Here is our second post focusing specifically on the beneficial use of masturbation by adolescent Christians to support the maintenance of sexual purity, celibacy and their overall Christian faith. As referred to in the previous article we believe that masturbation should essentially be regarded as a healthy form of exercise and when treated in the same way as other forms of exercise, it can be regarded as a beneficial activity that is effectively worshipful and reverential of God. This is only possible when masturbation is performed solely and privately, and when no clearly sinful practice such as the associated use of lust or pornography is incorporated into masturbation.
The personal benefits of masturbation are clearly both physical and spiritual and perhaps emotional as well, the latter more so for females. As with our previous article we are focusing more on males in this article due to the higher uptake of masturbation typically found. Physical benefits are evidently found in release from pressures such as those caused by the production of semen for males, in the enjoyment of pleasure resulting from masturbation and orgasm, and in impacts upon the sexual development of individual. Spiritually positive outcomes from masturbation include those which enhance the believer’s personal faith in light of knowledge about their sexuality; for example, the experience of physical pleasure from masturbation sends positive messages about sexuality and encourages worshipful reverence. It is also spiritually beneficial to practice masturbation when it helps protect a believer from the pressures placed on their sexuality in everyday life. For males, it is well known and understood that their levels of serum testosterone, visual arousal, semen production and other factors create a strong level of sex drive for most of them and create a strong desire for physical relief from these pressures that is experienced daily. As the rest of this website shows, we have focused strongly on masturbation in the knowledge that there is no reference to it in the Bible showing it to be a harmful or sinful practice and that we believe masturbation can in fact help people to fight off lustful desires and keep away from or recover from the use of pornography.
Benefits of masturbation, as above, are physical and spiritual. There is an element of physical benefit in the release of sexual tension (arousal), however the spiritual benefits are significant. To understand this we need to look at the types of pressures that can come onto a Christian male (or female) in relation to their sexuality and the need for an opportunity to relieve those pressures. Christians have a greater degree of sexuality pressures than the normal population due to the key expectations of their faith to maintain sexual discipline and purity as a lifelong commitment and service. Masturbation, as we discuss extensively previously on this site, provides an opportunity for a type of “sexual devotion” in which a Christian can acknowledge and surrender their struggles and challenges to maintain these expectations, and in turn receive affirmation of their sexuality. This is especially important for adolescent Christians either male or female because it is the key period of life when their sexuality is being most developed. However sexual development occurs throughout life in response to major relationship events and for example is also relevant in various stages of marriage, for example at the beginning of marriage and in relation to specific life events such as pregnancy and major illness that disrupt normal marital relations.
The practical aspect of this affirmation involves key physical parts of the body in which there is the opportunity to focus on each body part in turn during a masturbation session. Males tend to be focused mainly around one or two parts, whereas a female will experience benefits from affirming many parts, due partly to a greater number of parts directly connected to physical arousal and also because characteristically female perceptions of sexuality tends to involve physical appearance of significant additional areas of the body. Again, awareness of this is especially heightened in adolescence due to the significant physical and sexual development that occurs during this phase of life. We believe that, contrary to the typical perception of male sexuality as being rather physically focused and mostly around one or two body parts, however, most Christian males at any age have deeper perceptions of the expectations and responsibilities placed on them and simply find it more difficult to express these due to well known communication challenges compared to females. We also want to suggest females might benefit from using passive toys due to the design of their anatomy, and we also recognise that a percentage of females have a consistently strong sex drive comparable with the majority of males.
The conclusion for this post is that Christian adolescents, especially males, should be supported and encouraged in the use of masturbation for a number of reasons beneficial to the crucial phase of sexual and relational development they are experiencing in life, and those reasons are summarised in earlier paragraphs in this post.