The Crazy Side of Orthodoxy by Charles Shingledecker

Author:Charles Shingledecker [Shingledecker, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

10.

MASTURBATION IS OF THE DEVIL!

Anyone having committed masturbation is penanced forty days, during which he must keep himself alive by xerophagy and must do one hundred metanies every day. – 8th Canon of John the Faster (died 595 A.D.)

INTERPRETATION

The present Canon decrees that anyone who is guilty of masturbating at any time is obliged to refrain from communing for forty days straight, passing these with xerophagy, or, more explicitly speaking, with only bread and water, and doing every day metanies to the number of one hundred each time. As concerning masturbators and fornicators, St. Meletius the Confessor asserts that they are making a sacrifice of their semen to the Devil, which semen is the most precious part of their body. – Interpretation as given in The Rudder

Wow. This Canon should thoroughly debunk the popular assumption that the Church Fathers were all prudes who never thought about sex. In this Canon St. John the Faster addresses a sexual “sin” which is such a big deal for some Orthodox Traditionalists that they won’t even refer to it by name. What the more mature among us, including the Church Fathers, call masturbation, they call “Self-Abuse.”

The Canon is straightforward. Anyone who commits the “sin” of masturbation is excommunicated for forty days. Those who do this sin must also keep themselves alive by “xerophagy,” which is to say by eating nothing but bread and water for forty days, as well as do one hundred prostrations a day for those forty days.

Whew! That’s a pretty darn good workout program. First, you get to you relieve yourself from sexual tension, and then you go on a strict exercise regimen of doing the equivalent of one hundred squat-thrusts per day for forty days straight. It probably won’t do much for building lean much muscle mass though, seeing as how you’ll be half starved to death in the process on your bread and water “diet.”

There is a fatal flaw in logic to this “starve the lust out of them” exercise program though. Even if a man or woman who masturbates did live out this strict Canon for 40 days, and assuming the individual fully recovers from the ordeal, does anyone in our modern age actually believe that the act of sexual release would become any less appealing to this individual? Sure, maybe for the first week of their convalescence in intensive care they might not think about sex all that much, but as they began to eat again, put on weight, and their bodies began to heal, their natural human sexual desires would also return, and then what? Would a person be so easily dissuaded from sacrificing themselves to the Devil the next time they channel surfed through the naked channel?

“Ah but wait a minute,” someone might protest, “this Canon is not meant to be a onetime cure all, but a penance that one must follow over and over again until they become conditioned to hate sex like all good Christians are supposed to!” Well, let us think about that for a moment.

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