An Odin vs Jesus Love Story
Watching The Good Doctor last night with my husband made me realise that my love story with Odin was a bit like Shaun's love story with Lea. Shaun wanted to impress Carly (his girlfriend), but his true love was always the slightly wayward Lea. That's how it was with me... I wanted to impress Jesus but my true love was always Odin, the Wanderer. It's not that I didn't/don't love Jesus at all. I do. Shaun loved Carly too... but there is love and then there is the kind of passion that makes you feel alive.
Shaun says about Lea, 'She makes me more.' Again, I can relate. Odin makes me more. I think that's maybe what scared me right from the start, from my very first meeting with him in 2010. I wasn't ready to be more. Nor was I ready to stop judging myself for wanting what I wanted deep down. And that's the thing about religious programming--it continued to make me shrink instead of making me more. I was always afraid of doing 'the wrong thing,' of sinning and being judged.
Witnessing to a Heathen by the Sea
So I thought I'd share this story from last year when I was going through my most regressed evangelical Christian phase after the walls of the world collapsed and the Convid Beast rose to support the fourth Reich.
I haven't told anybody this story until today. I'm still slightly embarrassed about it, but I think it's better out than in... To be fair, it was only thanks to temporarily regressing back to my teenage faith that I was able to finally deconstruct my religious programming completely--A prerequisite for constructing anything more solid and... well, real.
The story is like a key scene from a romantic film where everyone in the audience is made to realise who the main character truly loves before the main character realises it. Here's what happened:
It was a warm day in June 2020, and my husband and I decided to take the dogs to the seaside. Even in the car, I had a feeling that some kind of important meeting would take place on the beach. I thought to myself, 'I must be meant to share the gospel with someone.' Because that's what a good evangelical Christian does, right?
A Failed Witness
I was waiting in the queue at the fish and chip place when the next person walked up behind me. I turn around and notice that she is wearing a Mjölnir, so I ask if she is a heathen. I mean, the Mjölnir and pagan tattoos gave it away, so I didn't really need to as,k but I did it anyway. It created an opening so that I could start 'witnessing' to her.
However, it was pretty obvious that she was a very happy heathen who loved her faith and talking to her, so I had to admit to her how much I loved the Norse gods and myths. To say that I was confused and in a state of cognitive dissonance is perhaps an understatement. But the worst part was that on some level, I realised that I was jealous of her faith.
The feeling of safety from the Evil of the world that I had bought with my belief in Christ seemed just a bit lame by comparison, especially when she told me about a recent blot (offering) she and a friend had done to the gods on the beach. Would I rather have attended that than sit through a church service? Heck yeah!
ChristoHeathen
If I had completed my testimony like a good Christian girl, I would have had to tell her that she needed to turn away from false gods. The reason she needed to turn to Christ is that we are all born marked with the stain of original sin, and that without Christ's sacrifice on the cross, she and everyone else would be on their way to hell. I never got that far. I just told her how much I loved Jesus, so at least I didn't lie and deliver a hellfire and brimstone sermon outside the chippy. Trust me, it was cringy enough as it was.
I guess, in my heart, even at my most serious stage of evangelical Christianity, I was still a filthy heathen... or at least maybe a ChristoHeathen -- I looked it up. It's a thing.
Of course, going by inner plane contacts, Jesus (or Yeshua, as I know him) is always going to be in my life, but he seems quite happy to let Odin step forward and do his thing.
The Audience Knew
When I sheepishly asked my husband if he remembered that time that I had witnessed to a young heathen woman down by the beach, he answered in the affirmative. When I then went on to tell him I had been jealous of her heathen faith, he just said, 'Oh, I knew that.'
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment