Someone asked in the comments of the previous post why I think masturbation is wrong. I’ll say more about that in the future, but for now I’ll say that I don’t believe the physical act of masturbation is necessarily sinful--it may even have arguable benefits. It’s the fantasy aspect of masturbation that makes it wrong for me. (Which of course prompts the question, “Well, what’s the matter with fantasy?” More on that later, too.) Anytime I masturbate I also fantasize: I look at a picture of a woman, or I think of myself being with a woman who’s not my wife, or I think of my wife doing something she wouldn’t normally do. Masturbation is an inherently selfish, isolated act, and from the standpoint of marriage, when I masturbate I feel I am robbing my wife of a time of intimacy and connection that is hers by rights. From a Biblical perspective, my body belongs to her, and her body to me.
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. (1 Corinthians 7:3, 4)
People think Christians have a problem with sex, but the Bible actually instructs married people to have sex and plenty of it.
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Your testimonies are righteous forever; Give me understanding that I may live. (Psalm 119:144)
The current pressure from internal compulsions and external circumstances are broader in scope and more powerful in force than anything in my previous experience. I’m in an almost constant state of inner tension.
Yesterday was the first time I have “acted out,” or fallen back on a behavior that I know is harmful to me and my family. The internet in our home is protected and monitored by SafeEyes, but while Jessica and the kids were out yesterday, and I was home alone, I bypassed the SafeEyes program by using a person-to-person file sharing network to download several pornographic pictures and masturbate to them.
It was wholly unsatisfying. Yet even as I write this I find myself wishing I could view them again. That’s the nature of this conflict.
When we purchased the software, I gave Jessica administrative rights to the SafeEyes program (which means she can see all of my web activity anytime she wants to, whether I am online or off). So when she came home, I asked her to log into the program and ban P2P file sharing networks. Once she had, I confessed what I had done and asked her to forgive me. She was very gracious about it.
Even though it was a failure in one sense, it was also a victory. I resisted the first natural urges to cover the whole thing up--and I could have easily done so. No one’s as adept at sneakiness and deception as I. But I don’t want to go backwards. I want to progress and be totally free from this addiction. And I know (and now my wife knows) that when I’m alone, I need to be cautious. I need to have a clear plan for how I’ll spend that time, because I’m more vulnerable when I’m by myself without a mission.
Today I was mowing the grass and a little snippet from a Psalm entered my head. I prayed it several times as I walked the length of the yard: “Give me understanding, that I may live.”
I love that verse. People might prefer it to read this way: “Give me understanding, that I may know.” But it’s not necessarily about knowledge. Knowledge does not equal salvation or spirituality or closeness to God, and often it’s not even helpful. Knowing is easier than “hearing." Giving mental assent to truth isn't the same as owning it and walking under the power and responsibility it brings.
“He who has ears,” said Jesus, “let him hear.” Of course He wasn’t talking about physical ears, but of spiritual perception and receptivity, which is a thing we can choose to cultivate or ignore. Knowing His voice often requires a willful, persistent denial of other voices and distractions around us.
What I need is to hear the present, active word of God so that I can finally have success at living. Not in some dream or vision of the future, but in the here and now. I know a lot--more than most people, honestly. But I’m only just now learning how to live.
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16 comments:
"She was very gracious about it."... you mean she didn't play Mrs Bobbett?
Seriously, the devil sure knows our weaknesses and how and when to play on them
being alone IS the most dangerous time for all of us with addictions...we battle on...Dianne
I agree with Dianne. I struggle more with my addiction to "emotional/comfort eating" when Jared is gone.
Ditto on what Dianne said...with Ryan being gone quite a bit I am alone...sometimes it isn't easy other times I'm so busy that the lonliness doesn't bother me but when I'm alone and it's quiet, well I don't like that. I know I'm rambling and not making much sense - I really just wanted to say that I'm glad you didn't hide it and I'm glad you were honest.
You're out somewhere around Jupiter. Come back to Earth.
We're all just animals. It's not the 'devil' tempting you. It's a biological need to procreate and spread your genes in order to ensure the continuation of the species.
Porn is what happens when biology is subjugated with ethics based on an out dated belief system.
Chris Rock has a great rant about how women can keep their men from straying. He says: Be there. If your man needs pussy and he's at home, hey, be there.
In other words. Put out. I think it's a huge failing that the blame is placed on the man instead of the woman when a guy looks at porn; he's acting on a need that has obviously gone unfulfilled. If a woman makes a point to jump her husband's bones three times a day, he won't have the energy to go looking anywhere else.
In turn, a man should return those affections. In the words of Dr. Laura, replying to a woman who was complaining that she never felt like having sex with her husband but she sure did love him a lot, she said, "Get over it. What does it hurt you? It's you're marriage bed. Take care of your husband or someone else will."
If you feel the need to jerk off, you're surreptitiously checking out porn, and then goading yourself with guilt about it and fighting some huge internal battle all the while against the 'flesh', which is just a doctored up metaphysical way of denigrating our humble roots, you're bound to fail.
If you're wife thinks your sex drive is unnatural, ask her what the fuck IS natural. Someone getting randy eyes and scoping out her mother is how she popped out. Without a sex drive none of us exist.
Generally a low drive is the result of a hormonal imabalance.
You're doing everything you can do to work with her and be a good husband.
Maybe ask her to work with you and get her testosterone levels checked out. Go to a doctor and explain the mysteriously low desire threshold. The ovaries produce the hormone, and women with a low sex drive generally produce less. It's a problem with a remedy and has nothing to do with good, bad, or Jesus.
I imagine you'll have far less difficulty fighting this battle if you're sexually satisfied at home, and there's nothing wrong with telling you're wife she's not meeting your needs. It's her job. That's not a mysoginistic statement, it's the plain facts. Marriage = a mutually exclusive right to sex whenever you want it. That's why people get married.
You want companionship go play chess in the park.
Dont know who "anonymous" is, (not Dianne), but they certainly posted a load of worldy codswallup.
Without God in your life you are nothing, and will end up with nothing.....
Get a real life who ever you are, else move back to Pluto or what ever outer darkness you are from.
9:01 PM
anonymous said, "It's a biological need to procreate and spread your genes in order to ensure the continuation of the species."
I doubt your wife would appreciate that argument if you cheat on her while she's sick in the hospital or was otherwise unable to meet your needs.
People don't get married in order to have a lot of mutually exclusive sex. There's no need for a marriage liscense to do that. People get married for the commitment...they're saying the commitment means something to them, to their families and to God.
I wonder what Dr. Laura thinks of porn? Why don't you call her and ask?
I'm sure I've heard her rant about what a "real man" it takes to marry a woman, with all the responsibility of the relationship and possibility of children and everything else that goes along with marriage. A wife is not just your very own plaything. It's a package deal. There's a part in the vows that says, "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health..." That's the appeal of marriage...that in the hard times when we're low and unlovely, someone will still love us and be commited to us.
I said, "Porn is what happens when..."
I didn't say, "Porn is great."
Please pay attention.
If something isn't being taken care of for an extended period of time, and if a man is made to feel guilty about desiring his wife strongly then who is he supposed to desire strongly, and how can he ever be right?
If there are no extenuating circumstances--wife in the hospital--that are strong enough for the intellect to suppress our strongest motivating factor--the sex drive--with reason, then guys start looking at porn.
So, for example:
If a man's wife who he has always been faithful to--and let's say here that the definition of faithful means no porn--is in the hospital, the feelings of affection and loyalty would stay strong enough until she was in a non-convalescent state so that he would have the moral turpitude to stay away from infidelity. How do I know this? Because if he finds infidelity reprehensible and he knows that his wife takes care of him sexually he will be satisfied to wait knowing that he can enter his wife with a pure conscience, which is far more fulfilling to a good man than squeezing one out in a whore's thighs.
Did I say get rid of God in my post? No.
I said sex and desire on a day-to-day basis have very little to do with God.
Sikki, your argument is invalid on many points, and I kind of cringe reading that. Christian housewives the nation across say that, and it has a lot to do with why there are more sexually frustrated 'nice' Christian men than on the other end.
The fact is you do get married to have exclusive sex, and you don'thave that comfort if you're just in a handshake let's-only-screw-each-other relationship.
Marriage makes a societal--and for spiritual people religious--statement that the person you're with is the person you plan to have sex with for the rest of your life, in sickness and in health, for better or worse.
You can have exclusive sex with a person without being married; more people are doing it these days. But the fact is there's still a level of uncertainty and unfulfillment involved in it--even for pagans.
Remove the sex and no one would get married. Marriage would not exist as we know it today.
Case-in-point. There are groups of so-called "asexuals" who say that they possess no sex drive. They form 'platonic' relationships in which sex is never mentioned or offered.
They rarely get married, and the ones that do rarely stay married.
Look it up.
I didn't say porn was a good thing. I think porn is a symptom. It's an outgrowth of the trend in the developed world of females--the vast majority--who use sex to manipulate their spouses, and it has a higher preponderance in the Christian world where sex is still not openly discussed than in the non-Christian world. That's not an indictment against your religion; it's just the way it is.
The typical scenario looks something like this:
A woman will offer her husband sex infrequently or on an irregular basis, rarely when he wants it. She knows, without giving full cognizance to this process--to fully analyze it would be an admission of what they are actually doing--that in withhold sex when he wants it and giving it to him grudgingly only when she feels somewhat generous that she is in control of her man. This itself isn't the cause of the emasculation of men, it's a symptom.
This is all a control game deciding who rules the roost.
Once she has withheld and offered irregularly enough a man is driven to a state of sexual frustration in which what would otherwise be reprehensible enough to stay away from--porn, physical infidelity, or a combination--becomes an attractive if still revolting option. The man turns to these options feeling unfulfilled in the sex life of his marriage but still loving his spouse, which breeds self-loathing.
The woman who has been only slightly unconsciously letting things develop to this point now has her partner's balls in the mason jar of guilt, and that is a powerful controlling factor in the marriage.
The woman goads her husband with this guilt who then tries to make amends and straighten up his act but the wife makes things no easier by being more facilitating in bed, which ensures the continuation of the cycle. The woman controls the man with his guilt by withholding sex until he is driven to extreme lengths, and the man is always emotionally 'indebted' to her.
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Believe it or not, that scenario is painfully common. Dr. Laura doesn't approve of porn. Neither do I.
The byproduct of marriage is responsibility. Children are what you get married for: so you can keep making them, and make them with the mate you've deemed suitable above all others.
The appeal in marriage isn't that you get to hold your wife's hand when she's puking. I haven't woken up too many mornings going, "Gee, I hope I get to hold my wife's hair out of the toilet while she's puking her guts out."
You do it for the admiring look she gives you later, the way she coos over what a great guy you are and cuddles up next to you in thanks and before screwing your brains out in appreciation.
And that has nothing to do with being a plaything. It has everything to do with keeping a marriage healthy. It takes more than God and prayer.
I'm thinking anonymous didn't read all the other posts....maybe I'm off on something but I (my opinion) think that Steve's problem with porn etc goes a little deeper than whether or not he's getting sex from his wife. He mentioned in an earlier post that he's used porn since he was a kid (10 or 11?)
Oh my gosh....who is this anonymous windbag????? Read more...rant less. Dianne
Ooh, how exciting. I have much to say, but not enough time right now to do the thing justice. Saturday evening, hopefully...
One more day....will be here with bells on!!!Dianne
What could be more important than what ya have to say.
Oh yeah, that family and work thing might take precedence eh? Hehe
I'm sure whatever ya have to say will be worth the wait...At least it better be! :P
This world is completely bass ackwards. We call things good that are bad, and we call things wise that are stupid as hell. Everyone with a brain KNOWS that porn is wrong. They knew that whorehouses were wrong, and that concubines were wrong, and that the rampant homosexuality that has traversed the pages of history was not how we were created. The fact of the matter is even Christians are so entrenched in our sin that it is only the grace of God that somehow allows us to see the light of day and what might be when we're perfected.
My family has been ripped to shreds because of pornography and infidelity that was actually a direct result of the pornography. It's very easy for someone still on the "safe" side of porn to talk about how it's a minor stumble in the course of all men.
The truth is, both men and women basically suck. We have an inherent inability to communicate effectively, and we're also inherently selfish.
How on earth marriage has actually survived is a testament that God's grace is still in the world.
Amen Ruth!!! My 1st marriage was destroyed by porn..I hate ,loathe and abominate it!!!!Dianne
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