I am not a medical professional but, like many posters in this thread, I’m gonna contribute my responses. They may have a medical component.
First the theological angle. I believe in my heart that God’s sole gift to the species was Free Will. You want to engage in and maintain a vigorous relationship with pornography? Rock on, my man or woman. Rock on. I find it not the least bit unusual that you have focused on a single image or persona. I suspect many of us do - be they real-world, from our past or imaginary.
Dreaming vividly is one thing. Using those images while awake to personify erotic situations is one thing. If you are experiencing a level of awake hallucinations that are SO vivid that you are engaging with that persona while walking down the sidewalk, that is in and of itself concerning.
Seems to me that hallucinations have exactly nothing to do with sexual urges. In all seriousness. If you feel you are living your life outside of your bedroom in safety and are not concerned about the level of intrusion of these images and especially this one image, then I do wish you well.
I’d also wish you to speak to someone who may be able to assist you in how you navigate your world. Again, this has zero to do with sexual urge AND zero to do with any imagining of God or Sin.
That’s nice…but how do the cultures themselves fare in the end? Do they advance scientifically, medically or ethically? Do they become stronger over all?
I don’t know. I’m basing this on a conversation I had with a researcher on this subject at least ten years ago. She was doing a study on schizophrenia in multiple countries. I’ll look into it and see what I can dig up.
I will say, after seeing my uncle suffer all those years, I’m not surprised. I think we’re pretty awful to the seriously mentally ill people in this country. Nobody really knew what to do with my uncle including our family. My grandparents supported him, but from a distance. When I say he was disturbed though, I mean he attacked a cop and talked loudly about pedophilia to complete strangers. He was a deeply troubled man.
My Mom became involved in NAMI at one point (because of course she did - they ended up throwing her out) because she would not stop the narrative that my uncle really wasn’t as sick as everyone thought and that he was manipulating everyone for personal gain, and it’s entire possible the guy was also a sociopath as she claimed, but he really seemed to me just a very isolated person in acute suffering who was wholly incapable of accepting reality. I never knew him before his first psychotic break, though. He was always the crazy uncle for as long as I can remember. But his trajectory as he got older was decidedly downward, and the summer he died he was in the hospital eight times.
Prior to his diagnosis at age 19, so I am told, he demonstrated extraordinary ability in math and astrophysics, so I guess that’s where my son gets it.
So the easy answer to @Czarcasm ’s question is: yes they do. India is the main country referenced and clearly India has advanced scientifically and medically. Ethically is a matter of opinion.
I immediately question the conclusion though? This may not actually reflect an apples to apples outcomes comparison, but instead reflect that those functional with psychotic symptoms in wealthy countries are more in the closet with them, with all the more dysfunctional getting labeled. It may be that because those having the same symptoms and functional in India are also aware that they won’t be negatively stigmatized for their visions, so these more functional (and likely with better prognosis) schizophrenics are included in the numbers more?
I’m reminded of an article I read many years ago interviewing a psychologist who worked in undeveloped regions, in Africa IIRC. He commented that mental illness manifested differently in different cultures, and that he could actually see them change over time as hunter-gatherers became more “Westernized” by exposure. Some manifestations of mental illness would vanish entirely while new ones would appear.
He also commented that while mental illness was just as common in cultures where families took care of their mentally ill members, it seldom got as bad as it does in ours where we either institutionalize them or dump them on the street. They still functioned poorly, but it never got to “the point where they can’t tie their own shoes” like it does here is how I recall it put.
Is it odd to conflate those behaviors with the LGBT? I am just telling you what the spiritual beings told me they enjoyed doing and were on board with.
Yes it would say bestiality’s is some what rare.
I think the argument that the bible does not talk a whole lot about sex is a horrible argument. I find is fascinating that any one keeps trying to make it. I have people tell they disagree with what the bible says about sex, but never argue that it does not really talk about it which is not true at all.
