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What a load of it...(not your fault, Skwim).
I'll take your silence on the definition of masturbation as an admission that partners can indulge in it.
So, it's immoral to sexually desire someone else unless it's one's spouse? I hope you realize that this makes just about every grown person on earth guilty of an immoral act. An act one does not choose, but is ingrained in the human character. A desire your god gave us in the form of our libido. So, in so far as masturbation goes, just what harm is created by resolving ones god-given libido through this solitary act?
The definition includes both self and others, as has been pointed out multiple times.
Visually, this gets a big
.
Dianna AndersonSo, where do you stand? Is masturbation an acceptable component to healthy sexuality for Christians?
Dianna Anderson is the author of the forthcoming
book, DAMAGED GOODS, out in Spring 2015
from Jericho Books. When she is not writing,
she is on the lookout for a new day job.
"Is masturbation an acceptable component to healthy sexuality?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, absolutely. In fact, I might scratch "acceptable" from there and change it to "important."
Like sex itself, masturbation is sinful only insofar as you use it sinfully. And what counts as "sinfully" for one person may not be sinful for others. This, most of all, requires knowing and understanding yourself and what your limits are. If you don't feel comfortable masturbating because you feel like it takes you to a bad place where you objectify other people, then don't do it. We make mistakes in christendom when we assume that masturbation is problematic for some, so no one, ever, should do this private thing. That's a problem, because my lines about what is sinful are not your lines, and making you conform to my lines in something as intensely complicated as sexuality won't end well.
As far as it being a component of healthy sexuality, it can be a helpful tool for understanding yourself and what feels right and what doesn't before you ever enter into a sexual relationship. It can also make you more comfortable and more confident with your own body so that you are more comfortable when the time comes with a partner. Masturbation can be an important component of a healthy sexuality and can be an important part of a healthy sex life (if you're comfortable taking care of yourself, there's less pressure when you're with a partner). It can be misused and abused, like any good thing, certainly, but it can also be a great boon to understanding and becoming comfortable with yourself as well."
[This reply was edited for brevity]
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is the author of Earthen
Vessels: Why our Bodies Matter to our Faith and
The End of our Exploring:A Book about Questioning
and the Confidence of Faith.
"If our ethic is to be Christian, then it must be qualified by the cross and resurrection of Jesus. That is to say, the pattern for our lives and actions must be shaped by a love that treats pleasure as the (sometimes delayed) fruit of our sacrificial self-giving for others, rather than a good without qualification.
If we disconnect the experience of sexual pleasure from the moment of giving ourselves for another, to another in love, we fundamentally distort the meaning of the human body in its sexual dimension. In the auto-eroticism of masturbation, we pursue a particular sort of satisfaction or a particular experience of pleasure. But it is through the mutual self-giving in love that our humanity is established (whether in sex or beyond), rather than the abstract experience of pleasure or the fulfillment of a craving or felt need. However enjoyable it might be, masturbation fails to fulfill this form of human sexuality, and as such is corrosive to the integrity of our persons and our intimacy of the Spirit.
SOURCE
.
Came across the following from a Catholic website, BeginningCatholic.com, that explains the church's attitude toward masturbation. That's stupidest thing I ever heard, when it comes to the church if it opens yours eyes or makes you smarter or feels good it's a sin. Ok look at it this way with out the church we would be people who ..touched themself 'we all do ' now cause of the church your all sinners. Monkeys do. I don't think we'll see em in hell
I've posted selected comments here. For their full reasoning click on the source link below.
Straight Talk About The Catholic Teaching on Masturbation
“Is masturbation wrong?”
Yes. The Catholic teaching on masturbation says that masturbation is always morally wrong.
Sex is intended to be both an expression of love for your spouse, and a beautiful means of procreation.
Sex is so special, powerful, and valuable that it is properly used only within marriage. If you’re not married, you should abstain from sexual activity.
Sex is the ultimate gift husbands and wives can give: a total gift of self, body and soul. Sex is how you fulfill your wedding vows to love totally, freely, and completely. As long as you both shall live. The secret of life is hidden in that intimate sharing.
The Catholic teaching on masturbation says that masturbation denies every aspect of that promise of sex — of that promise of your vows!
Masturbation is:
Focused on yourself
A withholding from your spouse
A statement that sex is only about pleasure — your own pleasure
Inherently sterile
Often accompanied by “adultery in your heart” through pornography and fantasy
Catholics don’t condemn masturbation just because of some lofty idea of what the natural purpose of sex is. We speak the truth about the harm it does to people.
That is the true reason for the Catholic teaching on masturbation: it denies the meaning of sex. It makes you less than fully human.
