How do you reconcile your fetish with the faith?

John the Baptist and Jesus himself was baptized in a river fully clothed so I think the good Lord has no problem with wetlook

Madeline

Brilliant Madeline !
I have often thought about this. I think the good Lord would want me to keep my sanity and as messy is also a calming and sensory thing. He would understand.
I have worried more about the waste and the plastic ect.

Given the utter size of the universe (look up 'galaxy super clusters' sometime), I'm pretty confident God doesn't give a fuck what I do with my free time.

Despite having attended Church affiliated schools in the "buckle on the Bible Belt" all the way through college and faithfully attended three times a week all my life, I became a closet Atheist. From this perspective it's much easier for me to see that many of my brethren attach far more importance to many earthly matters than the Almighty probably would. They put some effort into trying to be perfect when they need to remember that they are instead, forgiven.

The actual truth is though that after the initial fear, and it was scary at first, my life made much more sense without the Great Omniscient Man in the Sky. I still go to Church as I always have just because it would change my life too much to out myself but inside I'm much more at peace now.

Once upon a time I would say yes, and that I didn't reconcile them. Instead the clash between my sexuality and my so called spirituality (honestly just "religion") was like that of thermite and dry ice. I can confidently say that experience with what many label as "Christianity" has not been a positive impact on my life. Including but not limited to:

- inferiority complex disguised as "humility"
- rushed into a marriage that was doomed to fail because SEX
- an under appreciation of this earthly existence because of it's downplaying for "eternal rewards"
- a lot of wasted time because of pursuing the same aforementioned "eternal rewards"
- a poor wife who grew up thinking and made to be they were something the were not
- guilt, that was probably a major contributing factor in the decline of my physical health
- narrow minded thinking that led to missed pursuits of knowledge

Nowadays I tend to shudder when I hear or read the term. Now, let me be clear that I'm making a direct distinction between the modern and various denominations of "the church" and the actual personage and actions of Yeshua bar Yosef. Pastorship and seminary were paths I elected to take once upon a time growing up.

But, my growth and experiences have caused me to cast off that cloak of religion, but not spirituality. I see many of the same questions asked by spiritual truth seekers as we do doctors studying the psyche, so I still believe in God because I seek meaning above all else to existence.

But to actually answer your questions... The simple answer is that I've stopped caring. Now, I reconcile them by acknowledging that I am a sinner, and that if all is according to how I grew up, then all is going exactly to God's perfect will. I acknowledge that my desires are born out of love, joy, and animal instinct. They do not come from a place of evil intent or harm.

I guess now is the part where I ask if you're looking for an answer to your own crisis of faith. If so, you have to find your own paths, and come to your own solutions; but I think others would be happy to share and elaborate their personal journeys if you wanted, myself included.

This topic would actually be a very good addition to the "Messy Minds" group and one of the best non WAM topics I've read in a good while.

I'm a Methodist but I see faith as a very personal thing (although I haven't put it to the church whether I can enjoy seeing people get pied or not but seeing as though they've accepted me being bisexual I'm guessing it's sound). I'm never keen on the supposed conservatism of religion (I think personally this is a bit of a stereotype, look up writings about liberation theology for a different view of how religion can operate with a more social dimension).

In the end I think bible teachings on social issues and other such things are much more prevalent than the supposed sinful nature of things the church said 300 years ago. A lot these days is up for interpretation and it's up to us personally to decide what our faith means. This conversation with God should hopefully solve things. Can be tough but it's good to internalise these things, puts shit into perspective.

I don't think having a fetish or kink is sinful.

As to the above comment, I have a comment for another day.

And Jesus did cure the blind man with mud....

I don't know if there is a physical place called hell, but I definitely believe that
hell exists in a very real sense. I also know that wam can send you to hell,
how do I know this? Because I've been there, twice in fact. Now this probably sounds like a
massive brag, but I tell you it's the truth.

When I was a kid I saw the movie "The labyrinth", which I loved at the time and I still
have fond memories of to this day.
One thing in the movie that always fascinated me, was the idea of the bog of eternal
stench, a bog so gross that you could never wash off the smell if you ever got it on you.
Somehow that concept stuck with me, and I used to obsessively think about alternate
versions of the movie where Jennifer ended up falling in the stench. As I got older my fantasies
moved away from that movie but the idea of that bog always stuck with me.
Eventually my fantasies coalesced into the idea of myself and a woman,
being trapped in the grossest place imaginable for all eternity.

Aaaanyway, some time back I took a certain mystery substance that seemed to
have the effect of heightening my imagination to the point where reality paled
to insignificance while under it's influence. While I was in
this state I started to think about wam fantasies, which felt immensely good at first.
I like enjoy vanilla wam, like custard, pies and gunge and I thought about these
delights for a while but eventually my thoughts
turned to my ultimate fantasy.
Now unless you have experienced something like this for yourself, you may not believe
that something could feel like this,
but at the time it felt more real than "real";
It felt like my fantasy took over reality, it felt like my fantasy WAS reality. But what a reality it was, it was truly a nightmare come true, a private hell in every sense.
I felt a total sense of hopelessness and an excruciating feeling of revulsion,
while at the same time,
the smells and sensations I expererineced beheld me in all their horror
; it was both equal parts agony and
ecstasy. My dream girl was there too (or so I imagined her to be), and we writhed together
in the utmost slime, our very beings turning into the essence of putrescence as we became
hopelessly entangled in the vulgar, chaotic mess of filth.
Time lost all meaning, and a minute could have been a thousand years, truly there seemed no
end to the torment that i had brought upon myself, and that contributed to the feeling of abject hopelessness and complete doom which I felt consume my very being.

It was as if the sum total of all the wam porn I've consumed over the years,
every substance, every shudder was vomited over myself and my partner in slime
endlessly and forever.

Of course eventually it did end, and in real time probably only about 9 hours had elapsed,
but afterwards it felt like an eternity had passed.
For a while after that all wam content lost it's appeal to me, and I felt a sense of
holiness come over me.
But slowly my wam addiction crept back into my life, like a bad smell.

Maybe I'm reckless, or possibly insane, but one month after this I tried the whole experiment again,
perhaps seeking some form of spiritual catharsis, because it was not mere lust
that motivated me the second time.

The second time I did this, I perceived that I came face to face with the devil himself.
He appeared to be the size of a mountain, and I floated towards his face while I swam in the
shapeless void.
His skin was almost black, but on closer inspection I saw it was actually a deep crimson hue, his eyes were reddish brown color. I stood in fornt of his face, which was as big as a house, and I
looked into his eyes. He said nothing to me, but staring into his eyes
was knowledge in and of itself.
his eyes conveyed to me a sense of overwhelming injustice, for I saw no evil in them, and I could not
help but feel only the strongest pity and sympathy for him.
I wept as I looked into those honest eyes, for In that moment I understood his plight in it's
entirety; that being the
plight of one who had been dealt the harshest sentence for the most undeserved misdemeanor.

Eventually we parted ways, and I did gain something from the experience, though it was a
harrowing one to be sure.
Now I do not believe that either of these experiences were real, they were both delusions,
but at the time
they were very real to me.
My take away from this is that; sometimes we get what we wish for, and yes hell does exist.

I'd say there's a very high probability.

And is reserved especially for people who type out boring pointless rants on 1 program, cut and paste it to another and then can't be bothered to spend 2 minutes editing it to make it look half decent!

Seriously, delete and enter are your friend.