The article enlightened me so much that I felt compelled to email it to my fellow choristers at All Saints' Cathedral in Nairobi. I also posted it on my previous version of this blog, back in the days when I was a master plagiarist.
Despite the article enlightening me on how sinful masturbation is, I never managed to break my masturbation habit for more than ten years - a proof that plagiarism just isn't right.
I began masturbating in 2006 when I was eighteen. Upon feeling how pleasurable masturbation is, I became addicted to it. But as the weeks rolled by, a voice in my heart told me that my masturbation habit was sinful. So I resolved to stop doing it.
At that time I was striving to refrain from masturbating, a fellow youth group member in the Catholic church I attended told us on one Sunday that there is nothing wrong with entertaining lustful thoughts in our minds. What is wrong, he said, is acting those lustful thoughts out.
Standing up, I opposed his line of thinking and asserted that the thoughts we conceal in our minds gradually transform themselves into physical reality. The youth group member soon changed his stand after another member sided with me.
Looking back, I am impressed with how wise I was because it's true that the thoughts we conceal in our minds eventually transform themselves into physical reality. As Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped, the ancestor of every action is a thought. James Allen, in his book As a Man Thinketh, phrased it so beautifully when he said:
A man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power.That's precisely why masturbation is sinful, for it involves entertaining lustful thoughts in our minds. And in this day and age, the flow of lustful thoughts during masturbation is enhanced by viewing adult clips on the internet.
The problem with adult clips is that they tend to glamorize sex by showing how satisfying it is when done in a variety of styles and with different partners. When youngsters view the clips, the impression they get is that marriage is all about sexual ecstasy.
But hey! Marriage is not just about sexual ecstasy. (If it were so, we wouldn't be having many celebrity couples breaking up.) Marriage also entails showing affection for a spouse, nurturing children and providing for the family.
Happy marriages are founded not just on physical attraction but also on trust, mutual affection and shared values. If youngsters could understand that, they would cease viewing adult clips and ultimately stop masturbating.
Besides being a sin, masturbation also affects our health adversely. According to one scholarly YouTube video, frequent masturbation can cause the following psychological and physiological imbalances and side effects: hair loss, problems with concentration and memory, deteriorating eyesight, mood swings, sleeping disorder, anxiety, stress and depression.
Having failed to kick my masturbation habit for close to 17 years, I know how difficult it is to stop masturbating. Imagine I would go for several days, sometimes even weeks, without masturbating, then give in to it in a moment of weakness, after which I would lapse back to my old ways of viewing adult clips and thinking all sorts of immoral thoughts.
It's not until mid-last year that I finally conquered my masturbation habit. For more than a year now, I haven't viewed any adult content on the internet or entertained a lustful thought in my mind. That's something, isn't it?
If I have conquered masturbation, so can everybody else. I therefore encourage people to stop masturbating since it can lead not only to health problems but also to such revolting sins as rape and child molestation. Masturbation is, in a nutshell, sinful and morally wrong, period!
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on the masturbation menace, you might also enjoy another one on "Pursuing Righteousness" which I wrote last year. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.
