The text describes a young couple in throes of passion. The feeling of lust and obsession for each other is mutual and evident.

The man lingers over his lovers ‘dove’ eyes, streaming hair, which he compares to a ‘flock of goats’ her ‘crimson thread’ lips and breasts that are ‘like two fawns’ before making his ‘way to the mount of myrrh.’ He rhapsodises.

‘All of you is beautiful my love; there is no flaw in you.’ The woman reciprocates her lover’s lust with lust. ‘My beloved thrust his hand through the hole,’ she says ‘and my feeling were stirred for him. I arose to open for my beloved.’

This celebration of carnality and lust, which conservative Christians vehemently condemns today is from-- the Bible. It’s a poem from the Song of Solomon.

There are passages like this in the Bible that celebrates unmarried sex, sex for its own sake and not just for procreation, as the church insists.

In fact, sex for pleasure was a social reality in the Biblical world. The Bible never stops a man from having sex with a prostitute or for that matter, women from having sex with a married man. The story of Onan goes on to tell how his father Judah had sex with his daughter-in-law dressed up as a prostitute.

Neither was sex condemned by Jesus. He never said anything directly on it. Jesus also had close relations with numerous women, including Mary Magdalene, an adulterous woman (even speculated to be his wife by some scholars), and had a remarkably tolerant and non-judgemental attitude towards women.

According to the gospel of Luke, Jesus had 72 disciples, including several women, who travelled with him from town to town. The gospels even narrate an incident were Jesus stalls the execution of a woman condemned for adultery by telling an angry mob that only people without sins should ‘throw the first stone.’

So yes, there is 'truth in the Bible,' but for that one should read and understand the Bible in context, not cherry-pick quotes.