog and it's not irrelevant, either.

The Creationism vs. Evolution Debate popped up on a forum my wife frequents. The stance she's taken thus far is pretty much my stance: it's a pointless debate. To avoid inviting tangential debates, I'll only summarize that we believe each thesis to be rooted in fundamentally different presuppositions, which can only be changed by spiritual prompting beyond the exclusive influence of reason.

Anyway, we were discussing the whole matter, and my wife pointed out that the analogy of God to an architect is flawed. The implication is that God planned out His "blueprints," and merely finalized them on each of the six days. Genesis doesn't say that God sequentially executed a predetermined course of action. For example, after God created the man, He later decided that the man shouldn't be alone and created the woman. Perhaps God created more organically!

"Let there be light! ...hmm, now let's separate the light from the darkness - nice!" "Hey, let's put stuff in the water!" I was reminded of Bob Ross, from "The Joy of Painting," moving intuitively from a blank canvas, to a plane of light and dark, to an abstract land mass, to detailed landscapes. "Let's put a happy little tree here..."

"But God is perfect," some may object. I think we misunderstand perfection, especially as the ancient Hebrews understood it. To be perfect is to be complete, and has the same root word for peace. Perfection is to not lack anything. It's not necessarily that Does-Everything-Right-the-First-Time-Perfection we hate in high school, or an anal-retentive attention to detail. God is not necessarily a Type-A personality. If God can instantaneously create from nothing, maybe it took Him six days to create the universe because He was experimenting, playing around, trying things out, and only at the end of the day was satisfied enough to say it was "very good." Like Bob Ross used to say, "We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents."

In the creative process today, there are generations of a single work. There are stages of Bob Ross' painting before he stops and calls it very good. If you chip away at the paint, you find evidence of the earlier stages - how the tree used to be a bush and the stream might have been a rock. Look at wikipedia, or collaborative documents, or computer programs, and you see the logs of even thousands of generations of revisions on a finalized work. Isolate one of those revisions, and it's a different work entirely. It's just natural in the course of the organic process to have traces and evidence of change little different than the evidences of evolution we find. (I'm not making any ostentatious claims on this, but only remarking on how natural such evidence is to creation at any level.)

This makes more and more sense to me as I think about it, which I've only done for a couple hours... maybe once I've thought about it a couple weeks or years, I'd feel confident enough to say more, but for now I'll let God be God and marvel at His wondrous works.

"Pink fluffy clouds..."

:-D

Let Rome Burn

Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

-Jesus Christ, Matthew 22:21

This should be a familiar quote, usually taught to distinguish Church from state.

Jesus demonstrates the difference, but to teach only that is too simplistic.  Immediatley before this, Jesus is talking up the Kingdom of God, and the Religious Establishment (aka, Pharisees) are trying to trip Him up.  "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"

Essentially, Jesus is saying the question is irrelevant - Caesar is irrelevant - Jesus is interested in the Kingdom of God.  And the Religious Establishment doesn't get it...

...neither does today's Religious Establishment in the United States. 

Perhaps the greatest challenge to Christ's Church has not been persecution, but establishment.  Under pagan rulers, Christianity thrived.  Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  The Christian Way is a way of suffering, of being a "living sacrifice," St. Paul says.

Except in rare instances, Western Christians have gone without real, physical persecution for about 1700 years.  A millennium after Christianity was legalized in Europe, the Religious Establishment again turned against Christ's Gospel when they fought against Reformation.  Nearly a century of bloodshed finally came to peace, and the Outlaw (Lutheran) Christianity was again assimilated into the Establishment.  This is where we find ourselves today.

As the people wake up from superficial modernism and begin to question presuppositions, the Religious Establishment again feels threatened - and it is threatened - because it is less Christ's Church than a bulwark of society.

Christ's Church transcends society, because Christians are called to be holy.  "Holy" reads "set apart."  Christ said "the gates of hell shall not prevail against [my Church]."

Jesus answered [Pilate], "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world."

-John 18:36

Therefore, we Christians should not be unnecessarily concerned with government.  We should not be unnecessarily concerned with the United States.  The Scriptures tell us to submit to our authorities, which we must - and that was written under a persecuting pagan regime!

Legislating morality helps no one, much less spreads the Gospel!  Even un- or anti-christian legislation should be of no real worry to you, because it has no effect on your soul, faith, or piety. Neither Republican nor Democratic party government is any more "Christian" than the other.  Neither the Green nor libertarian party are any less so.  And if you are a Christian, you are no less so under a Muslim, a communist, democratic or despotic government.

So if Rome is burning, like so many pundits are screaming from the rooftops, let it burn.  "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness..." wherever you may be.  Under whatever government you may be.

Sinners Smoke Cigarettes

Sinners smoke cigarettes
The righteous smoke cigars

Sinners smoke cigarettes when and where they can
The righteous smoke cigars in hidden enclaves and at special gatherings

Smoking cigarettes is a disgusting habit
Smoking cigars is relaxing and flavorful

Sinners are addicted to cigarettes
The righteous have no reason to give up cigars

Sinners are enslaved to immoral tobacco corporations
The righteous indulge immoral tobacco corporations

Cigarettes cause cancer, disease, and death
Cigars cause cancer, disease, and death

There is no difference between sinners and the righteous,
except how honest they are with themselves
--der_m, 03.May 2009

i smoke Pall Malls, by the by ;)
yours in Christ