Monday, August 22, 2005
"Autoeroticism"
Visit me at my new website - anniecrawford.com
Bonnie over at "Off The Top" wrote a great post on masturbation. I think it is essential as parents to face this issue head on and thoroughly think and pray through how we will prepare our children for this difficult issue. My own parents awkward silence and implied laize-faire attitude toward sexuality left me largely naive, unequiped to face the incredible strenght of temptation and easy prey to the paradigms flaunted on the cover of Cosmo.
I started a comment to Bonnie's post and realized that it was way to long to burden her blog with, so I will paste it here.
Very interesting. Thanks for being courageous to post it. Thank you for the link to Dobson as well, it helped clarify some of the difficulties of the issue. I think there is a vast difference in how to deal with this issue concerning young boys (or girls) as opposed to mature adults and especially married adults.
I would tend to agree with your points, Bonnie, when considering mature Christian adults. I understand Dobson's points when dealing with young boys. To try and understand, I compare it to my own struggle with eating disorders. Sex is good, food is good. However, there are abuses of these good gifts that certainly have spiritual significance, as well as physical and realtional consequences. Young girls have an especially difficult time with food during the changes in adolescence. If I deal with my daughter by just telling her "Don't, don't don't" I exacerbate and help to further a negative and guilt laden relationship with food. I assume Dobson and others are concerned with this effect in dealing with 'autoeroticism' (Thanks for teaching me a new word!) in an overly legalistic way.
I asked my husband about the issue, and he said that, after age 13 at least, night problems were always connected to thoughts from the previous day. The goal is to pursue purity of mind. A mind passionate for the great things of God is great medicine for fixation upon lesser things. He agrees that the ultimate goal of sexual purity would exclude autoeroticism, yet the journey there is difficult, just as it seems to be for Americans to honor God and their body with what they put in their mouth.
In that light, many of these issues and others that are so problematic to our culture, seem to be uniquely difficulties of an affluent culture. We have the time, liesure, proparity and freedom from physical suffering to develop eating disorders, the priviledge to have diseases of over eating, the idle time and privacy for masses of youth to experiment with "autoeroticism". Rev. 3:17 seems to echo through every reflection I have on American culture.
Dobson certainly clarified that p*rn*graphy is a sinful activity which must certainly be related to unfettered autoeroticism. It would seem a strange line that would separate the two. The latter is ok as long as you don't picture anyone who isn't your spouse? Such wierd moral boundaries usually indicate an error.
Ultimately, I want to pursue purity and self-control in a manner that honors God and cultivates the health and joy He created us to have. I want to train my children to pursue these goals while understanding that the journey is difficult, especially in adolescence.
I started a comment to Bonnie's post and realized that it was way to long to burden her blog with, so I will paste it here.
Very interesting. Thanks for being courageous to post it. Thank you for the link to Dobson as well, it helped clarify some of the difficulties of the issue. I think there is a vast difference in how to deal with this issue concerning young boys (or girls) as opposed to mature adults and especially married adults.
I would tend to agree with your points, Bonnie, when considering mature Christian adults. I understand Dobson's points when dealing with young boys. To try and understand, I compare it to my own struggle with eating disorders. Sex is good, food is good. However, there are abuses of these good gifts that certainly have spiritual significance, as well as physical and realtional consequences. Young girls have an especially difficult time with food during the changes in adolescence. If I deal with my daughter by just telling her "Don't, don't don't" I exacerbate and help to further a negative and guilt laden relationship with food. I assume Dobson and others are concerned with this effect in dealing with 'autoeroticism' (Thanks for teaching me a new word!) in an overly legalistic way.
I asked my husband about the issue, and he said that, after age 13 at least, night problems were always connected to thoughts from the previous day. The goal is to pursue purity of mind. A mind passionate for the great things of God is great medicine for fixation upon lesser things. He agrees that the ultimate goal of sexual purity would exclude autoeroticism, yet the journey there is difficult, just as it seems to be for Americans to honor God and their body with what they put in their mouth.
In that light, many of these issues and others that are so problematic to our culture, seem to be uniquely difficulties of an affluent culture. We have the time, liesure, proparity and freedom from physical suffering to develop eating disorders, the priviledge to have diseases of over eating, the idle time and privacy for masses of youth to experiment with "autoeroticism". Rev. 3:17 seems to echo through every reflection I have on American culture.
Dobson certainly clarified that p*rn*graphy is a sinful activity which must certainly be related to unfettered autoeroticism. It would seem a strange line that would separate the two. The latter is ok as long as you don't picture anyone who isn't your spouse? Such wierd moral boundaries usually indicate an error.
Ultimately, I want to pursue purity and self-control in a manner that honors God and cultivates the health and joy He created us to have. I want to train my children to pursue these goals while understanding that the journey is difficult, especially in adolescence.
3 Comments:
At 8/23/2005 4:50 PM,
texashimalaya said…
Wow, I was "winsome" about such a topic! Perhaps there is hope for my writing yet! Thanks for visiting and commenting, Hugo. I don't think it is an issue to break fellowship over, so I appreciate your gentle disagreement. It is really an issue I would rather the men lead the way on, as it isn't a personal weakness for me.
At 8/24/2005 11:42 PM,
Hannah Im said…
Good comments, Annie. I just don't have the energy to blog about this one myself right now, but I want to. It was a serious problem for me in my late adolescence. And I was a relatively strong Christian too. During my time at DTS, about five of my fellow students confessed that they struggled with the same issue. These were women, by the way. So I think it is an issue that needs to be addressed beyond just "Don't do it."
BTW, my husband's grandfather was married at the age of 11--this was in the early 1900's in Korea. So, I doubt he had the problems of someone who doesn't marry until age 35. I also think that having more than enough to eat and lack of physical activity contributes to lust problems.
At 8/25/2005 9:31 PM,
texashimalaya said…
Hannah - I hope that sometime you might blog about it. I know there are many women who struggle and few Christian women who graciously address it.
Sammantha - I definately, agree that the contemporaty visual abundance of nudity and erotic graphics has a great deal to do with this problem.
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