Something that is so common, a problem for so many Christians, is one of the few things ever discussed in church.  So what is the answer to the question, ‘Is masturbation a sin?’  Is there really anything wrong with it?  I mean, what’s the harm?  What does the Bible say?

The Bible doesn’t specifically address the issue of masturbation.  Out of the entire scriptures, not one verse mentions masturbation.  The closest one that is used most often in relation to masturbation is Genesis 38:9 -

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother.

Tamar was Onan’s sister-in-law.  Her husband, Er, was wicked and recently died.  So Judah, Onan’s father told him to lie with Tamar to produce children that Er couldn’t do.  But Onan, spills his seed to prevent himself from impregnating Tamar.  The Lord is angry and ultimately kills him.  So, because he spills his seed, many equate that with masturbation.  But, if you look at the context, it isn’t masturbation the Lord is displeased with, it is the fact that Onan deliberately prevents himself from passing his seed on to Tamar.  He disrespects God’s perfect design by wasting his seed.  The purpose he was to fulfill was thwarted by his own selfish desires.  So this verse we can’t use to defend or condemn masturbation.

But I believe the issue of lust is important to discuss in relation to masturbation.  In my many years of battling with this issue, I’ve heard the arguments that masturbation is alright as long as it doesn’t become an addictive behavior and it’s used as a tool for relaxation and not lust.  But I have not found one time when lust could be suppressed from the act of masturbation.  The two are closely associated.  Masturbation is an artificial expression of sex, and in God’s perfect design, sex is to be a relational, deeply intimate expression between one man and one woman of their sacrificial love for one another.  So how could one be able to masturbate without bringing a relational dynamic into it – most often in the form of fantasy or pornography?

Christopher West, in Theology of the Body for Beginners, shares insights from Pope John Paul II.  He discusses an interesting perspective on lust.  Pope John Paul’s belief is that love and sex ultimately is self-donation.  It is the body’s capacity of expressing love.  A man’s body doesn’t make sense by itself and a woman’s body doesn’t make sense by itself.  Sexual difference reveals the unmistakable plan of God that man and woman are meant to be a “gift” to one another.  This is a whole other subject for a different post.  But this sets the backdrop for what he later brings up about lust:

Lust “passes on the ruins” of the nuptial (marital) meaning of the body and aims directly to satisfy only the “sexual need” of the body.  It seeks “the sensation of sexuality” apart from a true gift of self and a true communion of persons … In reality, lust is a reduction of the original fullness God intended for sexual desire.

Lust is the difference between self-gratification and self-donation, taking versus giving.  You see, sex is a very relational thing.  It was never intended to be enjoyed by oneself.  Regardless of whether you claim you can masturbate without fantasizing or not, it doesn’t matter.  Sex and orgasms were meant for the marriage bed, to unite two individuals in self-giving.

An orgasm was not originally designed for relaxation or for self-indulgence.  I remember hearing a talk one time by Sy Rogers.  I’m paraphrasing and perhaps even restructuring his thought here, but this is the gist of it.  An orgasm, originally, serves as a seal between two individuals.  In a world without pornography and void of masturbation, a man is to meet a woman, fall in love, marry, and unite in the joyous act of sexual intercourse.  When both partners experience orgasm, their other partner is imprinted in their minds, stamped, sealed, and delivered to their brain as the person of their dreams…in essence.  Of course I’m merely paraphrasing.

The dangers of masturbating is imprinting your mind with many different people that were never supposed to be linked to this most intimate act.  A rewiring in your brain happens.  That’s why, at least for me, when I began indulging in pornography I could never masturbate without the fantasy.  Because that was imprinted in my mind.

Can you imagine what it would be like, men, to never have masturbated, never looked at pornography, resisted the temptation to lust, and once you marry and enter the marriage bed for the first time, your wife is the only one imprinted on your mind in the most intimate moment?  That was God’s original intent.

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. Galatians 5:16-17

Ultimately you must search your own heart with God’s help to determine if it is sin or not.  The best way to tell is by asking yourself these questions, “Do you feel guilty after you do it?” If the answer is yes, then most likely you are feeling conviction, which means it is sin for you.  Is this something habitual for you?  Has it become an idol?  Then masturbation is not a good or beneficial thing.  Do you use it as a form of medication?  Then masturbation is a substitution for God, and therefore sin.

For those who do truly believe masturbation is possible without lust, then I should ask, what’s the benefit? Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:23 that, “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” So, masturbation may possibly be permissible, but what’s the benefit that it brings other than self-gratification and pleasure? We are called to be living sacrifices, not living self-indulgers.

Ultimately masturbation is a counterfeit form of intimacy and leads to self-focused gratification.  Therefore, how do we deal with it?

First, acknowledge God’s grace and love for you.  If you are trapped in a repetitive, addictive, unbreakable cycle of masturbating, you probably feel a lot of shame and guilt.  If so, embrace God’s love, and rest in His grace for you.  He sees you, not your sin.  Begin to dive deeper into relationship with Him.  Once He supplies your relational needs, then the counterfeit of masturbation loses it’s appeal.  If you are fulfilled in His love, you no longer need the self-gratification or indulgence of pornography or masturbation.

