Well, we talk about this subject a lot. We talk about all sorts of sexuality issues on this blog, but this one really takes centre place. We continue to have this very strong conviction that masturbation is a very important topic that the evangelical community should be discussing, and that one day, it will become so much less controversial that people will talk openly about it.
We don’t have a liberal view to sexuality as such. We hold to fairly standard and consistent evangelical convictions about sexuality, specifically in regard to monogamy, chastity, abstinence and so forth. However, our convictions on masturbation is that this subject has got an unjustifiably bad rep over the centuries, and that most of this is strongly influenced by the very conservative views of the complementarianist theological community, without any real justification.
Put simply, we believe masturbation should be viewed for what it is: a useful tool for godly men and women to manage their sex drive in a way that helps them maintain discipline and purity. Let’s look at it from a point of view of “sexual appetite”, or desire, and compare that with our better known appetites for food and drink. Our bodies are designed to react to a variety of stimuli. Obviously for food, this is driven by smell and taste. For sexual arousal it is driven by a variety of factors that vary between genders and specific people, however touch is quite important. The physiological mechanisms of sexual arousal in our bodies are quite similar to those relating to food, and the physical pleasure is directly analogous. But of course there is the question of what we achieve by sexual release if we are on our own because up to now, the predominant view in evangelical churches has been that sexual pleasure is something only to be experienced by a married couple together. However, the body parts that are involved are owned by us as individuals, and we have full rights over them. The traditional view of sexual intercourse is largely driven out of a very conservative viewpoint that it is solely about procreation and that any type of sexual activity outside that is wrong.This has gradually evolved into typical evangelical thinking that sex between a married couple can be for recreational purposes as there is nothing in the Bible that demands sex has solely a procreative purpose. It is important to note that masturbation is not mentioned in the Bible in any negative way, but appears to have been interpreted as being a sexual sin by numerous leaders of conservative evangelical communities, but the case for this is questionable.
What we achieve by sexual release through masturbation is the ability to use it to manage the pressures of sexual arousal which happens to us whether we are together with other people or on our own. For single people who don’t have another outlet, which married people do have, this is really important to be able to do in a constructive way that does not involve sin. Getting aroused, or receiving sexual release, are in themselves not sinful, the problems occur when people bring in other practices such as sexual lust, idolatry, adultery etc. Having sexual intercourse with someone you are not married to, or using pornography, are examples of practices that create problems, including sin, which have always been a problem for the Church and its membership throughout history. By managing your sex drive in a way that does not involve sin, but enables you to deal with the physical and other pressures of your sex drive, your ability to remain single and stay free of sinful practice is greatly strengthened. Whilst sexual sin has always been a concern of the Church, we live in a day and age when the widespread availability of internet pornography means that the use of it by church members is increasing to alarming proportions, with even the suggestion that Christian women are becoming addicted to it in significant percentages.