The Catholic teaching on masturbation says that masturbation is a grave sin, what we call a mortal sin, by which we reject God’s offer of life.
“Does the Catholic teaching on masturbation say we should repress our sexuality?”
There’s a difference between repression and self-control.
Repression means to “stuff” those feelings down when they arise, denying them and wishing they weren’t there.
Repression doesn’t work. Many people try this route and fail.
Self-control is different. You don’t deny the reality of your sexual drive, but seek to control it according to your will. That’s called being free! If you’re a slave to your urges (sexual or otherwise), you’re not free.
The key to this is to redeem our sexuality, not to repress it. Christopher West makes this point about the Catholic teaching on masturbation in Good News About Sex and Marriage:
source
When sexual feelings, desires, and temptations present themselves, as they inevitably do, instead of trying to ignore them or “stuff” them by pushing them down and under, we need to bring them up and out. Not up and out in the sense of indulging them, but up and out and into the hands of Christ our Redeemer. You might simply say a prayer such as this: _Lord Jesus, I give you my sexual desires. Please undo in me what sin has done so that I might know freedom in this area and experience sexual desire as you intend. Amen._ The more we invite Christ into our passions and desires and allow him to purify them, the more we find we’re able to exercise proper control of them. And we begin more and more to experience our sexuality, not as the desire for selfish gratification but as the desire to give ourselves away in imitation of Christ. This is what redemption is all about. (_Good News About Sex and Marriage_, p.81)
Did you get that? "Masturbation . . . makes you less than fully human."
Less than fully human?? Hell . . . .
"On average, 78 percent of all Americans age 14 and older say they have masturbated at some point in their lives, according to the NSSHB. When men in their 30s were asked whether they had masturbated alone at any point in their life, 93.4 percent said yes."
Looks pretty darn human to me.
.
.
Dianna AndersonSo, where do you stand? Is masturbation an acceptable component to healthy sexuality for Christians?
Dianna Anderson is the author of the forthcoming
book, DAMAGED GOODS, out in Spring 2015
from Jericho Books. When she is not writing,
she is on the lookout for a new day job.
"Is masturbation an acceptable component to healthy sexuality?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, absolutely. In fact, I might scratch "acceptable" from there and change it to "important."
Like sex itself, masturbation is sinful only insofar as you use it sinfully. And what counts as "sinfully" for one person may not be sinful for others. This, most of all, requires knowing and understanding yourself and what your limits are. If you don't feel comfortable masturbating because you feel like it takes you to a bad place where you objectify other people, then don't do it. We make mistakes in christendom when we assume that masturbation is problematic for some, so no one, ever, should do this private thing. That's a problem, because my lines about what is sinful are not your lines, and making you conform to my lines in something as intensely complicated as sexuality won't end well.
As far as it being a component of healthy sexuality, it can be a helpful tool for understanding yourself and what feels right and what doesn't before you ever enter into a sexual relationship. It can also make you more comfortable and more confident with your own body so that you are more comfortable when the time comes with a partner. Masturbation can be an important component of a healthy sexuality and can be an important part of a healthy sex life (if you're comfortable taking care of yourself, there's less pressure when you're with a partner). It can be misused and abused, like any good thing, certainly, but it can also be a great boon to understanding and becoming comfortable with yourself as well."
[This reply was edited for brevity]
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is the author of Earthen
Vessels: Why our Bodies Matter to our Faith and
The End of our Exploring:A Book about Questioning
and the Confidence of Faith.
"If our ethic is to be Christian, then it must be qualified by the cross and resurrection of Jesus. That is to say, the pattern for our lives and actions must be shaped by a love that treats pleasure as the (sometimes delayed) fruit of our sacrificial self-giving for others, rather than a good without qualification.
If we disconnect the experience of sexual pleasure from the moment of giving ourselves for another, to another in love, we fundamentally distort the meaning of the human body in its sexual dimension. In the auto-eroticism of masturbation, we pursue a particular sort of satisfaction or a particular experience of pleasure. But it is through the mutual self-giving in love that our humanity is established (whether in sex or beyond), rather than the abstract experience of pleasure or the fulfillment of a craving or felt need. However enjoyable it might be, masturbation fails to fulfill this form of human sexuality, and as such is corrosive to the integrity of our persons and our intimacy of the Spirit.
SOURCE
.
Beats me.
I hope you don't think I'm saving it, far from it, and then me and my BF have a grate sex life , I'll get "relief" 4 to 11 times in one of our sessions, I suggest any of those "sinners" out there go to the smut shop by a prostate toy and go plug that thing ,I bet you scream oh God many many times.
