IS MASTURBATION WRONG?
We believe that masturbation always involves lust or fantasy, and biblically, we are to overcome our lust, not be overcome by it. If we are overcoming our lust, there is no need to masturbate. We know that masturbation is very habit forming and quickly enslaves most who do it. Sexual self-control is a work of the grace of God in our lives (Eph. 2:10). Masturbation is like pouring gasoline on the fire of lust. Our lust will burn more, crave more and seek more satisfaction. This will lead to more lust, fantasy, pornography, and masturbation.
Also, masturbation is lousy preparation for marriage. It is born out of satisfying our own needs and not the needs of others. It is selfishness! It looks after me only and doesn’t “esteem others as greater than ourselves” (Phil. 2:3). When a single man or woman begins masturbating before marriage, it conditions them for self-satisfaction and not their spouse’s satisfaction. If the only sexual experience a man has had for the last ten years has been without a woman, when he gets married, his wife won’t be nearly as quick to respond as he is. This will lead him to wonder, “What’s wrong with her?” When the truth is, he is the one with the problem. His unbridled lust has left him selfish and lacking self-control.
“For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete his own personality in that of another and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.
For the harem is: always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is: always adored, always the perfect love, no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”
– C.S. Lewis
Masturbation also defies God’s creation order. The creation pattern is male and female together, not man satisfying himself. God created the sexual union to be the highest expression of “oneness” imaginable. We are to give ourselves to our wives in the same way Christ gave Himself to the church (us), sacrificially denying self. The sexual union should be about giving and not taking. Masturbation conditions you to be a taker and not a giver.
Here is our response to the question …What have you told your sons concerning masturbation? Is it right or wrong?
We have explained to our older sons that if they choose to not use self control and give in to masturbation, they will end up like many of the men we counsel. These men come to us because they cannot have a normal sexual experience with their wives. Over the years these men have trained their bodies and their minds to respond quickly to their own lust. Therefore when they get married the joy of sex has been diminished to a quick act of taking and not giving. Instead of sweet times of intimacy that bring oneness, they experience frustration due to their inability to fulfill their wives. Love making for them lasts for only a few minutes and ends with a lack of fulfillment and emptiness.
A life of masturbation will lead to a marriage full of bitterness. The wife often spends years making herself endure an unfulfilling sexual relationship. Almost always she becomes bitter at the man she once fell in love with because she feels used and sees herself as nothing more than an object of his lust. He on the other hand feels like a total loser, inadequate as a man because he cannot bring his wife to sexual fulfillment & oneness. These feelings of failure in this area strike at the core of who he is as a man. Many times a man will balance his feelings of guilt by blaming his wife for her unresponsiveness to him. It becomes a vicious cycle of bitterness and blame for both people who years ago, stood at an alter pledging their love to one another. Never in a million years would they have ever dreamed that 15 years later this is how their marriage would end up. It all started with a choice for a young man when he was but a teen. Do I give in the burning passions I have today and lose the joy that awaits me tomorrow? God has always allowed men the freedom to choose sin ….but what they do not get to choose is the consequences of that sin.
Masturbation and women…
I (Jenny)have talked to many young women who are in bondage to masturbation. It is not, a “men’s only” problem! Besides all the obvious wrongs i.e. it is based out of lust and a desire to have what is forbidden, it also has major consequences that can affect intimacy later in life.
One of the biggest issues with women is fantasy. In order to participate in masturbation most women end up allowing themselves to fantasize. Often a woman will tell me “oh I do not do that” but as we continue to talk, they reveal that their fantasy does not involve another man but it is themselves they are fantasying about. In their fantasy they are not 40+ years old with wrinkles and an aging body but young and beautiful. They do not realize that they are rejecting their bodies and giving the enemy ground by allowing this short lived fantasy to have place in their mind. Most women are not aware that they are even fantasizing. It has become just part of the routine!
I encourage all women who are struggling with this sin to ask God to show them what they are being tempted to think about when they engage in masturbation. They are often surprised by what God shows them. If a young woman spends her life using fantasy to enhance arousal she will train her body to only respond when fantasy is involved. Once married she will find that at times when she is having a difficult time responding to her husband, she will be tempted to revert back to fantasy to move things along. This gives the enemy ground and takes what God meant to be pure and undefiled and defiles it.
The above scenarios have been played out before us in the lives of many we have counseled. We rejoice at the number of couples who have allowed God to transform this area of their marriage. God has taught husbands self-control and how to be givers and not takers within the marriage bed. God has taught them patience and understanding and how their wives need to feel emotionally and spiritually intimate before they can abandon themselves in sexual intimacy.
We have also seen women break the bondage of fantasy that has had them bound since their teenage years. We encourage these couples to make a commitment to never be intimate without praying together before and binding the enemy from any intrusions with impure thoughts or motives. For these couples, the act of sexual intimacy has become an incredible emotional and spiritual experience, just as God intended it to be.
God created the sexual union for oneness! Nothing makes a husband & wife closer than when they are experiencing oneness spiritually, emotionally and then physically. God created it that way! He designed it to be a perfect picture of the oneness that he desires with his church, The Bride of Christ. God is awesome! And marriage is awesome when both husband and wife have yielded their bodies to Gods control.
We tell young men and women…It starts when you are young! Don’t wait until the damage has been done and the strongholds have been established. Make the right choices today!