misconceptions about sex you had as a single person

[DaveW]

One "myth" that I did not grow up with (but my wife did) but later on in college the church tried to impose on me:

Masturbation is the ultimate sin against God and your own body.  It is the sin that SOOO BAD that it cannot even be mentioned in the Holy Bible.

Horse Hockey.

As a follow up to this, when DW and I got married; (Sept 1977) this was the opinion of the church we we went to.  They even had morality police come around every couple of months and ask you point blank if you masturbated or not. If you had, they tried to cast out demons of lust and perversion.

As someone who had been an "every day" kinda guy since a freshman in HS, the longest I ever lasted was 6 weeks (and I was climbing the walls)  There was a LOT of guilt and shame. There were a few people in leadership positions that were removed from their offices for doing the big M.  And it was announced as such from the pulpit.

Back to my story.  So DW and I get back from our honeymoon, and it is announced that in October they would be playing a new video series from author and christian psychologist James Dobson called "Focus on the Family."  His book "Dare to Discipline" was a hit in our congregation.

So they played the videos (one a week) at the members-only meetings from late October to the end of December. We were gone over Christmas so we missed the last one.  When we came back, at the first members meeting in January, the whole senior leadership team (pastor and elders) got up and apologized to the congregation for their stance on masturbation. I guess Dobson really got thru to them.

But I was thinking "Why couldn't you have come to this opinion about 4 years ago? ? ?" But I was also very glad for all the singles there who did not have to go thru what I experienced. Those guys woke up from the myth.