We’re continually studying the application of various principles about sexuality in a Christian context as we look at different aspects of everyday life and how sexuality issues are worked out for people we work with in ministry. We have felt to write another part of this series specifically for adolescent Christian guys because practically all guys experience challenges with a high sex drive and managing it effectively in a physically, sexually and spiritually healthy way. This is a good time to reaffirm that our general thinking on Christian sexuality is essentially orthodox except in the area of masturbation, which is the subject that this blog talks about the most. We have firm convictions that masturbation makes a strong healthy contribution to sexuality for Christians when used properly and within well defined boundaries that are essentially the same as traditional understandings of Christian sexuality.
Male sexuality and female sexuality are different, and one of the most common differences is the level of sex drives in males, which are for the most part, consistently high for many reasons, whereas females are more likely to be in the low to middle range much of the time, and perhaps high at specific times, according to influences like hormone levels at particular times of their reproductive cycle, or during pregnancy, for example. We believe there are a small percentage of females who have consistently high sex drives, but likely this is much smaller than the percentage of males in this category, which most probably covers nearly all males. These differences naturally lead to varied emphases on sexual things for guys compared to gals, in that the average guy, including Christian guys, is going to be talking about sex a lot and using sexually charged language perhaps more than the average Christian gal. This isn’t attempting to minimise in any way the very welcome increased emphasis on female sexuality in church settings, which has partly come about because of egalitarian leadership focus and undeniably has been influenced by the sexual revolution in wider society. It is a great thing that there is increased awareness and discussion of female sexuality in a lot of Christian contexts (we view with considerable dismay the attempts to roll this back by complementarians in recent years and note the present controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention and elsewhere over the ordination of female pastors). Nor are we about to excuse sexual harassment or abuse in any way (these issues are also coming up in relation to a lot of churches where complementarian and other questionable theologies have been applied to diminish female sexuality and simultaneously excuse obnoxious behaviour by males towards females). But we do want to get some level of understanding across the whole church of these differences, because the big issues of sexuality define our everyday lives as Christians and shouldn’t be swept under the carpet, minimised or ignored.
What we simply want to emphasise the most is that guys are subject to very strong physical sexual demands within their bodies which are ongoing and create pressures to find physical or sexual release on quite a frequent basis. Guys are thinking about sex all the time and this often translates into sexual thoughts about people they are in close physical proximity to happening randomly in their heads throughout the day. For the average guy, a physical release at least daily, sometimes more than once a day, is practically as essential to his life as eating or sleeping. The traditional teaching from the church has been that single guys are to practice complete abstinence from seeking that physical release. Male biology makes it very difficult to achieve this in practice – guys’ bodies are constantly manufacturing and storing semen ready for the next opportunity for ejaculation and the internal storage in their bodies fills up about every two days, after which they becomes more strongly sensitised to physical arousal. Added to that of course is the well known fact that guys get strong physical arousal from seeing or being around women and this can’t be avoided. We feel that in the knowledge of these sexual realities for Christian guys, which aren’t materially different from other guys, traditional church teaching is unrealistic and creates unhelpful pressures, expectations and shame for adolescent Christian guys who will probably succumb to the desire to masturbate at least some of the time and really should be encouraged and supported to use masturbation in a healthy way to help manage their strong sex drives rather than being condemned. There is a perception out there that guys are pretty assertive about their sex drives and we do see that to a notable extent in society, often negatively. But when it comes to our adolescent Christian guys, they can be pretty sensitive about sexual things and embarrassed about what they find happening in their bodies, and masturbation is one of those things. This can discourage healthy conversations about issues of sexual development for them.
From the knowledge we have gained in ministry to date, we believe, as we outlined in the previous parts of this series, masturbation is a healthy activity adolescent Christian guys can practice in order to manage and develop their sexuality from the start of puberty for as long as necessary in life. For most guys, they will find masturbation useful throughout life, including within marriage. When Christians marry, the husband and wife will undoubtedly find it useful to talk about how much masturbation they have been partaking of whilst single and what ongoing needs they foresee going forward, and particularly they will want to look at times they can masturbate together as an alternative to full intercourse, and it’s important to de-emphasise the solitary or self-focused aspect of masturbation and change that into an emphasis on using it to support the marriage. It’s also important for both the husband and wife to understand that their eyes must exclusively be for each other, the liberty they have had in singleness to spend time with multiple people of the opposite sex is over when they marry. Getting back to adolescent singleness, we want to emphasise the importance of masturbation for sexual development. Guys naturally have a physical desire for gals and their hot bodies drive guys crazy. This is all very healthy and normal, and we want to ensure a single Christian guy has a healthy way of releasing the physical desire he has for gals, and that is best done through masturbation. Guys are going to go places where they will see gals, for example they may go swimming at the pool or the beach and there will be gals there in bikinis, in other places gals will be more dressed but often wearing tight or revealing clothing as is commonplace in society today.
