This series is not over yet! Here’s Part 8, and there may well be a Part 9 or 10, we are unsure, just that we feel some more is still to be written on this subject. In this article, among other things, we look at levels of sex drive. The purpose of defining and labeling these levels is mainly for ministry purposes. We aren’t intending to stigmatise anyone, and we want to continue to encourage both Christian men and Christian women to be at peace with themselves regardless of whichever level they find themselves at.
We want to write Part 8 because we feel there is yet more to be uttered on this subject of sex drive and masturbation, particularly for Christian guys. Way way back in one of our earlier series, we suggested that masturbation could be thought of as optional for women, but mandatory for men. Whilst we are not attempting to imply in any way that men have no self control over their actions, it is well understood that the greater majority of males experience a high sex drive and masturbation offers them the opportunity to manage and discipline their sex drive. Yet in the evangelical church, masturbation is often a taboo subject, or men are discouraged from practicing it.
We’ll just delve into this sex drive subject again. We feel from our ministry experience that it is useful to define low, medium and high levels of sex drive. We suggest low could be a frequency of orgasm once or less per week, medium could be a frequency of 3 to 6 times per week, and high can be a frequency of 7 to 14 times per week. There is a bit of overlap between these ranges possible. We also can define an extra-high or super-horny range of 21 to 28 times per week. At the highest frequencies the possibility of addiction has to be taken into consideration, however we do believe that some Christians who have a high sex drive can operate at the higher end of the frequency range without becoming sexually addicted. They may simply desire to partake at the higher frequency when certain conditions are achieved, such as when they are alone for a few days. The more interesting in depth question of course, is what influences sex drive in general and this may be more of concern for the smaller percentage of women who experience an extra-high sex drive, who may feel that such high drive is somehow “abnormal” for women. However our ministry focus is geared towards people in the high end of the range and our recommendation to people who find themselves here is to avoid labeling themselves in a negative way and instead seek their counsel directly with God and find peace in that way. We believe the three ranges are within the bounds of sex drive levels for both men and women that are healthy as long as sex (masturbation) is being used for healthy purposes. We also believe there are no specific parameters in any one person’s life that can push them into the direction of a higher sex drive. In our ministry experience, we are coming round to the knowledge that daily masturbation hits the spot for many single men and women, especially adolescents, and that a small percentage of men and women fall into the extra-high category. Some women who are in this category can have the ability to orgasm very quickly, within a couple of minutes or so.
Sexually addictive behaviour is a concern in a wide range of sexual contexts, which for Christians cross over into sinful practices such as lust and adultery. We feel that our ministry focus on endorsing masturbation according to our 3-D principles provides the means for godly men and women who have become ensnared in sexual addiction to escape from the clutches of this, and can personally testify to this ends. It follows that this is an important aspect of our ministry overall. It must be realised that sex is innately spiritual in nature, and the problems of sexual addiction are different from other addictive behaviours. The challenges that people who have become addicted to pornography face, are becoming more well known with the much greater availability of pornographic materials in society as a whole, and the damage, whilst not at the same level of physical damage to a person’s body as addictions to alcohol or drugs, does appear to have psychological impacts, and there are measurable costs to society from the addictions, just as there are with other types of addictive behaviour. It goes without saying that men are more susceptible to sexually addictive behaviour because of the prevailing norm of a higher sex drive experienced by the greater majority of men, and there are reasonable grounds for concern that such behaviour imposes a considerable burden on society in terms of the social acceptance and normalisation of such behaviour in traditionally patriarchal societies.
Due to sex being a spiritual activity, the problems with sexual addiction for Christians also cross over into the spiritual realm, and this makes it different from other addictions that Christians generally have to contend with. This is a key reason why it is so important to address sinful behaviours and challenges resulting from sexual sin or addiction within a Church context. The spiritual challenge resulting from sexual sin can be so difficult to deal with that it can lead to people giving up their faith and departing from a life of devotion and service to the Body at large. Hence we have a strong conviction with our ministry that it is absolutely imperative for us to help young people address the challenges created by the development of their sexuality during adolescence. This is a key issue for the ascendance of future generations of youth to leadership in the Church.
As we have stated various other times in this blog, we believe it appropriate for Christians to commence masturbation at the onset of adolescence, the point of their lives at which the development of their sexuality reaches the greatest level of importance since gestation, and from which time this development becomes an ongoing daily challenge to be disciplined. We are thus asserting that masturbation, far from being some sort of aberration used by a minority of believers who have struggles that they haven’t yet overcome, should be normalised as an activity that is able to be a key part of every Christian’s personal activities, for devotion, discipline and development of their sexuality. Each and every believer practicing masturbation will then discover a suitable rhythm for its use at the times they need it, in terms of the frequency, according to whatever level of sex drive they have.
We believe wholeheartedly that the church needs to come to the same understanding about masturbation as we have expounded in this blog. The key reasons are for the benefit both of male and female Christians who masturbate. For both, the stigma surrounding masturbation causes a lot of unnecessary guilt and shame over the use of it. For women, it becomes in some part a question of what masturbation achieves for them, since with the demystification of female sexuality that has been taking place over the past 50 years or so, which has had a big impact on approaches to female sexuality in the Church as a whole, it is now more common for female Christians to masturbate than in the past. Christian women also need to be able to deal with a high sex drive if this is the situation they are in without embarrassment, and to be able to talk more openly about sexuality and sex in general. For men, it becomes a necessary key to removing the embarrassment caused around masturbation, which is an extension of the typically male high sex drive. Christian men talk about sex a lot because of their sexuality but also as a tacit unnamed acknowledgement of their high sex drive.