2. Meetings would be held for single men to discuss masturbation and its sin. The sin of "Onanism" was sited - the only reference in the bible they can come up with and if you know your bible history, it is actually references prostitution.
As EAS mentioned, it's not, his correction above. Anyway, they do this still, of course.
3. Kissing or fondling was discouraged until marriage although assumed that it might take place whlie you were "praying for the purpose to decide to become married." - I think that is called dating ... but they would never admit that.
Not so troubled by saying 'be pure' or 'wait on things', especially on physical intimacy when so many times people are 'trying to decide' after barely beginning to date and often after barely really knowing someone at all (the only males and females I saw know each other really well, beyond evangelism experience or silly crap DTs did together, were "core" members, i.e. this usually meant people in leadership). Thing about barely really knowing one another and getting involved is it, as I was just talking to a friend about, accelerates the feelings of closeness even beyond what you may really have: powerful stuff. We can't keep harping on GC* over this when until only recently in history societies (wisely) controlled interaction between sexes tightly, or at least tried to, except at points when their societies broke down, and nobility and kings often got-around such regulations.
Whenever you look at large-scale survey-efforts where researchers genetically test the children of "such and such men" they often find...many times the women had cheated on her husband. Of course there are things like the rampant sexual immorality of our society, including in the so-called church: guys my age often, more often than I would have thought in our age, lament things like "whoever I marry probably won't be a virgin", which tells me the same thought floats through the heads of men as it did (as embodied in extensive literary tradition) over thousands of years through history--sex with whom matters, and to marry one already involved with another physically is like being--and it's only ever possible to be, a second (or worse). You want to find the root of so many marital problems today? How about a husband constantly confronted by his competitor..through the influence on the woman that would later become his wife, or her conformation to another man such that she's hardened to her own husband.
The whole "it's usual for sexes to freely intermingle and legalism to say otherwise" is quite superficial, egalitarian and so modernism-approved, but we do know better: there's a reason good father's don't let their daughters go unattended with males, and vice-versa.
4. As a married woman, a Phyllis Shafleys (sp?) book was circulated among the group and we were encouraged to only partipate in missionary style sex only. Any exploration as a young couple any of us were having came to a complete stop!
Does this tell any of you the leadership of GC is of that sensual mind we're warned false teachers have, for their obsession with this sort of thing?
5. Anytime a man masturbated (married or not) he was encouraged to confess to either a felow brother
still happens
or to his wife ... can you imagine how this helped a marriage?
?
NO idea.. In any case, I don't know why a spouse would necessarily be troubled.
I would challenge anyone to offer another bible verse against masturbation ...and where are the ones pertaining to women?
You know, it's not masturbation that I think is considered wrong per se, at least by everyone who forbids it. Rather I think it's a synthesis of (1) observation of general revelation and (2)
deduction inference of necessary consequence from scriptural doctrine, that people
caution rightly regarding masturbation. I remember one GC* teacher who nearly had it right on this point, though he didn't. Basically his fear was that masturbation would always inevitably involve fantasizing about the opposite sex, which is a sin (one of the heart): his error was that it can't be said surely that all will always fall into that, though highly likely, but otherwise, apart from him making and proclaiming that assumption, it is a good general caution. Another is addiction: there's a lot of it among the youth, (though probably always has been--hormones and all), to sex, whether on the internet, or really, or just taken in one's own hand: we are to be addicted to nothing, and sex, or sexual activities, by its/their very nature (we can go with general experience held in common between all men, or we can go the physiological route), is just that. In a relationship between husband and wife the addiction, so-called, is a good thing, glue-like: it's one recognized in scripture that it's not bad, i.e. they're not to deprive one another. (As for glue-like, at least it should be--it should be a bonding thing between husband and wife, whereas in reality either could still be just addicted to sex rather than attaching to spouse).
So it can be said it can be like playing with fire, but that's the qualification, "can be", and it's these things, not necessarily the masturbation in itself, that should be warned of: warning, making aware of danger, making cognizant, not making a rule here.
I just want to be counter superficiality in these matters, by the way.