“Philip” is a single young man completing a PhD at divinity school and serving in lay ministry at a Lutheran parish. The product of a traditional religious upbringing, he struggles to reconcile his sexual behavior with his calling.
It was almost midnight when I arrived at her airport hotel. I had spotted “Jess” on Twitter, where she had advertised her availability. We quickly set something up, and I drove nearly two hours to visit her.
She met me in a lacy black teddy and high heels. She’s a California girl touring the East Coast. It soon became apparent that our date would not consist of sparkling conversation. She was unfamiliar with the words “seminary” or “theology.” Nice girl, but no candidate for Mensa. Her long hair and considerable assets more than made up for her lack of theological acumen.
Soon her teddy was off. She asked me what I liked, and I suggested she get on her knees. She complied and took me deep in her mouth, her hair between my fingers as I caressed her head.
She pulled a condom from a bag and sheathed my throbbing cock. I positioned her at the edge of the bed and slowly entered her. I held her hips and began moving in and out of her, thrusting hard and deep. I had tapped into my feral nature. A certain desperation compelled my pelvic thrusts. Amid the red hot pounding of flesh, I ached for release. I felt my body swoon, a low, primal groan coming from deep in my chest.
I recall one encounter with Rhonda in which I caught glimpse of us in flagrante delicto in her bedroom mirror. Even with my poor eyesight, I saw myself plowing Rhonda doggy style on her bed. Yet it was as if I was watching another person. My mind could not accommodate an image of me having sex. Having been taught to despise the sinful flesh, visual evidence of my carnal indulgence contradicted my self-concept. I struggled to accept that I am a sexual being.
Rhonda noticed my tendency to intellectualize, which has shaped my understanding of religion. This probably explains why I’ve gravitated to the study of theology. “In the Christian West, theology has too often been a disembodied enterprise,” writes James B. Nelson. “It has been understood preeminently as a rational discipline, a matter of the head.” Academic theology, still in thrall to the Cartesian reduction of the self to the mind, gives short shrift to personal religious experience. I’ve tended to reduce religion to a matter of belief. Belief is understood as a cognitive assent to a proposition. To the extent that belief outwardly expresses itself, it does so in the form of rules that are to be followed. Sex is understood within a matrix of rules, which entails prohibitions against an array of behaviors.
And yet so much in Christian spirituality and Christian life is flesh-denying, flesh-despising, flesh-devaluing. It is head-centred, ponderous, life-extinguishing, devoid of passion. . . . It is disturbing to see how Christian history and Christian spirituality has been so marred by a highly ambivalent tradition which, while officially rejecting gnostic denials of the goodness of the flesh, has nevertheless been affected to a great extent by those gnostic tendencies….
Kenneth Leech
I’ve also inherited the body/spirit dualism that has marked Christianity since the early church. “Much of early Christianity is a sustained polemic against bodily instincts [and] sexual desire,” notes Mark I. Wallace. (“It is well for a man not to touch a woman,” 1 Cor 7:1.) Paul’s opposition of “flesh” and “the Spirit” implicitly disparages sex and the body. Augustine made this critique explicit by attributing carnal desire to the Fall. Elaine Pagels writes, “Ever since Eden…spontaneous sexual desire is, Augustine contends, the clearest evidence of the effect of original sin.” Inheriting the Platonic elevation of the mind over the body, Christian thought emphasized the weakness of the body and the need to exercise control over it, lest the soul be endangered by the lustful flesh. (The obliteration of reason during sexual passion was a big reason why Augustine was so suspicious of it: “So intense is the pleasure that when it reaches its climax there is an almost extinction of mental alertness; the intellectual sentries, as it were, are overwhelmed.”) “Man became like the beasts when he came to practice sexual intercourse,” lamented Clement of Alexandria. Early Christian communities exalted virginity and celibacy, marking the victory of the soul over the body. The church, according to historian and sexologist Vern L. Bullough, “continually emphasised that the sexually active person was a sinner.” One scholar summed up this tradition as “erotophobic.”
