Question about images

  • Thread starter Thread starter BoBo1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

BoBo1

Guest
Is seeing images of semi-nude but not pornographic girls, just to appreciate their beauty, a sin, if it doesn’t lead me to masturbation or bad thoughts?
 
I think not. But that’s at the razor’s edge of “near occasion of sin.”

In other words, in and of itself, no, it’s not. The question is whether you can control the split second that comes next in the equation.
 
BoBo1 said:
Is seeing images of semi-nude but not pornographic girls, just to appreciate their beauty, a sin, if it doesn’t lead me to masturbation or bad thoughts?
Click to expand...
Coming across an image is one thing, intentionally seeking it out just to “admire” is another. Such activity doesn’t sound spiritual healthy.
 
Last edited:
Based on your posting history, you seem scrupulous. Please speak to your pastor. The internet is the wrong place to try to get help for this.
 
From what you posted a little over a week ago, I would avoid that at all costs. Don’t “admire”. Don’t.
 
Agreed, unless someone is looking at the Sistine chapel for the nudity though.
 
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of justification. Trying to figure out a way to make looking at nude images not sinful. And the trick we often play on ourselves is to convince us we are admiring their beauty.

Matt Fradd says that logically nudity is not sinful because human beings are not sinful. But do to our fallen nature, it is almost impossible for us to see a nude photo and not lust. Convincing ourselves we are just admiring is justification.

I don’t need to go look at nude images in order to admire the beauty of women. I can see fully clothed women in person instead of through a screen, and actually talk with them. Women aren’t an object or some alien species. Let’s not treat them as such.

Those images are of someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s niece, someone’s girlfriend. See the humanity not the object
 
Last edited:
GospelOfMatthew said:
it is almost impossible for us to see a nude photo and not lust.
Click to expand...
Rather sweeping generalization.

If someone spends time in the art world, they do see many, many nudes in just about every format.
GospelOfMatthew said:
Women aren’t an object or some alien species. Let’s not treat them as such.

Those images are of someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s niece, someone’s girlfriend. See the humanity not the object
Click to expand...
The women, and men, including myself, who have sat as life models for art classes are doing so in our full humanity.
 
BoBo1 said:
Is seeing images of semi-nude but not pornographic girls, just to appreciate their beauty, a sin, if it doesn’t lead me to masturbation or bad thoughts?
Click to expand...
Not avoiding the occasion of sin will always lead you into it; you’ll always be tempted to want to see more, and it will take you to down a slow descent into pornography. Custody of the eyes. If not, you will have a mind full of bad thoughts, the wicked spirits will make sure of that. Work on uprooting the bad in yourself to making yourself into an man a good woman wants to marry…
 
Stop playing mental games with yourself. You need to ask your confessor, not people on the internet.
 
TheLittleLady said:
The women, and men, including myself, who have sat as life models for art classes are doing so in our full humanity.
Click to expand...
One can be an art model without removing your underpants. After all, if the real intent of the class was to study anatomy, muscle structure, and the play of light and shade on the body, there is no need to be completely naked; that’s just something people rationalize. Fetishes are often masqueraded as art…
 
Surely you don’t imply that artists, art collectors, art lovers, are “Fetishists”?
 
The purpose of art is to raise the mind to higher things, namely to God; Who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty itself. Thus the true artistic expression gives glory to God in one way or another by raising the human spirit to God. Like anything else, art can be corrupted and be used for hiding different motives, fetishes and evil disguised with physical nakedness. Hugh Hefner described his magazines as art, when in truth it was smut, even though his models were simply revealing the beauty of the female form; that display was for the eyes of men, teenagers and young boys to gaze upon. What do you think all that gazing lead to?

The nude figure in art is best represented in classical form; and must be in the context of a work that inspires the mind to goodness in the service of truth…
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top