Self-Created Deities
Total tl;dr warning for the first part. I'll put a break in and if you don't wanna read my entire spiritual history, just jump to the break.
Okay, so, I was born into a non-denominational, charismatic, fundamentalist Christian family. If you don't know what that means, basically, we believe in speaking in tongues, laying on of hands, miracles, signs and wonders, singing/clapping/dancing in church, prophesy, etc. The kind of Christians that freak people out in meetings, because we look like we're on drugs or some kind.
When I was 3, I became a Christian myself. I reaffirmed my belief when I was 11, due to being too young to remember the first time. From the time I was 4 onward, I've gone to church. I was baptized when I was 13 or so. (Having an aversion/fear of water, it took that long to scrounge up the courage.) I went to a Christian school from grade 1-8, and was home-schooled through said school for grade 9. I never had much of any social interaction with people who weren't Christian until I was to university at 18. In fact, when I was 9 and playing house with my new friend who lived next door, I went to pray over the "meal" and she didn't know what I was doing. That shocked me, that someone wouldn't know to pray before eating.
When I was 13, I realized that my sexuality wasn't heterosexual, and I began to feel a sort of pressure and awkwardness, knowing what my parents thought about homosexuality, that the Bible says it's a sin. So I buried it, although 3 years later, it decided it wasn't gonna hide in a corner anymore, and this time I wasn't able to deny it: I'm a lesbian. This freaked me out. Needing to confide in someone, I told my sisters, and they supported me, and suggested that, if I needed to talk with someone older, to go to my aunt, because she's totally open-minded and would never tell anyone. So a year later, on a trip to see family, my aunt and I were in the hot tub and I came out to her. Unfortunately, I didn't know it, but the living room window was open, and my mom overheard. A week later, she asked me about it, and I confirmed that yes, I like women. Cue months of suggestions as to the "reason" I'm gay, talk about how it's a sin, yadda yadda yadda.
I finally looked up the verses in the Bible that mention homosexuality, did some research, and found that, in fact, nowhere in the Bible does it even mention loving homosexual relationships, and the things it says are sinful have specific circumstances around them, or have had a shifting translation over the ages, because the original meaning has been lost. I came to feel comfortable with both my sexuality and my faith, certain that they weren't mutually exclusive. I told my mom what I'd learned, and she told me that it very well may be, but in her spirit, she knows it's sinful. What can you say to that?
One day, I was praying with my parents about a problem I was having, and somehow the subject of my sexuality came up. I don't remember the exact conversation. What I do know is that it led to my parents praying, in reference to my sexuality, that God would bring me back to the path He has for me. So I went back into the closet. Cut to a year and a half later, and my mom and I are having dinner and talking. Rather out of the blue, I say, "You realize I'm not straight, right?" Bye-bye closet. Although this time, I made my mom promise to stuff it with the theories. That was 3 and a half years ago.
About two years ago, I started developing an interest in "New Age" things. Crystals and stones, that sort of thing. I looked into the ideas behind it, and they make sense to me. Energy and resonance and all that. And I started thinking that maybe it didn't contradict God and the Bible like my parents have been saying. They talk about New Age as if it's some horrific brain wash experiment. I know that's not when I started doubting, I've gone through phases of doubting my whole life. But that's when it really became a niggling problem.
That niggling problem, recently, has started screaming in my ear. I've started researching some things in the Bible, asking questions. Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart, having him stand against Moses even in the face of the Plagues? The Bible says, flat-out and multiple times, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Where's the free will? That bothered me. I looked into the story of Jesus' birth, and found the Bible contradicting both itself and historical record. That made me wonder, can I believe anything the Bible says if there are obvious errors in it? I kept looking. I found the story of the destruction of one (two-ish) of the tribes of Israel. (Judges 19-21) That freaked the heck outta me. That the appropriate (and God-given!) answer to a group of men raping and killing a woman was to kill and burn the entire city it happened in. That's not just an eye for an eye. That's 'the death of you and all your family' for an eye.
I told my parents about my feelings today at dinner, and my dad brought up the story of Noah (yes, it was random) and how God told Noah that He regretted creating man. That brought up another question for me. If God exists outside of time, and the past, present and future are one to Him, as the Bible says, how can He regret anything? Before He even created the universe, He would have known that the entire world, save Noah and his family, would be wicked and corrupt, and yet He did it anyway. That doesn't jive with regret. Regret is a hindsight emotion, something you feel when you didn't know the (negative) outcome of your actions.
That brings me to now, and my realization that I can't, in good conscious (that would be the one that God gave me, according to my parents) follow a God who has this aspect of His personality. My mom suggested it was simply a 'facet' and that the stories may not be completely historically accurate. But if God is a fraction of how He is portrayed in the Bible, I can't accept that. And if He isn't like that at all? Then I can believe nothing the Bible says.
This doesn't leave me in a good place. I feel like I'm flailing around without anything to hold on to. I know there's a god/goddess/thing "up there." I've had experiences that leave me with no doubt at all that a higher power of some sort exists. It's the "some sort" that I'm having trouble working out.
And so I ask...
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Is there such a thing as self-created deities, and if so, do they have any power?
As I said in my tl;dr, I most certainly believe in a higher power. I'm simply not sure of the form it takes. I've always felt little to no actual connection to the Christian God. In fact, I feel more of a connection to a set of goddesses that randomly came to me one day. By that, I mean they just sort of... popped into my head. I don't heard them of anything, they're not walk-ins, I just have this knowledge of them that I can't explain. I've known of them for something like 4 years, I guess. I don't remember exactly when it happened. I didn't think anything about it at the time, except to find myself thinking of them at odd times. I think of Ashda when it snows, or Leruu when it rains. When the full moon is out, and it's so bright and beautiful and hypnotizing, I've caught myself, on occasion, thanking Amoran. And I don't know what this means.
Some have suggested that the Higher Power, Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is in fact numerous entities joined together or interacting together, and that they show themselves in different ways to different people. Some have told me that one's own will can bring these being into existence. I've been told that they are not "higher" but "different."
I suppose, what I'm wondering, is... could these goddesses I connect to so strongly, despite my best efforts, be real?
Note, where I've mentioned their names, I should let you know that those aren't their true names, but simply what I refer to them as. They came to me nameless, and I needed a way of distinction when I wrote about them.
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