It was Friday night. I locked the door to my dorm room. My roommate was gone for the weekend. I took out of my backpack the copy of Maxim I had purchased at a local pharmacy. My purity pledge weighed heavily on me. I had refrained from masturbation since arriving at college. As I pulled the zipper down my pants, my sin was ever before me (cf. Ps 51:3).
Yet Avril beckoned.
My college’s Internet access was filtered, so I had no access to online pornography. This was my portal to sexual release. Unlike other girls of my acquaintance, who were sweet and (ostensibly) pure, Avril Lavigne radiated sex. As I furiously jerked off to Avril, my hypervigilant conscience, if only momentarily, was obliterated. It was only later that I was plunged into shame and tearful repentance.
“Self-gratification” was a sin, a grievous violation of my pledge to purity. Warnings that spilling my seed would invite divine displeasure (Gen 38:9-10) were still vivid in my mind. The same hands with which I hold the Bible should not be defiled by touching myself. I read and reread Every Man’s Battle to fortify myself. As my time in college progressed, however, my struggle against “the secret sin” intensified. Alone in my room, I succumbed again and again to sin. (Elizabeth in my English literature class was a frequent object of my ejaculatory fantasies.) I felt so dirty. But it felt so good.
I eventually summoned the nerve to purchase a copy of Playboy at Barnes & Noble. It all seems very tame in retrospect (Playboy was a relic even then), but possession of pornography, even in its soft-core form, was a serious offense at my school. Enjoying the company of Miss October was a transgressive act. I still recall the delight of discovering, as I unfolded the centerfold, the form of a woman’s naked body and the pleasure it invited. (Although my knowledge about female anatomy was so limited that I initially assumed that women naturally did not grow pubic hair.) A cycle that would becoming achingly familiar started to emerge: Yielding to concupiscence, I sought out sexual gratification, only to be tormented by guilt and regret afterwards. I’d recommit myself to purity and abstain for a period, only to fall yet again into sensuality. My sexual personality was beginning to fracture.
My girlfriend had no idea about my struggles with lust. She devoutly believed that True Love Waits®, so our relationship was resolutely chaste. (We refrained from kissing for a long time.) I strove to honor her purity; I suppressed any sexual desires that arose toward her. The fires of lust continued to smolder, though. It was with an exquisite mixture of arousal and guilt that one night I masturbated in my apartment while my girlfriend was touring with the school choir. I felt so unworthy of her. There she was singing hymns of praise while I lusted over Katy Perry and her two big talents. My commitment to purity was being battered by intense urges I could no longer corral.
There would soon be a reckoning.
Lutheran Guilt 