by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: December 25, 2009

Your personal relationship with God (who- or what-ever you perceive God to be) is just that - personal.

It is formed of your own experiences, your own insights, your own meditations upon the subject - and it may well be that you don't knowingly have a personal relationship with God.  And yet, knowing or unknowing, each of us has that relationship; if it's unknowing, then we haven't realised that such a relationship exists - but it does if only because, without God, there is no life.  There is nothing.

Perhaps you are a Christian, and thus your relationship with God is based on what your priest, pastor or prelate tells you is the real meaning behind the Biblical texts.  If this is true for you, then it can be a beautiful relationship.  Then again, other faiths have equally beautiful relationships - the relationship between a Pagan and her Goddess, for example, is supremely beautiful because it is raw and, in the original sense of the word, rude.

It is on the Pagan's personal relationship, though, that we should dwell; whilst not everyone is a Pagan, this will make most sense in explanation.  In the rawest, rudest Pagan adherent's world, therefore, God is not just for when someone's looking, but an everyday part of life.  The Pagan should be a conduit for God - although the term "God" can mean any God or Goddess from the pantheon by which the believer has been called; however, she will usually have an affinity with just one of these - meaning than her every action should be God-inspired.  This is the ideal state for the Christian, also - but the Pagan does not have the oxymoronic problem of God being at the same time all-powerful and all-good; if we accept the presence of evil in the world, then how can this be?  Indeed, the Pagan accepts that life is a balance of light and dark, but will have come to the knowledge that even the darkness can be a source of light - that God, in whatever manifestation she has been chosen by, is not completely good or else completely evil.  In the same way as Judas Iscariot, in the Christian world, is necessary for the fulfillment of the prophesy, so is Loki, the trickster, or Set, brother to Osiris, or Gronw Pebr, lover of Lleu Llaw Gyffes' flower bride, necessary for each of the relevant tales.

Then again, this knowledge will have come to the adherent not through the word of a second person - for people can lie, especially if there is a gain to be made.  It will not have come from a book, for books are made by men and, even if inspired by God, can be fictional, fraudulent or, in some cases, both.  No, this knowledge comes through oneself.  It may have been encouraged by other people, but it will have come directly from God - assuming the relevant precautions have been made in opening the communication.  Ergo, if one communicates directly with the Divine, then one has a personal relationship.

Those who don't have this direct link are at risk of exploitation from those with ulterior motives - be they temporal or spiritual.

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