So, I am coming from a baptist background and I was baptized at the age of 10. I have recently been told that my souls would go to the Christian God because I was baptized? I stopped following the Christian belief because I was strictly driven by fear of hell and damnation. I started this journey because I wanted to grow with happiness and peace as a Wiccan. Now I’m not so sure if I can do that if my soul is forever bound to the Christian God, since being a Wiccan is “against his will” and I’d be cursed to hell regardless. Any advice/help would be appreciated on this matter. Thank you!
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I grew up Methodist but I always thought that being baptized only counted if you were an adult. Anyhow, I don’t know about other people but I don’t believe in hell or the devil. Those are Christian concepts and I’m not Christian anymore. I don’t know how it works for Christian witches. That’s just me. I was baptized at 12 and don’t worry about it. I’ll go where the Lord and Lady guide me.
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Thank you, I’m no longer apart of the Christian faith but it’s been a little hard transitioning when I’ve had fear and hell embedded in my brain since I was younger 
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It’s important that you realize that from the day you were born you were indoctrinated into that religion.
Years of indoctrination will take years to get rid off, it will not happen overnight, even if you stop going to the church, the brainwashing lingers. That’s why you feel that your soul is “bound to the Christian God” when it really isn’t.
Take is slow and day by day, you will eventually get rid of it completely, but it takes time.
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Thank you, and yeah it still affects me sometimes but I know that’s not what I wish to be apart of anymore 
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Transitioning can be hard because unlike Christianity, in the Craft you have absolute freedom to do whatever you want. It sounds very vague, but that’s the beauty of it.
Pracitcing Witchcraft is not about following a predefined path but finding and creating your own path.
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I get that. It is difficult. Surely but slowly you’ll get there. I have faith in you!
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Thank you! I hope that over time I get stronger and more confident!
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I am so glad you brought this up @quadeera. I wonder if I should put a disclaimer on my answer “This is a personal opinion and may not be the opinion of anyone else on this site” But if we were having tea together this is the story I would share with you. In my life I was baptized as an infant… then I married a Baptist minister who wanted to re-baptize me as an adult… then I attended an Apostolic church and they didn’t accept my first two baptisms and wanted to be sure that I was re-baptized --without --the 3 in one, Father, Son and Holy Ghost component.
AH religion… Through all this I have felt that my soul is still mine until the end of my days and my relationship with my maker is personal and not confined to any one Dogma. I am still struggling with the concepts of heaven/hell — As I work with the spirit board I begin to trust more in a continuation of spirit beyond death that exists in neither heaven nor hell. I find it freeing to broaden my view of God to all that exists…and at least for me I no longer accept that my ‘pagan’ belief system is in conflict with my understanding of biblical teachings. I have several friends who consider themselves Christian Witches. I don’t call myself that … but I can only answer for me and where I am in my journey. At least for me it makes more sense to believe in a creator God that is timeless and existed long before man imposed his Religious constructs and ideas about God.
Hildegard of Bingenhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen a German benedictine abbess was very skilled with herbs, crystals and her connection to nature… a ‘wise woman’ who commanded great respect and ultimately was sainted for her knowledge and her legacy of books. She is my hero.
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I grew up Baptist, as well; however, I am finding the transition much easier than I expected. I’m not an eclectic witch, as I now follow the more pagan path now, but I find wisdom still in things I learned in my Christian past.
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As Francisco said, it can take years to break free from indoctrination.
I was baptized as a child in the Lutheran Church. I first started dabbling in Wicca at 15. Then I became a right-wing, conservation, evangelical Christian and I was baptized as an adult because my first baptism wasn’t a “believer’s baptism.” I was the person on street corners passing out gospel tracts. My team would target malls and large events so we could reach many people at one time. I won’t get into all of beliefs from that time period but let’s just say Southern Baptists were too liberal for me.
I was slated to teach on the book of Revelation in 2010. I’d taught on it before many times but I wanted to do something bigger and more structured. After a year of preparing I’d come to realize my old beliefs on the book were wrong. I ended up teaching something vastly different from the book and we had so many people in the class that we had to keep the door open so the rest in the hallway could hear.
The dispensational views of Revelation were the first dominos to fall. Next to fall was my belief in heaven. NT Wright is a great starting point. I believe he was an angelican priest? He wrote a book called Surprised By Hope that started with me on a journey concerning the idea of heaven. I soon came to realize that the Christian hope isn’t heaven, it’s resurrection. Most Christian teaching on the subject focuses on heaven and ignores the resurrection part but the resurrection part is the part the early Christians hoped for the most.
I’ll skip a bunch because this is getting long but the next things to fall were the concepts of a being called The Devil, hell as a final place of torment, the bible as inherent, and Jesus as eternally God.
Each step along the way I cried and prayed that God wouldn’t lose me, that I would stay his forever and that I wouldn’t be punished for eternity. It was brutal at times because how indoctrinated I became before this journey began, and it took 10 long years for me to finally reach the point that I’ve reached: I’m an eclectic witch that practices what I call “Originalist Christianity.”
I worship Yahweh and the Holy Spirit as The Lord and The Lady. I believe Jesus existed, as do most scholars, and that he died, but my beliefs for why he died on a cross are radically different than Christianity would teach today. I no longer believe he rose from the dead and I no longer believe in heaven or hell, but I do believe in resurrection. I do believe in making the earth a better place and that one day it’ll be redeemed completely from all of the chaos that we’ve brought on it. And I’m finally at peace within myself with these beliefs and my Wiccan practices.
It’s not enough for me to just say these things to you to comfort you. We each need to take our own journey. But we are all in this life together so if you ever want to do your own reading or to chat in a separate post here (or on the discord server) hit me up and we can talk.
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I have it on really good authority that your soul stays here. I use pendulum skrying to speak with the spirits of the recently departed. They tell me that family is there. Non have seen an angel. If you want to have a human body again; move close to a pregnant woman. The Baby will suck you in. Of course you have to experience diapers, and gestation all over.
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I am soooo glad I stumbled across this! I was baptized as an infant in the catholic church but grew up southern Baptist, baptized again when I was 12 or so. I still hold to certain beliefs because they make sense to me where others aspects don’t (like the lack of a feminine diety) and having chosen to follow my current path has brought up all these thoughts in the back of my mind. This is clarification for me (as I sit here tearing up). Thank you for sharing, this is just what I needed 
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