“When Scripture Isn’t Sexy: Wrestling With God’s Goodness in Genesis 6 & 9”

Most weeks, when I sit down for Sex & Scripture Saturday, I stay inside a theme: intimacy, embodiment, desire, the body, shame, connection.

But this week—while reading Genesis 9—I found myself drawn into something harder, deeper, and honestly more central to the whole conversation about Christian sexuality:

Is God good?

Genesis 9 is the passage where God tells Noah and his sons, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
The same instruction given in the garden.
The same reminder that sexuality and reproduction were created blessings, not sinful inventions.

But this chapter sits after one of the most troubling stories in Scripture:
the flood.

A world destroyed.
Humanity wiped clean.
Only one family spared.

And before I could talk about “be fruitful and multiply,” I had to pause and face the question my body was quietly asking:

How do we reconcile a good God with a story like this?

So I went backwards and reread Genesis 6, the chapter describing the world before the flood.
And one verse stood out like a heavy stone:

“Every intention of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)

Every intention.
Only evil.
Continually.

Not just human failure.
Not just sin.
Not just brokenness.

Total corruption.

The kind of world where violence, exploitation, cruelty, and abuse aren’t the tragic exceptions—they’re the baseline.

And I felt something soften in me.
Not resolve.
Not certainty.
But understanding.

The closest thing I could relate it to were the years I spent working in a nursing home, watching people live in bodies that trapped them in unending pain.
I remember praying, sometimes desperately, that God would release them—not because I wanted them gone, but because I couldn’t bear watching their suffering continue.

A mercy.

In the flood narrative, I don’t love what happens.
I’m not at peace with it.

But I can imagine God looking at humanity—His creation turned entirely inward, harming and harming and harming again—and grieving so deeply that mercy looked like ending the harm altogether.

Not punishment.
Not rage.
But sorrow.

And then the rainbow.
The covenant.
The promise:

Never again.

Genesis 9 is less about “make babies” and more about God beginning again with hope.
Not perfection, not naivety, but hope.

Hope that people could choose love.
Hope that violence wouldn’t always win.
Hope that intimacy—physical, emotional, spiritual—could be reclaimed.

This wasn’t a sexy week.
But it was a real one.

And honestly?
Before we can talk about what God says about intimacy, we have to wrestle with who God is.
If He’s trustworthy.
If His character is good.
If His boundaries are rooted in love or fear.

Genesis 9 invited me to hold that question tenderly again.
And maybe it’s inviting you into the same.

Watch my full reflection video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMGsnkMPxbM