Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

'Mastery of the moment is mastery over life'

As mentioned in a previous blog post, most of the lifestyle questions the kids ask are sex-related. Common questions include: 'you cant date on YMT, but your allowed to hook up, right? You can still 'get some', can't you? Your allowed one-night stands once a week aren't you?' (I absolutely love getting these questions!).

Anyhow, for the last couple of weeks, we've been running a couple of 'Sexuality' themed ministry days. Now, with the days being 'sexuality' themed, I was expecting a few sex-related questions. What I was not expecting, however, was the amount of questions I got on Masturbation. The kids questions were soo persisting that I decided to go home and do some research on the Catholic teachings of what the urban dictionary defines as 'Wanking'.


Spanking the monkey. Stroking the Salami. Choking the chicken. Teasing the trouser snake. Jerkin the Gerkin. Beating the meat. Tooting the horn. Tossing the turkey. Firing the missile. Cuffing the Carrot. Yanking the Crank. Teasing the Weasel. Cleaning the rifle. Buffing the Banana. Bashing the candle. Flapping the bacon. Walking the dog. Sinking the battleship. Soiling the Kleenex. Hitting the Deck. Polishing the gun. Taming the Dragon.
No matter what you define it as, if you are the average Aussie, you have experimented, one way or the other, with masturbation. Even though, growing up, we all heard that it was going to send you straight to hell. Or give you hairy palms. Or make you blind. How interesting.

According to the YouCat, the Church has always warned its followers about masturbation. However, in modern society, most of the Church's warnings have gone down as urban legend. According to JPII's Theology of the Body, masturbation destroys the nuptial meaning of the human body. Has JPII's teachings worked? Have people stopped masturbating?

If only. Studies have gone to show that people still ride the self-service elevator. According to the studies of Sue Johanson, a secular sex educator and counselor, nine out of ten adolescents have masturbated at some point upon entering puberty.

I asked a good mate of mine (athiest) in Sydney for a quick introduction on the beginnings of his journey with 'masturbation':
“I started when I was fourteen. I cant remember any specifics, but I remember it feeling really good. I still remember what it felt like when it was over. It felt really good, but I would feel guilty for some reason. I’d never felt so good and bad in the same time bracket. However, the pleasure would override the guilt. I started to do it regularly on a daily basis. As the weeks passed, I would do it more often, from twice a day, to whenever I was bored and had a free 20 minutes to myself."

So how can something that feels so good be so bad? [Oh, that is the question!] Well, there is a debate over masturbation, with both sides spouting statistics, facts, and arguments that, quite honestly, are very good.But what does the Bible say? Does it say that masturbation all that bad?
 
According to Anne Hooper, a famous secular British sexologist, Masturbation is defined as “the stimulation of the genital organs to achieve sexual pleasure.” She adds that masturbation is a “valuable method for sexual exploration as a release for sexual frustrations.”

Many secular psychologists say that teen masturbation is normal, and should be encouraged, if only for the possibility that they would engage in this behavior instead of actually having premarital sex with a partner and getting into another bunch of problems.

So if the secular world says that masturbation is normal, what’s so wrong with it?
My atheist mate in Sydney describes how once his mom caught him in the act. "she got really angry. I never understood why, though.”

My assumption is that my mate's confusion is shared by many others.

Fr Gerry Gleeson believes that the Bible does address masturbation, even if it doesn’t address it directly. He suggests masturbation becomes dangerous not as a single, solitary act, but as a lifestyle that takes us away from entering a close relationship with God.

I used to make the mistake of defining my relationship with God by the sins I committed. The Bible says that “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

Masturbation is an expression of lust, which is the worst sin that destroys God’s plans for human sexuality. Sex and all its forms were planned as the best expression of love between husband and wife, and is one of the many amazing gifts God gave man (some married men would say that it is the BEST gift god gave man). God wanted sex to be shared with a spouse, and masturbation takes away the partner. It makes the sexual act self-centered and self-pleasing, and this is not what God wants. It also skews our human sexuality.

The Media sure as heck doesn’t help us in our call to a chaste life.
Fr Gerry says, “many people become curious about the pleasurable sensations of their bodies and experiment with masturbation, and are often eager to gain access to sexual literature.” He says young adults will have sexual desire and biological needs, and will want to seek out porn. He says having a sex drive and wanting to release all that sexual tension is 'normal'.

However, 'normal' doesn’t equals good. Natural desires can easily become sinful cravings, and masturbation is built on a self-centered view of sex.

This self-centered view is more obvious today. Teens are in greater danger of becoming addicted to the pleasure of orgasm, especially because there are lot of materials out there that encourage it.

Fr Anthony Percy, a priest who is famous for his commentary to JPII's Theology Of The Body, says that “Masturbation is more often than not accompanied by sexual fantasy. That fantasy is often provoked by pornography.'

Fr Anthony defines Pornography as 'the depiction of the human body for the explicit purpose of evoking sexual arousal and lust in the viewer. It reduces the human person to only a visible dimension. Although usually visible in nature, pornography can also include written forms.'

I found this definition quite down to earth, but extremely unsettling. With the knowledge of 'porn' really is, I have noticed that it literally is everywhere. Billboards. Commercials. Books (ever heard of Daniel Steele?). Music videos. Movies. TV shows. The internet. Magazines. Posters. I would have to say that over 60% of marketing in Australia contains some form of 'soft core' porn. Thats more than what I got for my ATAR!

Why should you get over it? And how?

Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:11: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in this world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” If our values are right with God, we can fight the temptation to masturbate. On our own, we cannot beat it. We need God’s grace to overcome masturbation.
Fr Anthony gives us good reasons not to masturbate: It makes us disrespect people, seeing them as objects; it creates false expectations and lowers self-esteem, and the Bible says that it is adultery: Matthew 5:28 says whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Masturbation and porn can destroy all your future relationships.

Masturbation by itself won’t send us straight to hell, but it will lead you towards that path. Make that attempt, with God's help, beat the habit. You won’t regret it. Trust me. Been there, done that.

Here are some great tips on helping get over masturbation:
1. Ask help from God. Let’s face it: you can’t beat sin without God’s help.
2. Eliminate temptation. Get rid of the porn. Don't stare. It's not easy, admittedly.
3. Get an accountability buddy. It helps when someone’s watching over you and making sure you kick any habit.
4. Avoid the opportunity. My mummy always told me that 'an idle mind is the Devil's workshop'

Bibliography, if you want to do further research (which I suspect you wont)

• http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090820021156AA3jTNp
• http://marriage.about.com/cs/masturbation/f/masturbatfaq3.htm
• The Bible
• Fr Gerry Gleeson
• The YouCat
• vatican.va
• Theology of the Body Made Simple, Anthony Percy
• http://site.themarriagebed.com/sexuality/masturbation-overview/teens-and-masturbation
• http://livethelife.wordpress.com/category/featured-article/
• http://www.christianity.net.au/questions/from_christianitynetau_moblog1352
• http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=229348
• http://ecclesia.org/truth/masturbation.html
• http://www.beginningcatholic.com/catholic-teaching-on-masturbation.html