"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." Gen 1:31A short testimony if you don’t mind. Several years ago I was writing smut and publishing it. Erotica. It was after erotica and sexual bondage became so popular with fifty shades. So many authors were going in that direction, the world wanting raunchy stories they could dive into and escape. During that time I was in a very dark place. Convicted over and over, more and more. For years justifying and asking even my counselor ‘it is not bad is it.’? As a Christian counselor her advice was Christian women want realistic stories not shying away from sex but as long as the motive is good, I think it is okay. But no matter how many said it was okay. it didn’t feel okay. Song of Solomon was one where I could justify God is okay with erotica. Still remember that day I came into full agreement with Him the sin was not my writing erotica but was the harm against others by leading into bondage, promoting dark things done in secret, enticing lust and planting it and helping it grow. (Imo) Song of Solomon is not erotica. Although the world says it is and views it as such. Erotica gets in your mind and entices one to imagine all sorts of images like porn.
What I was writing was not clean. What God writes is clean. To see oral sex promoted in the Word is comparing semen to the immaculate seed. They are not the same. To say His seed remains, in you. Intimacy and sex, they are different. Comparing sex and intimacy is like comparing water where you thirst and again and are never satisfied, with the Living water where one never thirsts again.
Erotica and the worlds love for it, willing to buy it up and mass produce it because it sells well...would be careful in what we say ‘see there, God promotes it.’ You can google now how God supports men with men and find the verse used to support the idea, but that doesn’t make it so. Can take the verses in Song of Solomon and as using Gods word to support men with men, support ‘see there, it supports oral sex too.’ God does not publish erotica. God published His Word. Seed. Tasting of fruit and He that love it will eat the fruit thereof. Breast with milk ...When every day it is spoken of those still in need of milk ...how then does it become comparing carnal things to Him?
God created and/or made it all very good. Already on this thread someone has mentioned that the supposedly 'lower' animals have done and do just about everything. In those animals it is not evil because they don't have the hearts and minds of men. They don't look at or see things as good and evil. So which ones are the 'lower' animals?
At the first with Adam and Eve it was a simple clear cut disobedience with no innuendos, no hidden agendas of worse things to come to be seen... but consider then what it says here:
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen 2:17
Eating of it, be it a physical tree or only a symbolic thing of something spiritual, it was a real beginning... or was it a real end or the real beginning of the end for men who would continue to eat of it... even after Jesus opened the Way to eat of that other tree, the Tree of Life?
In a sense those lower animals, all of them, were the 'clean beasts' which men could eat while men, themselves, after that first disobedience had become the 'unclean beasts' unfit to eat. God never stopped working with them and some of them pushed or were pulled toward becoming clean as we see here:
"And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD." Gen 4:26
But then how long was until we see this?
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." Gem 6:5-7
God was sifting through all of the garbage that men had made of themselves from that which had been "very good". Men, for the most part, were working to making things worse and worse until no man could really sort it all out at all. Don't just consider what you
and others have posted but look also at the what's new on TV and in the movies today! Zombies and vampires! What is a zombie? The walking dead:
"And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead." Matt 8:21-22
Even Jesus was surrounded by Zombies and now we are displaying them on TV and arguing on a Christian forum about them among ourselves. Help us dear Lord!
And are there any vampires on our entertainment screens today, those who drink the blood of men, the life of the flesh?
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” Lev 17:11
But the Life of spiritual man is the blood of Jesus, which is the Spirit which quickens [brings Life].
When I saw the title this thread at the first I did even want to read the OP. All of us have or have had or our own demons and our own past. For you and a few others [few compared to the billions on the other side] there is a testimony of what God has done.
God has through His Son brought many [or should I say 'few'?] to real Life again, the Life lost by Adam and Eve and smothered in confusion by their offspring to the point where many do not even pay lip service to doing that the "very good" or encountering the "very good" lost so long ago. Who knows what is good?
Too much emphasis on directing ourselves and others [as if we are so 'very good' they must listen to us] in how to live this temporal life and to properly enjoy it... Some build on the idea that Jesus did all of the work so we need not do anything but believe that he did it all.
Where should the emphasis be?
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Matt 22:36-39
Not only those who admit themselves and even proclaim themselves to be unbelievers, but even those who are mouthing continuously that they believers in God while denying His ability to make them clean now.
The old man of us, apparently still alive in many who say they have been "saved" is indeed perhaps the lowest of animals, the most unclean of all animals as manifested all around us and in ourselves. Even Noah at the very top of those " saved" missed his way badly... after God had saved him.
So many people, calling themselves believers too, want to put it all back on God and not even be required to do what little they really can in order to approach again that "very good"....
"I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity." Ecc 3:18-19
" And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Matt 19:17