“But I am carnal”
Romans 7:14
I became estranged from my own body. Displays of affection have always been uncomfortable for me. (I’m not a hugger.) As I strove for purity, I tried to exercise self-control and master bodily passions. But lust is not so easily tamed. When Summer in her cheerleader uniform triggered an erection, I learned, in Augustine’s words, that “the genital organs have become as it were the private property of lust, which has brought them so completely under its sway.” Although I struggled to exercise reason and spiritual self-discipline, my body rebelled against my efforts to subdue it. “He could not obey himself.” As my disobedience accelerated, I disassociated my “real” self from my corporeal self. That’s why I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. It had a feeling of unreality to it. I was performing sexually without being fully present in the act. This discrepancy of selves is so discordant that I have trouble making sense of it.
All of which helps to explain how I’ve come to depersonalize sex. This doesn’t mean that my sexual encounters, even paid sex, has been devoid of elements of affection. The experience of sex for me, however, is centered on the pleasure inherent in the act itself. Sex is reduced to fucking. My early experiences with call girls were instructive. Prostitution exposes with blatant honesty the romantic fictions artificially attached to sex. The zipless fuck without pretensions of intimacy or attachment appeals to me.
They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin (2 Peter 2:14).
This week I’m overseeing Vacation Bible Study at our parish. It mostly consists of fetching materials for the kids.
Speaking of fetching….
My eyes can’t help but notice a few of the comely MILFs accompanying their kids. Mrs. Hansen, prim and proper as always, yet with a shapely behind. Mrs. Paisley, who with her long brown hair and black frame glasses resembles Tina Fey. Then there was Sasha, the yoga instructor who dropped off her kid on her way to teach her class. She came dressed for work — her skintight yoga pants left little to the imagination. (I couldn’t help but notice a few months ago when her chest expanded, obviously due to breast augmentation.) Her wedding ring only seemed to intensify her erotic appeal.
This year we’ve combined our VBS with another local Lutheran parish, which is pastored by “Rev. Lara.” She’s young, having received her first call just a few years ago. Wisps of brown hair frame her pretty face. She’s married with two small children.
I can’t take my adulterous eyes off of her, either.
“Women lust and women cheat.” So writes Wednesday Martin in Untrue:Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. Her most significant discovery is that women are no more “naturally monogamous” than men. Women, it turns out, are not evolutionarily programmed to be less sexually adventurous. The fairer sex is just as capable of “passionate, voluptuous pleasures and sometimes of tremendous risk-taking in the pursuit of sexual satisfaction.” Martin reports that more than one woman she interviewed told her, “I have a really strong libido. I don’t think I’m cut out for monogamy.” Martin relates her own struggles with monogamy. “Cheating was a lot of work, with a lot of stigma. But when we thought about or experienced the passion and excitement of being with someone new, or considered trying something we’d never tried before, it felt worth the risks. In fact, it felt urgently necessary sometimes.” Society applies a double standard to a woman who is open about her own sexual desires, despite increasing evidence that women are prioritizing sexual autonomy. One poll showed that the number of women admitting to extramarital activity has increased by 40% since 1990. In The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, Alicia M. Walker interviewed dozens of married women (including regular churchgoers) who found partners on Ashley Madison. She discovered that most of them weren’t searching for love or intimacy. They were sexually dissatisfied with their spouses and sought sexual satisfaction elsewhere. (Perhaps this sheds light on the quality of sex in the matrimonial state. One survey reported that more than half of women had their “best sex ever” with someone other than their husbands.) Our sexual script that assigns a less active libido to women is being rewritten.
I adhere to a religious tradition that extols the sanctity of marriage. One of its ten commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (Esther Perel notes, “It is the only sin that gets two commandments in the Bible, one for doing it and one just for thinking about it.”) And yet, despite being single, I find the taboo thrill of “cheating” highly arousing. Sex with the Deaconess was intensified by the engagement ring she always wore during our coupling. Some of the pleasure surely came from simply getting away with it. Neither staff nor parishioners nor her betrayed fiancee across the Atlantic knew about our extracurricular activities. Nor should the frisson of transgression be discounted. “Being bad is a pleasure,” says Perel.
Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too has the taboo against it. It has been legislated, debated, politicized, and demonized throughout history. Yet despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy….In every society, on every continent, and in every era, regardless of the penalties and the deterrents, men and women have slipped the confines of matrimony. Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one. So what are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced?
I’ve written earlier about my own experience of defiling the marriage bed. Breaking the Sixth Commandment (according to Lutheran numbering) brought immense guilt. And immense pleasure. “Monogamy may not be a part of human nature but transgression surely is,” Perel says. “Whether we like it or not, philandering is here to stay.”
“Faith” is a self-described “professional girlfriend.” Her knees are firmly planted in the carpet of her upscale hotel suite. I’m gently caressing her thick blonde hair as she takes me deep into her mouth.
“I think you’re a little turned on!” she teased as her tongue licked the head of my hard cock.
At this moment I’ve lost myself. Or have I found myself?
“Let me keep your secrets,” she promised me earlier. It didn’t take long for the straps on her sundress to drop down, exposing her big augmented breasts. As we kissed, she grabbed my cock through my pants.
“Why don’t you get undressed?”
A plain white envelope containing several crisp $100 bills lies on the table confessing my need. (And perhaps hers. She admitted, “I like to fuck. A lot.”) She provides a space for me to express myself sexually without fear of judgment. With her I can be honest in a way that I can’t with anyone else.
“Why don’t you tell me what to do?”
I told her to lie on the bed. She positioned herself and spread her legs apart. As if by a certain ineluctable magnetism, she pulls me into her. As I slowly thrust inside of her, I surrender to passion. I’ve detached myself from my other identities.
Nothing matters to me but fucking her.
“You can put us in nice clothes and take us out to watch Shakespeare in the Park but we’re still animals deep down, and we like fucking best of all.”
Janice Dickinson
I feel her fingers dig into my waist. Religion told me it’s a sin, but my conscience is deadened as I rush towards orgasm. My body strains, my ass clenches, my balls tighten. A slight dizziness overtakes me. I continue to thrust until my body shakes and I emit a sound I don’t recognize from myself. Completely drained, I collapse on top of her.
Stephanie offhandedly confessed that to me during one of our encounters. Her work as an escort obviously testified to that. She had previously admitted to being “promiscuous” even before her introduction to the “industry.” In addition to her current boyfriend, she has “secondary boyfriends” whom she usually sees for about 90 days. And she’s admitted to being turned on by having sex with strangers.
So, no, she can’t be monogamous.
“I don’t think human beings are monogamous creatures by nature.”
Scarlett Johansson
I’ve had over 100 sexual partners.
The vast majority have been escorts. There have also been internet hookups and one-night stands with classmates. Only a couple were within the context of what could broadly be called a “relationship.”
(I’m a virgin compare with King Solomon. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines [1 Kg 11:3]. The Deuteronomist seems to disapprove of his love of foreign women more than his promiscuity.)
In traditional Christian morality, sexual activity is reserved for marriage, which is, as my church puts it, a “lifelong, monogamous, and faithful relationship.” With my behavior, I’m definitely flouting this expectation, which certainly applies even more stringently to one in ministry. But what if this expectation that governs sexual conduct is contrary to human nature?
In a Playboy interview a couple of years ago, Scarlett Johansson said, “I don’t think it’s natural to be a monogamous person….I think it definitely goes against some instinct to look beyond.”
Ms. Johansson’s opinion is not without merit. Social scientists have observed what is called the Coolidge Effect, based on an anecdote (probably apocryphal) about Silent Cal and Mrs. Coolidge. Justin J. Lehmiller describes it:
[T]he first couple visited a chicken farm together, and on their guided tour, the president trailed a bit behind his wife. While visiting the hen yard, Mrs. Coolidge took note of one particularly potent rooster that went from one hen to the next. She asked the tour guide to be absolutely sure to point out that rooster to the president when he came by. The guide obliged. When President Coolidge arrived at the yard, he was informed of the rooster’s sexual prowess and, further, that his wife was the one who thought it should be brought to his attention. The president paused for a moment and responded, “Tell Mrs. Coolidge that there is more than one hen.”
