by Anonymous on Nov 8, 2013 at 8:58 AM

Dude. So much time has passed since your post that you probably won't see this, but if you do, you're being way too hard on yourself. As someone who studied to be a pastor, but later realized it wasn't my calling, I still studied the scriptures, and the topic of sex, etc., was always of major interest to me. I'm in my late 40s now.

First, it's interesting that the Bible never talks about masturbation. Nada. Zip. If God wanted to make a big deal of it, He would have. The creator made us, and he created humans with this intense sexual hunger, and for men in particular, it's a physical need. We have to release it regularly. In the gospels, Jesus did condemn a man who looked with lust at another women, but most people miss the point of that passage. The point was to convict all of those self-righteous religious leaders who thought they were good enough on their own to **earn** their way into heaven. They needed to see that even their thought life was enough to convict them.

None of that dismisses the fact that we have a physical need to release. Don't destroy yourself with guilt.