A single Christian guy is going to see a lot of physical things about girls wherever he goes and it is going to make him horny. When he gets home he will want to masturbate from being horny and naturally he will think about the different gals’ physical features he has seen during the day. He may also be reading a newspaper or magazine or viewing a website and may see pictures of girls as well. At the same time though, he has to be conscious of the Bible’s clear unctions against lust. Gals are of course very sensitive to guys looking at them lustfully and many will make it abundantly clear when the boundaries have been overstepped. We also are going to make it clear we are not going to suggest the use of pornographic material is in any way acceptable for Christian guys. Any pictorial material that may be viewed must be non-nude and not emphasise anything explicitly sexual, however it is quite OK for any type of pictures of gals to show them in various kinds of clothing provided that no private parts are visible. Pornographic websites should not be visited under any circumstances as they generally contain a range of extreme material which is unsuitable for any Christian to become aware of and this can result in unhealthy obsessions developing which can only be released by deliverance prayer. Ministries in this area have the knowledge of many personal testimonies of people who have become addicted to pornography after just one viewing and the major negative impacts it has wrought upon their lives. This also applies equally well to other media such as magazines, TV, video etc.
So long as Christian guys are careful about what they are looking at, that their physical interest in girls is kept at a healthy level, then it is OK for them to sublimate that physical desire and arousal into regular masturbation. It’s no exaggeration to say that the majority of healthy single guys, even Christian guys, will want to masturbate from 7 to 14 times per week (see our earlier posts on sex drive levels for more discussion about this). For some guys, they can still be using masturbation in a healthy way at greater frequencies than this. This is important as a means of sexual development in adolescence, and it’s what enables a guy to develop a strong sexual identity during this particular phase of life when that is a very important personal focus for him. By having that opportunity to undertake that development during his adolescent years, he is well prepared for marriage when he reaches adulthood and meets the right gal. Likewise, he is also well equipped to effectively manage his high sex drives in a healthy way that enables him to remain well self controlled when in the presence of gals, such as he will typically encounter at school or university, church youth group or a variety of other social settings. As we have written in other parts of this series, a guy may use his memory of having seen different gals, or pictures of them, during masturbation to help him become sexually aroused as he builds up to sexual climax, but he must not look at any pictures of any kind whilst masturbating, as it is the case that chemical activities in his body that take place during masturbation and orgasm cause memories of whatever he is looking at when these activities occur to be strongly imprinted in his brain, and one of the biggest problems that people who have become addicted to pornography give as an ongoing struggle in their lives is the constant recall of these imprints which drives them to keep masturbating addictively. In effect, the reason for this is to enable a husband and wife to have views of each other’s naked body imprinted in their brains as a way of helping to ensure they can keep out competing attractions and this is something they can make use of when masturbating themselves in times when they are temporarily separated. So the only appropriate context for a guy to be looking at a woman’s body when he is masturbating / orgasming is when the woman is his wife.
So let’s suppose our typical adolescent guy does meet that special gal, and they go through courtship, and decide to marry. At that point, they have to change their focus for masturbation to be on each other. They’ll be spending a lot of time together and getting to know and see each other in a variety of contexts, and physical desire will become quite strong. It’s totally OK for each of them to go home after they’ve spent some time together and masturbate, and it’s totally OK at the point where they are formally committed (i.e. engaged) and have set the date, to think about each other physically when they masturbate. During that engagement period, either of them will often need to masturbate more than they have usually done whilst single, because they are developing this strong sexual desire for each other, and that means they are going to get quite horny around each other and whilst thinking about each other at home. Any time they feel like getting frisky in each other’s presence during engagement, they just need to make sure they have reasonable periods during the day that they can be apart from each other and get time to masturbate those sexual tensions away. One of the most positive things that either of them can do whilst they are masturbating is to pray for the other’s and their combined sexual development and spiritual health in relation to their future married life because that engagement period is a great time for more intense pre-marital sexual development, and that is in addition to any regular pre-marital counselling or marriage preparation they may choose to have. This is definitely one way a guy can bless his future wife, because of the way women are generally treated in society, if she can be spiritually prepared for the physical aspects of marriage, it will help for her to be able address any negative sexual experiences, and couples should also talk about these things, this all becomes good preparation for the wedding night first time sexual intercourse. But what goes into that for both husband and wife is all the healthy sexual development they have got from masturbating from the beginning of their adolescence. That’s where it is important for families to ensure they give their teenage Christian children the proper support and encouragement they need around masturbation as part of normal sex education.