Novelty in the form of new (or potential) partners enhances arousal while interest in a current partner will diminish over time. (This appears to have a neurochemical basis. Novelty boosts dopamine and norepinephrine levels.) It turns out that this phenomenon in humans has its roots in evolution.
Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeffa explores the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality. The main thrust of the book is that monogamy is a relatively recent arrangement at odds with how humans have evolved as primates. “Like bonobos and chimps, we are the randy descendents of hypersexual ancestors….Conventional notions of monogamous, till-death-do-us-part marriage strain under the dead weight of a false narrative that insists we’re something else.” Let’s start with biology. The testicles and penis of the human male, larger than in other primates, as well as his tendency to quickly reach orgasm, point to a creature capable of multiple ejaculations. The woman, in turn, features uniquely shaped breasts, copulatory vocalization, and the capacity for multiple orgasms. It seems both men and women were designed for promiscuity.
“In London alone, there are 80,000 prostitutes. What are they but… human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy?”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Then there is the social structure that prevailed for most of humanity’s history. Before the advent of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, humans lived in small communities that shared resources–food, shelter, protection–as a survival mechanism. Like everything else, sex was also shared. “Several types of evidence suggest our pre-agricultural (prehistoric) ancestors lived in groups where most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time,” Ryan and Jeffa write. The emergence of private property made paternity matter, which incentivized the formation of stable, exclusive relationships. The imprint of having had access to multiple partners remained, however, explaining why monogamy has been so vexing. The sexual dysfunction in so many marriages is the product of an arrangement that doesn’t come naturally to us.
One successful escort, whose clients are mostly married, reflected on her experience and concluded, “Monogamy, to me, is a lie. I think it’s healthy to want to be with other people.” Her sexual exploration can’t be confined to one partner. “I want to experiment and experience it with more than one person. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to be in a relationship, but I want to have all the sex.”
“Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.”
Marquis de Sade, Juliette
Anthropologist Donald Symons noted, “Human males seem to be so constituted that they resist learning not to desire variety despite impediments such as Christianity and the doctrine of sin.” I bring this up because I stumbled upon discussion about non-monogamy and Christian sexual ethics. One Christian woman in a polyamorous relationship detailed the explorations she’s shared with other polyamorous Christians: “We tend to have gotten married young, felt trapped by the conservative bounds of purity culture, and wanted to explore the sexuality we never really got a chance to have. But it can be daunting to leap from the repressed Christianity we were raised with to the sexually open world of non-monogamy.” Another polyamorous woman acknowledges the possible sinfulness of her lifestyle, but excuses her behavior by saying that she can’t help being attracted to more than one person. “And it’s not going to damn me any more than those swear words that slip out on occasion,” she says. Another Christian couple, “Mr. and Mrs. Jones,” are swingers who, upon being exposed as participants in the “lifestyle,” were expelled from their church. “When you grow up in the church, someone else is constructing your faith,” Mr. Jones explains. “Then real life occurs, and something doesn’t make sense, and you have to give yourself permission to deconstruct your faith.” They’ve found clandestine support from a few pastors who themselves are swingers.
Recently, a few Christian ethicists have put forward theological justifications for non-monogamy. Queer theology has described God’s love as “promiscuous.” One Baptist pastor and theologian goes so far as to declare, “The Holy Trinity is a polyamorous relationship.” Duke University ethicist Kathy Rudy has proposed that even forms of non-monogamous sex such as anonymous and communal sex can be understood as embodying an ethic of hospitality. They remain decidedly in the minority, however. Even the advocates of a progressive Christian sexual ethic operate from the assumption that sexual relations occur within the context of monogamy.
