The beauty of paganism is it's lose enough a term that it can mean whatever your actions and rituals define it to mean. Nobody's telling you what the "tenets" of paganism are. Nobody is issuing commandments. Nobody is bombarding you with orthodoxy and arbitrary rules. YOU define the rules for yourself. YOU are responsible for discovering your gods and the guides YOU deem worthy of emulation.
Nobody picks any of this stuff for you. If you want and need someone to tell you how to live your life, and to continue to be a "CHILD of God," you may as well go back to the religion they fed you as a child. Such a person probably doesn't really want to grow up anyway. Adulthood means responsibility.
The basic reverence for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are fundamentals in paganism only because they are fundamental realities of Life Itself. The absence of Air will unceremoniously suffocate you. AND it's presence is the breath of your life. Water can drown you. AND it can hydrate and nourish you. Fire can burn you. AND if you're not a complete idiot, you can cook your food with it. Earth can bury you. AND if you have skill, you can build a house with it.
Acknowledging these elements is simply acknowledgement of Reality; and your fragility and temporariness within it. Reverence for them is nothing more or less than avoiding being stupid and/or ungrateful.
Paganism promises you no afterlife; it promises only that if you don't notice THIS life and what's going on here, you'll both miss it and regret it. There is no more fundamental and obvious truth than that.
Paganism promises you neither redemption nor threatens you with damnation; for that's YOUR job. You decide whether to hear the counsel of angels or the temptations of demons. You decide whether to become a devil or a god.