paganism

• comprised of Hellenic and Latin mythology, patriotism, and tradition

121:5.31. The pa­gan cults. These were a com­bi­na­tion of Hel­lenic and Latin mythol­ogy, pa­tri­o­tism, and tra­di­tion.

• Jesus ignored thoughtless pagan

132:7.1Je­sus, Gonod, and Ga­nid made five trips away from Rome to points of in­ter­est in the sur­round­ing ter­ri­tory. On their visit to the north­ern Ital­ian lakes Je­sus had the long talk with Ga­nid con­cern­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of teach­ing a man about God if the man does not de­sire to know God. They had ca­su­ally met a thought­less pa­gan while on their jour­ney up to the lakes, and Ga­nid was sur­prised that Je­sus did not fol­low out his usual prac­tice of en­list­ing the man in con­ver­sa­tion which would nat­u­rally lead up to the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual ques­tions. When Ga­nid asked his teacher why he evinced so lit­tle in­ter­est in this pa­gan, Je­sus an­swered:

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”