Then there’s “polyfuckery,” which entails sex outside a monogamous relationship and without emotional attachment. As the escort mentioned earlier said, “I don’t exactly believe in love. But sex… Sex is something I’ll always believe in.”
Betty has returned from her hiatus. I made the long drive to her temporary incall at a budget motel. She’s returned as a brunette. She met me wearing a black bra, short pink skirt, and stockings. We spent a few minutes reacquainting ourselves with each other. Then she unfastened her bra from the front.
Fornix in Latin means “arch” or “arched room,” which was associated with the chambers used by prostitutes in Rome. Fornicatio referred to what was done in one of these rooms. In Greek, porneia (πορνεία) derives from pornh, the word for a prostitute; porneia originally meant consorting with pornai. These terms were then extended to more broadly encompass “sexual immorality,” but their etymology reaffirms that the prostitute is the locus of sexual transgression.
Betty’s breasts are (as a ’90s sitcom put it) real and spectacular, and they received more than ample attention from me. After we completely undressed, I suggested Russian. She dabbed some lube on her cleavage, I straddled her chest, and I started titty-fucking her. I wanted to cream all over her tits, but, alas, I couldn’t come. I’d have to wait for the main event. After the condom came on, she climbed on top of me and slipped me inside of her. She began riding me. I savored her tightness. After several minutes, she positioned herself on her hands and knees. I furiously fucked her doggy style. Our fornicatio reached its crescendo, and I collapsed on the bed, drained but satisfied.
We lay naked on the bed and caught up a bit more. Then the hour was up. We dressed, and after a hug, I departed her motel room.
“Sex has become the religion of the Western world.” So says Charles Pickstone in The Divinity of Sex: The Search for Ecstasy in a Secular Age. Pickstone, an English vicar, boldly sets forth his thesis: “namely that sex has taken on many of the functions once performed by religion. In particular, sex has become a path to an encounter with primordial mystery.”
The decline of religion is attributable to secularization. In modern industrial societies, which increased material comfort through the mastery of nature, God no longer seemed so relevant. Darwin demonstrated that humans were the product of an evolutionary process, seemingly in contradiction of the creation account in Genesis. Higher biblical criticism established the complex human origins of biblical texts, weakening the claim that they were the word of God. Knowledge of other religions became more widespread, diminishing the uniqueness of Christianity. To use Peter Berger’s term, the sacred canopy has withered away.
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Bernini, 1647-1652
Yet the religious instinct remains. And as Roger Scruton observes, “[E]rotic and religious sentiments show a peculiar isomorphism.” Religious devotion, severed from traditional religious structures, has been transferred to sex. As secularization progressed, Pickstone writes, people “began to turn to the mysterious, forbidden, private, ritualised world of sex both for experience of another world and for the language in which to express that experience.” Foucault wrote, “A great sexual sermon has swept through our societies over the last decades.” Whereas religion was once seen as the product of the sublimation of the libido, sex is now the outlet for the spiritualities diverted from organized religion.
I read this with interest because of the considerable energy I expend on sex. I really don’t have any hobbies or recreational avocations. My friendships are few. When I’m not at church or immersed in my studies, I’m often pursuing sex in its various forms–escorts, porn, phone sex.
My spiritual life is dry. Prayer and worship fail to spark my soul. I experience transcendence only during sex, especially when I orgasm. Sex has become, in Tillich’s famous words, my ultimate concern. After years of abstinence, I’ve embraced sex with the zeal of a convert. When I penetrate a woman, I feel like I’m penetrating a mystery.
Is my spiritual dryness a product of the guilt my sexual activities generate? Or rather does my obsession with sex come from religious dissatisfaction?
Mandi met me last night at the door of her hotel room in a tight black mini dress and black suede boots that went past her knees. Minutes later she teased me, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!” She seductively stripped out of her clothes, making me throb. Some fun on the bed followed, then she positioned herself by bending over the desk.
We unapologetically committed our sins behind closed drapes and shut doors. Gratifying the flesh inside a 14th floor hotel room. Away from prying eyes.
