Caught Red-Handed

A hot date with Rosy Palmer and her five sisters. Choke the chicken. Flog the log. Spank the monkey. Put a quarter in the meter. Four of these are euphemisms for masturbation; one is what you do if you don’t want a parking ticket. Hint: Attacking a gibbon won’t get you 15 minutes more parking. It is amazing how many different phrases there are to describe masturbation. For something so infrequently openly discussed, it sure has a long thesaurus entry. It is, however, worth discussing. It has been suggested that. According to polls, 85% of men admit to masturbating while 15% lie about it. It is a very common activity for both men and women. The question is: what does the Bible say about it? Ready to be shocked? Nothing. Well, it shouldn’t be that shocking. The Bible also doesn’t mention the stock market, cell phones or the internet. (Though two of those are often associated with our topic.) The Bible is not a rule book. It doesn’t have an indexed entry for every possible thing you might encounter. At its core, it is about building a relationship with the God who made us. As we learn more about Him and grow in that relationship, we get to see the things that He loves . . . and hates. We also get to see what benefits us most. It’s kind of like getting a tutorial on your new iPhone directly from the late Steve Jobs. So we do have guidance from the Lord about our sexuality, but it is, annoyingly, not just a list of do’s and don’ts. (Annoying, because if there were just a list, if I could find something that wasn’t covered, I could do it with impunity. For example, the Bible never mentions marrying lawn furniture, so. . . dum, dum, da, dum. . . ) Now, if you attended a Catholic school, you probably remember the nuns railing against self-love. (You are also likely to be dealing with phobias of yard sticks and penguins.) You were told to turn from the sin of Onan. Interestingly, onanism is another term for masturbation. Here’s the problem, though: Onan got a bad rap. “Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.’ But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.” (Genesis 38:8-9 ESV) This needs a bit of explanation. The Jews had a law that if a man died without producing an heir, it fell to his next-of-kin to sleep with that man’s wife in order to give her a son. He would then raise that son as if it were the other man’s and that boy would be the heir to the deceased man’s holdings. It was a strange, but sadly, necessary custom of the time. But Onan wanted none of it. Well, not exactly none. He rather enjoyed the whole “having sex with my sister-in-law” part, but he wasn’t so keen on giving a child to his brother. No doubt he expected to gain his lands, or some portion thereof, if no child resulted. So he pulled out before ejaculation and spilled his seed on the ground so that the woman couldn’t conceive. Onan’s sin wasn’t masturbation (In fact, he seems to be practicing good old-fashioned two person sexual intercourse.), it was selfishly denying his brother a legacy. Does that mean that masturbation is okay? There is nothing intrinsically evil about touching one’s own private parts. Babies do it before they have any sense of what Victoria’s secret is. The issue has to do with why one touches themself. And that is, pardon the pun, the rub. For most, the act is designed to elicit sexual arousal. That arousal, typically–unless you are the guy marrying your lawn furniture, is a result of lust. You have sexual thoughts or feeling toward someone or, more often than not, some digitally altered creation of online pornographers. And lust isn’t the best thing for us or our relationships. Jesus taught about this problem. People of His day were trying to be good legalistic rule followers and boast about not having violated that whole adultery command. Then Jesus brings the smackdown. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:27-28 ESV) But, but, but. . . I never touched her! The problem is that sin isn’t external. It always starts in the heart. That lustful attitude is just as wrong as the actual act. (And before you go there, actually having sex with someone is just making things worse.) Think of it this way: Your significant other tells you that they have never cheated on you, but that they regularly have sexual thoughts about and masturbate to mental images of all of your friends, people on TV, musicians, etc. How good does that make you feel? How valued? Even if you don’t have someone in your life, lust ends up cheating you. You end up with this crazy imaginary world that will never match reality. You set yourself up for a fall. I’m not pretending that this isn’t a tough issue. As adults, we all struggle with sex, desires and the best ways to act on them. But God really does want the best for you. He created sex, you may recall, and He wants you to enjoy it. (Something we’ll discuss in a later post.) Lust just doesn’t help that. So the simple answer to the question of masturbation is that though the Bible doesn’t address it directly, when you take the sinful motivation of lust away, it isn’t as much fun anymore. If this is an area you have a really tough time with, consider doing some simple things to help. Tell a trusted friend and ask them to hold you accountable (Yes, you will slip up.); put a timer in the bathroom that will go off before you have a chance to get too dirty in the shower; take a porn fast and, one day at a time, skip the sites, snap chats, kiks or whatever it is that tempts you. The nice thing is that it forces you to pay more attention to your partner and to rebuild passion within your relationship.