We also must daily deny ourselves, our fleshly desires, and self-focused motivations to Christ.  The longer we starve an addiction, the easier it becomes to resist.  Our bodies are not our own.  “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” 1 Corinthians 6:19.  As a temple of the Holy Spirit, we should not defile our bodies in acts of self-gratification of any kind.

We must submit our sexuality, sexual appetites, and impulses to God.  He, by His Holy Spirit, will give us the grace and power to resist and fight the temptation to masturbate.  This is something that can be extremely hard to break.  So walk under the grace of our Lord, and not under condemnation.  The more you feel accused, the easier it is to stay stuck in this sin.  God neither accuses or condemns you, because Christ took on all of that for us.  If you are stuck in the repetitive cycle of sin, then I encourage you to truly embrace who you are in Christ.  You are beloved, a dearly loved child of the King.  To learn more about helpful tools and ways to handle temptation read Hope for Resisting Temptation.

If you are using masturbation to medicate pain, loneliness, or brokenness, then acknowledge it and begin to understand what triggers you and how you handle certain issues.  Your brain has been conditioned to respond to hard life situations through masturbation.  It will take some time to retrain your brain and respond to these same situations by turning to Christ who is THE absolute medicator and healer.  Masturbation only medicates for a few minutes.  Christ heals for a lifetime.

This is indeed a reality that so many men struggle with.  It is now becoming a prevalent struggle for women as well.  Don’t keep this in the dark.  Gather around your brothers, men or sisters, women and begin to fight this struggle together.  It is when we bring our dark secrets into the light that freedom comes.  Darkness only perpetuates more bondage.  The more we talk about this in a real, honest, and humble way, the more shame and guilt will relinquish its power to the healing of the community of faith and Christ Himself.

As an individual who is fighting same sex struggles and submitting this battle daily to Christ, you bring a different and much needed redemptive viewpoint to other DOT participants. They can learn a lot from your personal battle with this issue and gain a better understanding for those students they are actually trying to reach. You have rejected the world’s answer to homosexuality and are experiencing a new-found freedom through Jesus Christ. You are proof that there is another way! By participating in Day of Truth, you can be an advocate for other hurting and struggling students at your school.

Now, please don’t hear us saying that you should broadcast your battle with homosexuality to your whole school. This certainly may not be the time and place for that, but you don’t have to share your testimony in order to be effective. You can still be a great influence in helping bring understanding and compassion to this issue without divulging your own personal battle.

However, if you feel lead to share your story to the DOT participants and/or the student group you’re involved in, be bold in your freedom and share the redemption you’ve experienced through Christ. Be confident that you’re not alone and there are thousands of other students battling right alongside you all throughout the world. Your story can plant seeds of life into the hearts of the broken and help other Christians see the grace of God in a new and different way.

By participating in Day of Truth you can make a difference. Whether you feel lead to share your story or not, you can be an invaluable asset to other participants and the students they are reaching out to. Hopefully, the conversations will continue beyond this one day event and the Lord will use you to bring real answers and hope to a culture impacted by homosexuality.

If I had a dime for every time a young woman questions her sexuality, I could easily pay for my children’s future college tuition.  And that would be sending them to a private school, not a community college.  You may wonder what is causing this unhealthy trend among teens and young women.  When you live in a sex-saturated culture like we do, with sexual images inundating us on TV, in movies and magazines, it is no wonder that sex becomes a constant theme to analyze, ponder and generally obsess over.

The other day, while milling through the masses at the airport, I considered buying a magazine to read on the plane rather than the boring novel I had borrowed from the library.  Every magazine geared toward women was either filled with images of seductive, scantily-clad women or boasted articles describing sexual fantasies and avenues to sexual gratification.  The cheesy mystery on loan from the library suddenly seemed as deep and nuanced as a Jane Austen novel.

Unless you are willing to completely remove yourself from society and live in a remote Bornean jungle or a cultic commune, you need to learn how to handle the sexual images that bombard your life and to understand the origins of the thoughts and feelings you experience.  Defining your sexuality by the random thoughts, dreams and feelings you may have, that are fleeting if left alone, is always a mistake.

Many lesbian-identified women I know, and those who formerly identified as lesbian, experienced several years of same-sex attractions beginning around the ages of 10-12 before they experienced their first lesbian relationship.  The teen nowadays who wonders about her sexuality does not usually have a history of same-sex attractions.  She is simply the victim of a culture that sexualizes women from a very young age.  Just look at dolls like Bratz and Ty Girlz that are geared for elementary-school aged girls, yet the dolls are dressed in skimpy dance-club clothes and caked with make-up.  This early sexualization of girls is almost guaranteed to lead to sexual thoughts of various kinds.