My position in the church forces me to be discreet about my sexual life. As a single minister, I publicly committed to sexual abstinence before marriage.
Which means I have to use the utmost discretion.
“Si non caste, tamen caute.”
Adalbert of Hamburg, medieval archbishop to his clerics
In one recent online article, the author extols the virtue of purity as not just an intrinsic good but as “prudent” in the digital age. “Almost anything we do on a computer or cell phone, no matter how embarrassing or sensitive, leaves an exploitable record that is difficult to expunge.” The very real danger of exposure recommends chastity.
That’s an ideal solution. But as the good archbishop said, “If you can’t be chaste….”
Outside of my brief (and admittedly very indiscreet) relationship with the Deaconess, I’ve avoided becoming entangled with a woman from my parish. (Although Heidi, with her tight jeans that reveal the contours of her smackable ass, is testing my self-discipline.) One of the advantages of hiring reputable “professionals” is that both parties have an incentive to discreetly arrange the transaction and protect their privacy. “High-basic-quality-escorts will show up on time, match their advertised description, provide the agreed-upon services at the advertised price, be discreet, and generally act in a manner respectful of their client’s privacy and safety,” writes one scholar. Both agencies and independent escorts will screen and verify their clients, treating the received personal information as confidential. “Tina” at a local agency, for instance, knows that I work at a church, but because her business traffics in the keeping of secrets, it is in her interest to not disclose such information.
This is not to discount the very real risks I take. Still, given the alternative, I strive to minimize them. A classmate once proffered these words of wisdom: “You can be smart or you can be celibate.”
The Kama Sutra refers to fellatio as auparishtaka – “superior coitus.”
I waited for her to unbuckle my belt, undo the button at the top of my jeans, and lower the zipper. Rhonda bent down and unzipped me. As she slipped me into her mouth, I was stiff but not yet rock-hard. With her lips tight against my shaft, I felt myself expand. She circled her tongue around the head, then took me deep inside her mouth. As she sucked and licked, she looked up into my eyes, reaffirming my masculinity. Down on her knees, submissive before me, Rhonda had given herself over to cock worship. Now was not the time to be a gentleman. I moved my hand to the back of her head. It was dark, dirty, and liberating.
“Fellatio” comes from the Latin fellare, meaning “to suck.” It was coined in 1894 by Haverlock Ellis. (A “fellatrix” is a woman who sucks.) “La pipe” is French slang for fellatio. English has its own terminology.
Because of its non-procreative potential, Christian moral theology condemned oral sex. Tertullian equated it with cannibalism. The medieval canonical penalty for fellatio was 15 years penance. It neglected a possible biblical sanction for orally pleasuring a man. In the Song of Songs, the woman says of her beloved:
With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste (2:3).
I recall hearing whispered rumors that some of my female classmates at my conservative evangelical college engaged in the oral arts while technically maintaining their virginity. (Apparently President Clinton’s definition of sex was definitive.) Virtually all of my sexual encounters with professionals and the majority of my encounters with non-professionals have included having oral sex performed on me.
“Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“[O]ne of the sources of its power and significance is the desire to place the penis in a forbidden location,” John H. Gagnon and William Simon write. Fellatio still has an aura of the taboo about it. “[T]he act of fellatio is symbolically constructed in terms of men’s dominance and women’s submission….The images of…dominating, controlling, degrading are all immediately available.” I can’t escape the impression that performing fellatio is in some way degrading. I’ve had trouble conceiving of it as something that “good girls” do. It has an ancient provenance. The ancient Romans thought the subservience involved in providing oral sex made it demeaning. In his book The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body, David Fredrick writes, “Both ancient literature and graffiti tell us that fellatio was the province of prostitutes; it was a sexual act no Roman male of the elite class would request of his wife.” Certainly the way it is roughly portrayed in pornography makes it look degrading. Philosopher Alan Soble states, “Putting your face in someone’s crotch, no matter the posture, no matter the language used to name the event, is degrading and humiliating.” Given the intimacy of the act, and the inherent vulnerability of the recipient, some see it as a tender expression of romantic affection. I can’t help but think that, when a girl presses her mouth onto my cock, she’s a dirty little whore.
