abaya

Parable, I agree with you about the fact that masturbation is, indeed, a sin... if you really are adhering to Christian dogma, it is hard to avoid this fact. If one is thinking lustful thoughts about someone other than one's own wife/husband, then one is indeed sinning. There are no two ways around that.

I started a thread about this in TFP a while back, asking Christians how they managed to make it "okay" to look at porn and lust freely about other women/men while still calling themselves observant Christians. The answers weren't terribly convincing, but it's interesting how people compartmentalize the issue. In other words, the answer went, "Okay, I'm not a perfect Christian, but God loves me anyway." So if Christ died for my sins, and I have accepted Christ as my savior, then I can sin (and some people do try to avoid it, but often give in) with the knowledge that I'm still going to heaven. That's how it works in their minds, I suppose.

For me, however, the realization that there were no two ways around this fact was one of the reasons that caused me to walk away from the church, and possibly the faith itself. It made no sense to me, on a variety of different levels, but mostly as a human being. First I stopped believing in hell, then heaven, then sin itself. Or rather, to me, "sin" became that which we do to hurt each other and ourselves. But to me, there are no eternal consequences for those injuries; only in our present lives, which is punishment enough. Karma, you might say.

Lusting occasionally after someone other than one's parter, however, has never occurred to me as being anything other than normal... and that is one of the many reasons I cannot continue calling myself any kind of Christian. It would give a very bad name to those who try *very* hard to avoid lustful thoughts and remain pure in heart, and who do truly avoid all kinds of sexual debauchery. I actually know people like that. They would, in fact, avoid this place like the plague.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran