Pagan Values Blogging Month #3: Personal Responsibility
I'm not normally a Christian-bashing Pagan. I generally try to practice tolerance and acceptance when it comes to people who believe differently than I do (which is pretty much everyone). One thing about Christianity does give me pause. In Christianity, if you transgress against your religious rules, and you own up to your mistake (or, if you're Catholic, you confess it to a priest, they give you a punishment & you perform whatever act is asked of you) you are forgiven by God or Jesus and your sin is wiped clean. It's a pretty nifty system. I know it's probably more complicated and layered than what I make it seem, but that's the gist of it.
As a Pagan, when I do something 'bad'... I have no one to apologize to, and no one forgives me, and my slate is not wiped clean. If I hurt someone, yes, I can apologize to that person and be forgiven by that person, but I still bear the karmic burden of my action. It adds up. Enough of that karmic stuff piles up and I'm reincarnated into an even worse circumstance than what I got in this life. But I have no one to blame for my circumstances except myself. I keep thinking how I must have been the Boston Strangler or something in my last life. Thinking about it now, it seems pretty silly to choose a religion in which one is responsible for every thought, every action, every word when I could belong to a religion where you can screw up often and be forgiven and go out & screw up again, ad nauseum.
The thing is, I like that sense of personal responsibility, and it is probably my strongest religious value. It makes me feel like I'm in complete control of my own destiny. The words I speak are my words, and only my words. The actions I perform are my actions. The thoughts I have are my thoughts. I am responsible for how I use them. No one can make me do anything against my Will because all acts I perform are performed willfully.
(Yes, a lot of times when I am talking smack, I blame it on Coyote. "Coyote made me do it". "It's my Coyote medicine"... or my favorite, snagged from The Simpsons, "I am a Coyote, after all". Yes, having Coyote medicine may play a part in my orneriness, Coyote does not control me - I choose to act in a Coyote fashion. And, much like Wile E. Coyote, I do pay for my more Coyote moments. I embarrass myself. I stick my foot in my mouth, and I must like the taste because I do it regularly and with relish.)
I also hurt people. Unlike someone else who can cover up a cruel joke or saying something mean... I can't say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't really mean that!" No, for me, it's more like, "Aw crap... I didn't want you to hear that..." Whatever it was that I said, I meant it, and I meant to say it, just not loud enough for the entire room to hear. Well, no, I meant for everyone to hear, just not you. Well, no, I wanted you to hear it, too, because I can't stand you. I can't just blush and shuffle my feet and apologize because, it was intentional. In the same vein, though, I don't give people meaningless compliments. When I say something nice to someone it's because I mean it, and I'm not just trying to be nice. Which is why some of my compliments may sound a little strange, or I pick up on strange things to compliment. I once told a woman I was attracted to that her butt was 'huge and awe-inspiring, like Mount Everest'. I was dead serious - her butt was awesome.
Generally, people that I hold in high esteem are people who own their thoughts, words and deeds. I like people who can admit they made mistakes, who can admit that they broke something, who can admit that they screwed something up somewhere. I also honor people who own their good deeds and take credit for their own work. Yes, God or Jesus or Brigid or Thoth or your mom may have inspired you to do something great, but in the end it was your hands that did the deed.
People who do horrible things and then blame Satan or their dog for it... unless they are clinically schizophrenic or paranoid delusional or have some other severe mental instability, it doesn't fly with me. OJ Simpson is not sitting in prison because he got a bum rap or had bad defense attorneys - it's because he committed a crime and got caught. I'm not saying that if a person commits a crime and owns up to it they should not face social ostracism and punishment - I'm saying that it's their fault they ended up in that situation and have no one to blame except themselves. If I went out and committed a crime and got caught, I would not be sitting in prison blaming society for my woes. I'd be figuring out how to get out of the mess I'd landed myself in and doing the work necessary to achieve my freedom. If a person says something hateful and spiteful to another person, and get their words thrown back in their face, those words belonged to them. Now that I think about it, it sounds a whole lot like another Wiccan saying: Whatever you cast out on the waters of life shall return to you threefold. What you own will return to you in time. In other words, if you can't eat it, don't dish it out.
