Havah Wrote:Good.
But I'm single. And I'm still 18....
Or I should ask: What's wrong with masturbation?
Lusting is the problem. If you could do it without lusting, i guess it'd be fine. Remember, you can commit fornication with your thoughts. Also, don't believe statistics just like that. My guess would be that most believing people feel bad masturbating, but do it anyways. If you ask me, one should either not do it, or not feel bad. If it is a habit and one cannot stop doing it, it is certainly bad, Christians should not have any kind of addiction.
About the how-to of sex: No one needs a manual for that, i'd say it's heavily instinct based (Plus, assuming an ancient environment, even here one would hear ppl talk about it, at least the nasty kids, right? Plus, there was less privacy (no locked doors in a regular house), and if all else fails, people took care of animals that had similar forms of intercourse all the time. They had to know at least something about that to properly take care of the animals, right?). There are enough people, even today, that never saw sex until their wedding night, or their first time of extramarital intercourse.
On a biblical perspective: Paul has written about the downsides of marriage a bit, yet after trying to say it is better to remain single, he said:
1Co 7:2 Nevertheless,
to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
1Co 7:9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for
it is better to marry than to burn.
If we understand "burning" to be a reference to sexual desire, Paul, in my opinion, would have made sure to mention other ways of taking care of that, if there were such ways. After all, he recommended to stay single. If masturbating would be fine, he should have said "you can always take care of yourself, you don't need fornication and devouring desire". But he didn't.
In my opinion, as long as one doesn't start masturbating, one will not feel the drive to do so as strong as one that was compelled to do so. If one could draw an analogy with drugs, heroine can be addictive from the first usage on. Withdrawal will result in many physical symptoms that seem to be destructive. After a very short period of time, one will be so addicted that normal daily life requires aconstant dosage of the drug. A doctor that does not know how destructive the grug is will recommend his patient to take a dose daily to keep his body's chemistry balanced. Yet, that does not make it good.
Same with masturbation.
i guess i will be criticised by this statement, but in my opinion, if one has addictive problems with masturbation, but would like to stop, the first thing to do is realize that God understands the situation of addicts of anything. This is covered by the blood and grace will take care of it (as long as the addiction is the driving element, and not free will). That means, one should stop feeling bad as to not give the devil room to grow. Still, most serious repentance should be ones lifestyle.
The second thing is to attempt to seperate masturbation from lust (only possible to a certain degree) as to attempt to untune the complementary elements of masturbation and lust. There are two fights to be fought here, and one has to figue out which one can be fought first (lust i guess).
Third, one should continuoulsy strenghten his own will through faith in Christ until one can overcome the addiction. Being aware of the past and present is necessary so one can keep track of the development.
All this is best done with a person that had a similar problem, but has it no more.
Just some thoughts.
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