On the subject of Hell and Salvation

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, since I'm on the subject, not only is this idea of a personal relationship with the divine common to classical paganism, it;s common to contemporary paganism...and in all three examples of contemporary christianity, classical paganism, and contemporary paganism...some deficiency in this personal relationship with the divine is suggested to be the root of much of our misery (if not all).  Each goes so far as to posit that the decreasing interest in the proper relationships with their prospective invocations of divinity are at least partially if not largely at fault for the apparent decline of their respective civilizations.    

To the classical greeks, divine abandonment was predicated on the wickedness of man and portended disaster.   To contemporary christians, the dimished role of christ in our lives and society is indicative of moral decay, and to contemporary pagans our disconnection with the numinous natural is very literally destroying the thing regarded as the source of divinity.

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It's also interesting to point out that while each of the three groups has (and two still) carries a priestly class, there's a heavily refined form of shamanism presenting itself as mystery tradition in all three.  

Those truly called to the numinous both expect and report a deeply personal relationship with the divine.  This is, bluntly, what informs them of the very existence of the divine. The conceit of a priestly caste has always been that some have better ears than others - and this fails to make sense as a conjecture in the absence of the assumption that the divine engages in personal relationships with human beings. This single statement is the difference between deism and theism. All theists have this thing you thought was unique in common. It's what defines you as theists. The notion that we can and have had a personal relationship with gods.