I guess a word on addiction is due. I believe that addiction is a disease. Yes, a person is responsible for substances they put in their body - things that are nourishing and things that destroy. A person can choose to smoke a cigarette, drink alcohol, take a drug... and they choose to repeat the behavior. At a certain point, though, the spirit of the substance takes over and the disease begins. Not everyone can master certain substances. Tobacco is a prime example. The tobacco spirit is very strong, and only the most powerful and trained shamans can palaver with it on equal footing. The rest of us are feeble compared to that particular Jaguar. I feel pretty darned smart when I think of all the times I smoked cigarettes and never got hooked in by the Jaguar's claws. I have another downfall in alcohol. Right now, I can hold my own against that spirit, but it's a tenuous hold and the joke will always be on me. Rob likened alcohol to a Crocodile, and he's so right. I can swim with that Crocodile but eventually it's going to get hungry - and I must always remember that the Crocodile is waiting for me to get tired. In my beliefs, a person is responsible for getting drunk or high, but once a person is drunk or high, their active and knowledgeable responsibility stops and they become a temporarily insane person who really can't be held accountable for their words, thoughts and deeds (buzzed doesn't count, I'm talking truly wasted) at that moment in time. If someone makes a mistake while intoxicated, they should be given an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, but they should still be held accountable for the mistake - otherwise they will never learn how important their decision to become intoxicated or to avoid becoming intoxicated is. I include myself in this. I can be a moron when I'm drunk, and I'm the one who decided to get drunk, and once I'm sober I expect to pay the price for whatever stupid stuff I did when I was drunk. So far, I've been lucky and haven't made any truly tragic mistakes - probably due to me not driving. But I always know something bad could happen. And because I'm a Pagan and I'm responsible for my own actions, even if I did it while drunk and therefore temporarily insane, I would have to live with the consequences of my choice for the rest of my life.
This could easily turn into a rant for me. I get annoyed easily by people who blame their upbringing, their environment or some substance for acting crappy. Yes, I was poor - Hel, I'm still on the border of lower middle class & upper lower class - my mother abused me, my father was immature, my various other relatives have heaped abuse and indignity upon me, I had no direction or guidance in life... but it's not their fault how I turned out. And ya know what? Just as much as no one else is to blame for how I turned out, no one else can take credit for me, either. It's all me, baby. It's my fault because I am not creative or emotionally intelligent enough to move forward in my life. I jokingly say that the Universe hates me, but it's not true. I am 100% to blame for all of me, and I am 100% to thank for all of me, too. The good along with the bad. My failures are my failures and my successes are my successes (granted, I did have some help, and I am grateful to the people who have supported me over the years).
Getting back to the lucky Christians, I think I've gained this smug sense of superiority. To me, Christians are kind of weak because they can't live up to their own actions. Their God doesn't seem to really even want them to take credit for their own actions - He wants all the fame and glory. God likes touchdowns and lottery wins and giving birth and lucky escapes from precarious situations. God's kind of like Al Gore - God probably wants people to think He invented the internet, too. Christians hand all responsibility over to their God and live these carefree lives, knowing that as long as they do everything their God tells them to do, they get to go to some paradisical afterlife. My Gods are more concerned with keeping the Universe running than taking credit or blame for everything I do on a daily basis. They also don't micromanage. My Gods give me hints to do things occasionally - the big things, but I've pretty much had to be a self-starting employee who does well on my own. Even if I do everything my Gods tell me to do, I still might come back as a cockroach. There is no Heaven, no Hell, no eternal reward or damnation... just me and my karma, the wheel keeps going around & around, from thought to word to deed, from birth to death to yet another life.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I am responsible for my words, but I do give myself some wiggle room. I can tell you this much - I never lie, I just tell stories.)
Source:
perzephone (Jun. 9th, 2009 at 8:04 PM). Pagan Values Blogging Month #3: Personal Responsibility
http://perzephone.livejournal.com/453428.html