“Every one of her blowjobs would have been enough to justify the life of a man.”
Especially when she was in her cheerleader’s uniform. I had made a covenant with my eyes, and I tried to take those thoughts captive, but….
At night in bed, visions of Summer came unbidden. I had pledged to remain pure, but as I envisioned my body on top of Summer’s nubile body, my hand went to a forbidden place.
When my erotic fantasy reached its apogee, and my body had discharged all its erotic tension, I was paralyzed by guilt. I vowed never to do it again.
Then I saw Summer once more in her cheerleader’s uniform.
Masturbation is sinful. That was the lesson I unambiguously learned in the purity culture. It stained one’s holiness, “without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). It was a form of adultery against one’s future spouse, for “the husband does not rule over his body, but the wife does” (1 Cor 7:4). Marriage was the balm for lust. As one commentator put it, St. Paul didn’t say, “It is better to masturbate than to burn” (cf. 1 Cor 7:9). Driven by lust and fantasy, masturbation enslaves one’s body to sexual passion, placing one under the dominion of sin (cf. Rom 6:14). I even recall one speaker who said that it was a form of homosexual activity because it did not involve someone of the opposite sex. One purity author said of masturbation that “its selfishness is utterly foreign to the Kingdom of God.”
This perspective has a long lineage. Ethicist Margaret Farley writes, “Through centuries of Western thought masturbation was judged to be not only an immoral sexual practice, but one that should be particularly repugnant to human individuals and the human community.” Kant declared that sexual relations with oneself was “an abuse of one’s sexuality” and relegated oneself “below the level of animals.” William James thought it led to insanity. Certainly the Christian tradition contributed mightily to this consensus. Aquinas termed the deed “unchaste softness.” (It also came to be known as the “solitary sin,” “onanism,” and “self-abuse.”) The Angelic Doctor wrote that masturbation is a grave unnatural vice that involves sin against right order and the use of one’s body. Raymond J. Lawrence in Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom wrote that “resisting the temptation to masturbate” was elevated into “the sexual cause celebre for Protestants.” Corn Flakes and Graham Crackers were invented as wholesome remedies against unwanted sexual desire.
Having pledged to remain chaste until marriage, I strove to “be pure in heart and body,” which included refraining from sexual self-stimulation. As the aforementioned tale indicates, I didn’t always succeed. I learned through bitter experience the same lesson as Luther: “Nature never lets up….we are all driven to the secret sin. To say it crudely but honestly, if it doesn’t go into a woman, it goes into your shirt.” I didn’t have access to porn, but my fertile imagination more than compensated. (As a teenager, I recall surreptitiously purchasing a copy of Maxim and jerking off to photos of Elisha Cuthbert. I wasn’t alone in my solo explorations. During one encounter, Stephanie confessed to me that she had experimented with cucumbers and a curling iron.)
For one young lady reared in the purity culture, her church’s proscription against masturbation and her inability to refrain from self-pleasure created a crisis of faith:
Throughout my teenage years I battled with it constantly. I don’t even know how many hours I spent on my knees at the altar begging God to help me “stop doing It” (I could only ever refer to masturbation as It) until I finally gave up and refused to go forward to the altar anymore.
It was the first thing I ever really felt betrayed by God about. He promised that there wouldn’t be any temptation we couldn’t face, didn’t he?…I don’t even know how old I was when I decided that I was done dealing with all the agony and pain– I was convinced that if I could dedicate that much time and energy into “quitting,” into countless promises and bargains and vows, that no matter how much I tried it just wasn’t going to go away.
Given my extensive catalogue of sexual transgressions, masturbation seems fairly tame. Farley concludes, “Masturbation is more likely to be considered morally neutral, which could mean that it is either good or bad, depending on the circumstances and the individual….it usually does not raise any moral questions at all.”
Lutheran Guilt 