I believe the bible mentions sex about 119 times. The bible even goes to say that sex is the most intimate form of knowing. In the Bible, sexuality is not separate from morality; instead, it is intrinsically linked to God’s created order and his moral guidelines for human conduct. The separation that you two are speaking of does not exist. Should we focus on other moral issues of course, but its not either or.
Jesus was in complete agreement with the prophets that came before him which is why he often times quoted them. In fact he states, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Jesus clarified that his purpose was not to invalidate the law, but to bring it to its ultimate fulfillment.
Lets go even deeper in that area. Do you believe that Jesus is God? That would mean that Jesus in fact dictated all those laws in the old testament to Moses and all the other prophets. It would mean they were acting as his agents. Every time a prophet king or judge in the bible talked to God or got a message from God that would mean he was talking to Jesus or getting a message from him It would also mean that every thing that took place before, during and after his ministry was directly dictated by him. Jesus did not have to specifically talk about every subject because his agents covered all the stuff he did not directly talk about.
I think “I didn’t come to change the law, but to fulfill it" is pretty good evidence that Jesus was a Jewish reformer rather than trying to start a new religion. That and other things he said. Also he didn’t seem too concerned about hanging out with sex workers and other supposed riff-raff.
I read a history book recently on Heaven and Hell and its conceptual development throughout history, and my takeaway is that even at my most devout I didn’t understand a damned thing about the historical, cultural and religious context of the Bible even though I claimed it as the Word of God. And that most Christians really don’t understand it either. They frequently draw conclusions completely unmoored from the reality of those times.
Uh, that does lead one to conclude that god was psycho.
No, really, very contradictory stuff coming from prophets and “attributed to god” by the same prophets and scribes, does not make sense; and so it was for many American Founding Fathers who realized that if god does exist, he/she/it is not really what humans in the past decided what God was about or talked about.
IMHO God is better than that caricature we got from the Iron Age,
How many of those are Jesus? I fully admit that ancient Hebrew authors had some wild and vicious taboos about sex, but Jesus almost never talked about it. Best you can do is point to his generic and political handwaving at all those old laws before he pivoted to talk about the stuff he cared about.
Any sex-obsessed demons are deliberately distracting from the meat of Jesus’s teachings, which had almost nothing to do with consensual sexual activity.
No. I think Jesus was a Jew who wanted to restore Judaism from what it had become under Roman rule. But i am not a Christian, and most days i don’t believe in God at all.
That being said, i take an interest religion and have studied both Judaism and Christianity in some detail.
Yeah, on consideration, i think you are right about that.
So, spiritual beings who are evil and deceptive by nature told you that?
6Thus said the LORD: For three transgressions of Israel, For four, I will not revoke it: Because they have sold for silver Those whose cause was just, And the needy for a pair of sandals. 7[Ah,] you a-who trample the heads of the poor Into the dust of the ground, And make the humble walk a twisted course!-a
Quite a lot of the Bible is about social justice, even the old testament. I think the demons are trying to distract you from actual morality.
My not so learned impression is that there is not a very consistent message as to what “social justice” means, even with the more limited “New Testament” corpus.
I would caution about trying to link the historical Jesus with any sort of modern movement. He was a Jew at a time when religion was pretty shitty to women. We know he was good with Mary Magdaline but that doesn’t mean he was a feminist in the modern sense. He never talked much about being gay, but he probably thought it was wrong. I’m guessing his view of resolving poverty was less '“socialism” and more “charity."
Whatever a Jew would have been likely to believe in that era is probably what he believed. I don’t have the historical grounding to speculate much further.
Sure–I’m not saying he was PFLAG or anything. What I am saying is that he didn’t seem to give a wet fart about sexual behavior. He spent all his time talking about other things. When modern Christians spend very little time talking about billionaires, camels, and needle-eyes, but a ton of time talking about porn, gay folks, and drag shows, they evince very different priorities from Jesus’s.
About the Social angle, I do think that Jesus was crucified because he had figured out a way to do “disinvestment” against the taxes going to Rome. The Romans did not like it when “their” money and tax collectors were being compromised.
