My reaction to a Pagan wedding,,,

I pride myself on being open minded and tolerant of peoples' right to believe what they like and live in any way that they so choose. So my reaction to my friend's news that she has been invited to a Pagan wedding surprised me.

My friend said that she had recieved an invitation from her partners cousins inviting them to a Pagan wedding where they would be calling on the Anglo-saxons and Gods...and my reaction was one of 'Well I could not go.'
This surprises me on two levels....

Firstly, as a keen pupil of religion and faith, I have always been interested in anything new and different and something like this would have been exciting to me in the (not so distant) past. The idea that I could go and observe something that was not an everyday occurance would have had me jumping out of my seat!!

Secondly, my feeling towards it was totally negative because I felt it was evil and wrong. Now I am not suggesting that these people don't have the right to have this wedding, of course they do - simply that I would not be able to go to this wedding if they were my friends.The people at the table with me asked why and all I could say was that the calling on people of the past and Gods felt demonic and wrong to me. I would feel open to attack if I was to go to such a ceremony.

So back to my original idea. I do believe that I am open minded and tolerant because I will always protest a person's right to personal views etc...but I believe that God must be changing me from the inside out because more and more my first thought on anything is God. I feel like I am seeing the world through the Holy Spirit more and more. I also think that some of my tolerance in the past has actually been cowardice. Easier to say it's fine for everyone than say that I believe something specific.

Today I was brave - I explained to the people around me that I couldn't attend a Pagan ceremony because God and Jesus were absent and it was in them and the Holy Spirit that I put my trust.

This in itself is new on me - but I intend to keep it up - to be a beacon to the people that I work with so that they may know God's love and Jesus' sacrifice for them.