Young girls are wondering if they are lesbians for no reason other than they find their pretty friends attractive.  One twenty-something newlywed asked me if I thought she was a lesbian because she found a reclining woman on a billboard attractive and couldn’t stop thinking about her.  Noticing someone’s physical attractiveness is not unusual and does not qualify you as a homosexual.  Several years ago on a Seinfeld episode, Elaine asked Jerry and George if they knew a fellow gym member who she described as handsome.  Obviously uncomfortable with the question, they averted their eyes while mumbling negative responses.  Elaine said, “Just admitting that a man is attractive does not make you a homosexual.”  George replied, “It doesn’t help.”

The fear that George expressed about possibly being a homosexual if he found another man attractive typifies what has occurred in our society over the past decade.  The mentality of fear or even of curiosity allows those meaningless, fleeting thoughts and feelings to grow and even fester.  Suddenly, something that was as innocuous as a gnat becomes as threatening as a virus-bearing mosquito.  The problem is that we perceive simple thoughts or dreams as defining our sexuality.  If you think about stealing a magazine at a convenience store, does that make you a thief or a kleptomaniac?  If you think about telling your mom you didn’t wash the dishes because you were studying when you were really texting your friend, does that make you a liar?

Thoughts are dangerous only when we dwell on them.  If we “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” moving beyond the sexual thought and on to more constructive thoughts, the power of the sexual thought is annihilated.  Let us try an experiment.  If I say, “Whatever you do, do not think about the giant, pink elephant in the room,” what happens in your mind?  You start thinking about a giant, pink elephant, right?  You can’t help it; neither can I.  Telling anyone not to think about the pink elephant in the room will prompt them to think about nothing but the pink elephant.  The same thing is going to happen when you are assailed with sexual images and seductive influences.

I can’t say all, but many girls feel the need to question their sexuality in our modern-day culture.  It is just what society has taught us to do in an attempt to normalize behaviors like homosexuality.  Student groups aimed at promoting homosexuality among youth encourage “questioning” students to join their group and hear about the celebration of homosexuality.  Attending a group that pushes you to further question your sexuality will surely influence the way you choose to define your sexuality.

Way back in 1982, the movie Personal Best shook many of my friends who had never before in their lives thought about lesbianism.  A track star has a lesbian relationship with one of her chief competitors, while maintaining a relationship with her boyfriend.  Lesbian celebrity Chastity Bono sites Personal Best as a movie that allowed her to embrace her same-sex attractions.  It left many of my friends afraid of becoming lesbians if they had close girlfriends who were attractive.  Never underestimate the impact of cultural influences on our lives.

By the way, you aren’t thinking about the giant, pink elephant in the room anymore are you?  Your mind moved on to other things and you weren’t worried that your fleeting pink elephant thoughts would somehow define you.

Throughout our lives, we will have thoughts, dreams and feelings that disturb us.  The best course of action is follow the example the apostle Paul gave us in Philippians,  “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (4:8),  and let the unwelcome thoughts fade away.

Throughout childhood and adolescence I steered clear of everything “girly.” No dolls or dresses for me. Instead of sweet nicknames like “Princess” I was the Great Green Frog, Sausage Legs, Lester, Pack Mule, and best of all Lumpy when I was going thru that awkward stage of early adolescence. The last time I was mistaken for my mother’s son was when I was a sophomore in college.

I think part of my problem has been that I am competitive by nature. If I didn’t have a shot at being the best, why play. As for beauty, brains and brawn: I did well in school. I was strong as an ox, some said, and did well in competitive swimming. Yet, I knew I was never going to be pretty so why even try. In fact it made me feel better to degrade anything feminine. I was strong and confident on the inside and it did not matter what I looked like on the outside. I was not going to make a big fuss just to please others who might be looking at me.

This attitude affected me into adulthood. During the first of years our marriage whenever Alan and I had to attend a social event fancier than church I freaked out. Where he enjoyed dressing up I feared being overdressed. Translated: I hated the thought of trying so hard at something I was destined to fail. And equally horrifying was the prideful thought that everyone would know I tried and see that I failed. As we contemplated having children I thought it would probably be best if we had boys because I had no idea what to do with a little girl.

Last fall I began a Beth Moore Bible study called Breaking Free. At the beginning of the series Beth said that we would be more beautiful by the end of the study and wouldn’t that be great. “NO!” cried everything within me. Promise me that I will be wiser, more discerning, stronger, more patient, more loving, anything but more beautiful. Why would being more beautiful be important or even desirable? Ever so softly God spoke to me and said that to be more beautiful was to be more like Him. He is beautiful.

I don’t for a second think He was telling me to keep up with the latest fashions. He was asking me to be ok with being more like Him. Femininity is not what our culture has made it to be. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Lucifer was a beautiful angel and that our culture has a distorted view of feminine beauty. Remember in Genesis God says that He created us, male and female in His image? He is as beautiful as He is strong. He is as full of grace as He is truth. He wants us to reflect His perfect beauty. Being a woman of God, being feminine is not just about being beautiful. It is simply one aspect of it, but if I reject that aspect I am rejecting something of God Himself. I don’t know the full extent of what this means but I do know I need to be okay with letting Him make me into a beautiful woman.