He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” - Matthew 8:26-27

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I feel it's worth mentioning that it was actually unspeakably brave for Christ to have done that.
This was durring an age where slight of hand trickery in the wrong place could get you killed.

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This was durring an age where slight of hand trickery in the wrong place could get you killed.

What Jesus did here was no slight of hand trickery. Jesus is God incarnate, and was both fully God and fully human. The world was created through Him, and as God He had power over nature. His disciples asked, "What kind of man is this?", and the answer is that He was more than a mere man: He was God walking among them.

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My apologies, I should have been clearer. I did not mean to imply that I felt that Christ was just being clever and deceitful.

The point I wanted to get across was that humans are naturally distrustful of things that we do not understand. I believe that Christ did what he did to prove that he was Divinity in human form; but I also know that it only takes One person to associate something they don't understand with evil sorcery to get someone murdered by a worked up mob of angry and scared people who normally wouldn't think about killing anybody.

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but I also know that it only takes One person to associate something they don't understand with evil sorcery

That actually is what the Pharisees did. At one point they actually said that Jesus was doing His miracles by the power of Satan. They hated Him because He exposed them for who they were, hypocrites and liars, and were trying to come up with ways to discredit Him.

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At least that’s how the story goes.

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Hence why I felt it was worth bringing up his courage.
Jesus Christ constantly provoked the Pharisees with his words and deeds; knowing fully what it would result in. Considering the talk of miracles and such; it's baffling that they didn't try to have him executed sooner than they did.

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It's a shame a lot is missing.

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Missing? What are you referring too?

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Christianity did not become a broadly recognized religion overnight. The early years were spent in a constant state of fear of being found out and executed. To assume that the Pharisees were satisfied after Roman authority executed Christ is in my opinion; really, really stupid.
By the time his execution happened and their counter-propaganda became 'mainstream' among the Hebrew population (as well as the occupying Romans), Christ retained a very diminished following; headed by disciples and apostles.
Years upon years of spreading/preserving Christ's gospel while trying to avoid the same fate as Christ was no easy task. Plus the early Christians would find an especially hungry enemy when Nero Claudius Caesar became emperor of Rome (37 AD to 68 AD I think...)
Roman persecution of Christians wouldn't start to calm down until about 313 AD.
There is a very broad amount of time for early scriptures to have been destroyed, forgotten, or altered to suite Roman and Hebrew policies/faiths as to not provoke either side into a Really motivated extermination effort.

That's just a short version of why I can say that a lot of stuff must have went missing over a period almost three centuries.
Dare to imagine how many revisions or selective editing happened between then and today; about two thousand years later.

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There’s no doubt that many revisions, mistranslations, or scribal errors plague the bible, that’s part of the reason that I don’t understand why anyone would take it seriously.

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The fact that so much was lost is one of the reasons why Wiccan influences work for me. Human cultures are constantly growing as a (whether some of us like it or not); and Wicca acknowledges that we are always changing.

Half a century ago American Christians aggressivly fought against interracial marriage; calling it an 'abomination against God's plan for marriage'. How many Christians in America today are fighting that 'good fight' and how many are pretending that it was never a problem?
Heck, a lot of Christians today fighting against homosexual marriage are old enough to remember how 'Rouge Justices' assaulted the 'Holy Family' template and therefore assaulted Christian values.

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'Rouge Justices' assaulted the 'Holy Family' template

I’m not familiar with this, what are you referring to here?

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I'm referring to the 1967 SCOTUS case of Loving v. Virginia that deemed anti-miscegenation' laws unconstitutional; and that many American religions continued their disapproval of interracial marriage after that. Whenever new laws or proposed legislation interfears with religious standards; there is a public outcry of being oppressed or being forced to disobey their faith.
We saw the same reactions in 2015 when the SCOTUS ruled that state laws againt homosexual marriage were unconstitutional.
I'm sure there are plenty of members of this group willing to argue that the new law doesn't make homosexual marriage suddenly unsinful. Historically speaking; a lot of American Christians had the same objections to the new law regarding interracial marriage.
These days it's considered a lot more acceptable; and to a lot of Americans it's not even an issue that's thought about (with some exceptions).

The terms you quoted me using are things I've heard Christians use when arguing against the validity of the Supreme Court's authority to make such a ruling regarding homosexual marriage; and I've noticed that older Americans have very similar things to say about interracial marriage.

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I see, thanks for the info!

So then are you a Wiccan, or are you a Christian?

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Trinitarian Wicca is something of a middle ground between Christianity and Wicca; and I'm somewhere between Trinitarian Wicca and Universalism although I lean closer to the former.

I guess the easiest way to explain it is to say that I believe in Jesus Christ but as to whom or what the Divine is; that's extremly fuzzy.
The Divine Spirit (God or whatever name you give God) is a Perfect being. Since we are Imperfect I feel that percieving the Divine as it is; is impossible for us. Our inability to fully comprehend the Divine is why I feel that all faiths are equally valid.

Most religions have a very clear template on who or what God (or the Gods) are. Various branches of Wicca (and Paganism in general) have their own general ideas but acknowledge that they are by no means the 'Absolute Truth' as to what the Divine is.
The Divine isn't something you can open a book and say "There it is". It is something we have to find for ourselves.

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I had to look it up because I hadn't heard the term "Trinitarian Wicca" before, but I have come across the concept, I think. It's basically all that stuff with the Mother Goddess and the feminine trinity of "Mother, Maiden, and Crone", isn't it?
A Christian author named Randy Alcorn brought something like that up in one of his books dealing with devils, New Age, and other occultic practices.

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Yes, several of Wiccan interpretations are centered around a feminine Trinity (not something I take literally since I believe that Christ is part of the Trinity and Christ is male and that I am incapible of fully percieving the Divine).
And yes, the Mother Goddess or Gaia is generally the head of many interpetations of Wicca.

I'm not familiar with Randy Alcorn but now I'm interested.

To he fair though; to the best of my knowledge, elements of every major Monothesetic religion points at other faiths and equates them to devil worship and such.
I can see making a point that certain faiths are simply not compatable with eachother but there is a fine line where we are just looking for reasons to vilify everyone else.

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I'm not familiar with Randy Alcorn but now I'm interested.

The book I mentioned was called The Ishbane Conspiracy. That book (and the book that comes before it, Lord Foulgrin's Letters) is basically a modern-day retelling of CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters, only there are more characters besides the two demons corresponding with each other and it deals with more contemporary issues than the ones in CS Lewis' day. Here's the summary...
"Jillian is picture-perfect on the outside, but terrified of getting hurt on the inside. Brittany is a tough girl who trusts almost no one. Ian is a successful athlete who dabbles in the occult. And Rob is a former gang-banger who struggles with guilt, pain, and a newfound faith in God. These four college students will face the ultimate battle between good and evil in a single year. As spiritual warfare rages around them, a dramatic demonic correspondence takes place."

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Sounds interesting
Thank you for that.

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You're welcome.