Stan asked some very good questions in “How Gods work in Wicca” which I’m going to answer here. The first one I’ll answer is “I see you mention a belief in Satan as well, so what do you believe about him?” First, I don’t believe that Christianity is monotheistic. That principle is very important to the rest of this post. It has a pantheon consisting in the very least of Jehovah the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit and Satan. Depending on what flavor you’re looking at you can add any number of angels, saints, Mary, etc.
This is based on how “dead” religions are viewed by anthropologists. There were faiths very similar to Christianity, with a “supreme god” and a family of lesser gods around them but no one now calls them monotheistic, although the followers then did so. See this site for details. In all other faiths, the son of God was a God just not the Supreme God.
All that said, I believe in Satan as a God of Evil. I believe Satan is wrong and wants to harm us. I believe he works in direct cross purposes to Jehovah the Father. I believe he’ll use every means at his command to do so as well.
Stan continues, “As I believe that Satan is out to destroy mankind, creating false gods and setting them up to be worshiped strikes me as a very logical thing to do.” And I agree this is very possible and leads right into “The question, then–when one presupposes a belief in a belligerent devil with great skill at deception–is how does one determine which faces and facets of Deity are correct and trustworthy?” Anyone in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints already knows the answer to this, you pray. You ask, you listen, you evaluate the effects on your life, and heath and soul and you keep on praying.
April 1, 2008 at 2:03 pm
This, then begs the question, “What makes a god a god?”
On another point–that of detecting false gods or true gods– what of those who aren’t members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints…what are they to do? Or are you prescribing the “pray and ask” method as a general rule that works regardless of denomination? See, if you say that–though I believe it’s true, personally–you’ll get people who ask, “Well, what God should I pray to?”
My answer for that is, “If you don’t know who you worship, don’t ask me to figure it out.” I think people have an innate sense of what they revere. Even if they don’t have a pre-existing belief in any given god(s), any real god would be able to hear a prayer, and understand that the prayer is directed at Him/Her, should someone decide to forego absolute aetheism and “seek God.”
Going back you the blog you reference at the beginning, the one in which I posed the intial questions, you mentioned worshipping *all* gods. What does your worship entail then, since you quite clearly point out that you believe Satan to be a malicious being who is interested only in our harm? I suspect you mean something other than what people traditionally consider “worship.”