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Hi Yucca. Are you saying that in your youth you dabbled in satanism? Elsewhere I think you mentioned something about the school you go to. So are you out of school now? Or still in school? I'm just trying to get an idea about who you are as a person. I hope you do not feel it is to invasive of your privacy. Thank you for your many good posts on this forum. I think you also said something that made me think you are a female. Is that right?

no i didnt ever dapple in satanism.what made you think i did that?maybe my bad spelling scares you? :silly: i'll try do more spellcheeks.you asked more about me.you guys need an intro page.i'm a male. aged 27 out of school now and working full time but still not content with all parts of life.will be taking 2 classes in fall.read a lot.help my mother out around her place.enjoy good health and fitness. am quting smoking sucessfilly on my own.teach swimming to age 12-14 at the Y. read lots. write some music.drink casualy.dont use drugs at all.no criminal past no criminal future plans.like sports.dislike politics.in a stable relationship.

Thanks, Yucca. The satanism thing was when you said:
i have lost that more childish need to be seen as cool.i regect satan.
I kind of linked the two sentences and thought you were saying that you no longer needed to, well, you know... play with satanism to seem cool. Sorry about the mix-up.

There IS a thread (somewhere) that used to be our intro thread, but it was never locked up at the top of the list, and so it got buried during some period when there were no new members to the forum for quite some time. Maybe we need to start another one, but practically every thread at the moment is off topic now anyway. Maybe we should just get people back on topic for starters!

I cracked up at "no future criminal plans". With me thinking you were into satanism, you probably do need to be that specific! So does that mean that we have something criminal planned, we would have to count you out? lol

Anyway, welcome!

My personal feeling is that "satanism" is more like a branch in the tree, and the root is idolatry. Anything that takes the the place of or priority over God is just as bad as Satanism. It's just that satanism has a much more rebellious connotation than "music" or "sports" or "job".

It's a bit like how Kenyans refer to corruption as "eating". When money is allocated for a project, and the project never gets done people say that someone ate the money for that project.

Eating doesn't sound as bad as stealing, but they amount to the same thing in the context.

I think the actual spiritual entity of Satan may be similar, although I usually feel a bit confused about that. In some ways it seems like he wouldn't care who we worship or serve, as long as it's not God, but then there are times (like when he tempted Jesus) where he shows that he does want loyalty specifically for himself.

That is a good thought Casey.You say idolitry Casey-does that mean worshiping a false god like an idol?

I guess they say eatting the money as it sounds less wicked than having stole-just like people say someone fibbed when in relty they lied.Or people say someone knicked something when they realy stole.Humans dont like to face the ugly facts.even when someone dies people will say they passed over.kind of dont want to call a spade a spade.Churches can be like that and promote that by not wanting to call sin, sin because it might make some people leave their churches.they dont confront sins head on.even my sin of smoking for example was always ignored i guess to be polite however now i think if the pastor cared for my health and my money he might have concelled me to quit.i did ask if my smoking was a sin or a problem and i was told it was between me and God.i realise it is my responsibiliy of course not the pastors just if he is really caring for his members he would tell me the truth and not snow me just to keep me from getting mad and leaving.which i would not have done anyway,my mother told me all the time to quit because she cares enoguh to conflict with my desires and stupidness.plus she didnt want her house stinked up. :-? but she cared enough to pin signs on the fridge of smokers lungs and stuff.

Hi Peter. I think what Casey was getting at by saying that the root behind the evil of satanism is idolatry is the New Testament definition of idolatry. In a couple of places in the New Testament it says that greed is idolatry. The more modern name for it is materialism. In some cultures they make what are called idols and declare them to be gods, in an effort to get away from worshiping an invisible God, but that gradually grows to where we are making all kinds of things and pouring our hearts into those possessions as extensions of ourselves and our faith. Today's world is into the worship of self, and art is a bit like that, which is why good Muslims won't have any pictures in their houses. Instead of just appreciating God's natural beauty (e.g. with a vase of flowers in the living room) we make images of those things (a still life painting of a vase of flowers on the wall). Covetousness or greed is just wanting more and more beautiful and expensive things, and that is what I think Casey was saying is behind satanism. Satan wants to trap our souls through an addiction to material objects that can be purchased with money.

Now we come to smoking. The primary concern that people have about cigarettes is what it does to your health. However, just doing something that is unhealthy is not in itself a sin, and so it is not that easy for a pastor to just declare that people who smoke are sinning and people who do not smoke (at least in that area) are not sinning. Jesus saw that there are things like self-righteousness that do more damage to us spritually than unhealthy foods or drugs. The addiction may be a different matter, although you could say we are all addicted to water, food, air, etc. simply because we cannot live without them. Where it comes a matter between you and God is that you need to come to a personal revelation about what it is doing to you spiritually, and about how you are going to work with God in overcoming it. A pastor can more or less order his congregation to stop smoking, but it won't work (for most of them) unless there is something happening inside, and we non-smokers often need to be patient about when that time comes, since God is teaching us not to be self-righteous either.

When I was younger, in my teens, I had a friend called James and we did a witchcraft ceremony. I remember we pretended to camp out, but really we did this ceremony where we were offering food to nonsense ‘moon goddess’. My mum had made us some nice soup in a flask, and we used this as the food offering. James poured some of the soup away to the nonsense deity. Later I drank the soup that was left.
I did not realise how bad this was in Jesus` eyes. I suppose at the time I was lost and I had not properly given myself to Jesus. But what happened is James and I got into an argument about something really petty, I believe it was about who turned the light off in my bedroom. We had gone back into the house after the ‘ceremony’ because James did not really want to camp out. The tent I put up he said was just to convince people we were camping, should they wonder what we were doing.
Anyhow, I got so angry with James about who switched the light off that I went and kicked my bedroom door and put a hole in it! I went downstairs and my mum met me and said I was behaving like a mad person.
On reflection I realise that it was so wrong to do the ceremony and it was not fun at all. I had kicked the door, lashing out at Jesus I believe because he is ‘the door’ or the ‘gate’. Nobody comes to the Father except through Jesus! The fact that we had quarrelled about the light I realised was because Jesus is the light! It was all significant to me later.
I realised what a betrayal of Jesus the witchcraft ceremony was. Really, it was a satanic ceremony. Satanism is not fun!
Catherine

You got it right, Catherine. Satan is very subtle. Notice how when he went up to Eve in the Garden it was like "no big deal, God was just messin' with ya" and when he went up to Jesus in the desert, he played a game of "dare ya!"? He hides his worst plans behind a mask of "just for fun"....

Later I drank the soup that was left.

Hmmm, so you probably had Jesus AND the moongoddess upset with you after that! :P

Just messing. Thanks for sharing that story, Catherine.

That's great to hear redyucca; I know what you mean. When I started reading the bible I too was not very sure about most of the things I read and I still hit little "speed bumps". The best thing about having council is that you can discuss the lessons in the bible and clear up things you may be unsure of. The best thing to do is to be sincere (as you seem to be) about following God's will and learning more about what Jesus taught. This forum is also a good place for council (as you may have noticed).