Party Of One
February 14, 2009 § 2 Comments
I didn’t know when I would actually write this, but Feministing posted on the Passion for Christ Movement and after reading all of the links, I just couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Masturbation: is it a sin?
I always had the impression that it was. As a young teenager growing up in a Christian church, anything remotely sexual was automatically deemed as unacceptable for myself in my mind. This didn’t prevent me from surreptitiously looking at porn [although I was first introduced to it by a male family friend…thanks for corrupting me at such a young age you JERK!], among other things.
Being a girl, I received less information regarding sex from church than my male counterparts. While it was accepted at youth group that boys struggled with pornography and lust, us girls were only given information regarding the emotional side of things. Guard your heart! Wait until the right, Godly man comes along to start dating! Well, those weren’t the things I was struggling with.
Looking back, I am frustrated that we were given no advice regarding female sexuality. It was kind of lonely and weird wondering if I was the only one who experienced sexual curiosity throughout middle school and high school. I recall timid conversations with some friends at night at a youth group camp. “What’s a dildo?” someone asked. I explained. “Ew, why would you want to touch yourself down there?” somebody else commented. “Does anyone actually do that?” I stayed silent.
Of course, I was never brave [or shameless] enough to voice my concerns. How could I ask somebody about it without incriminating myself? How embarrassing would it be to ask my youth pastor to make it a subject of learning among the girls? And so the situation never resolved itself. I stopped looking at porn online because I knew that was wrong, and it also got kind of repetitive. It was always more out of curiosity than gratification anyway. As for masturbation, I had the notion that it was wrong simply because it was so taboo, but I never had my questions answered.
I didn’t think about it extensively until last semester, when I stumbled upon the blog Christian Nymphos. Don’t read it unless you have burning questions or are at least slightly perverted, though, because these Christian women are pretty honest about the kinds of fun activities they engage in with their husbands.
I emailed the editors of the blog with my question about masturbation, and they directed me to this post.
The understanding I have come to regarding the issue of masturbation is that it appears that in and of itself, it is not a sin. The problem is that often there is no separation between masturbation and other sin issues that the Lord has been clear about. […]
God has been clear about lust. In His Kingdom, lust and adultery are no different from one another. So to get aroused from pornography and then masturbate with lust in one’s heart would be sin.
My mind was blown. They were right! The Bible doesn’t say anything explicit about masturbation. I mean, I haven’t read the whole thing, but it’s true that I’ve never seen any specific Biblical references as to why the act of masturbation would be considered a sin.
I asked the question on my Xanga a few months ago and received various responses. JZ linked me to this video, in which Pastor Mark Driscoll addresses the issue of masturbation:
He basically echoes what I read on Christian Nymphos: the singular act of masturbation is not a sin, but lust, which is a sin, is closely intertwined with masturbation most of the time and so masturbation becomes sinful. The same sentiments are reflected in the pages of the book Sex and Dating, which I quickly perused while my friend was letting another friend borrow it.
After all this research [which wasn’t actually that much, but at least I had my three sources, which is the minimum requirement for the Missourian, heh], I felt pretty sure of myself and was glad to have finally settled the matter. The answers I found did not justify or condone all types of masturbation, to be sure, but there are certainly some benefits to exploring the nether regions. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to insert a tampon if I didn’t know where my vagina was, right? And if one wants maximum pleasure out of her future husband, then one should really get to know oneself first. This is especially important in light of the fact that the female erogenous zones are more complex than male ones, and while it’s pretty obvious when a male experiences sexual climax, it’s a more complicated process for females.
auradis 
Lol, well it’s gotta be lust, because how do you get turned on?
You gotta think of or see someone else –> Lust
I like this entry, because it is an issue that needs to be talked about by both sides.
[…] of a pistol and ended with a bunch of -tion words that I forget, one of them being “self-masturbation” [redundant, for the grammatically picky], at which point she curled her two fingers in a […]