There are a lot of people that say masturbation is normal, natural and doesn’t hurt anybody. It sounds good, but what if it’s NOT really true? What if masturbation has the potential to mess with your mind, weaken your marriage and negatively affect the quality of your life?
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t for a minute believe that you’re going straight to hell if you masturbate. You won’t go blind. You won’t suddenly develop warts, or any of the other things those old wives’ tales tried to tell us. But, on the other hand it may not be as harmless as the world would lead us to believe.
The Bible talks a lot about lust and immorality and sexual sin, but it really doesn’t seem to speak specifically to the topic of masturbation. There have been people who have tried to “bend” a few different scriptures in an attempt to make them pertain, but those applications seem “iffy” at best.
Even though a clear Biblical command about masturbation seems to be missing, we don’t want to assume that the silence gives us license to do whatever we want, nor do we want to heap undo condemnation where God never intended it. Before we try to come to any conclusions on this controversial topic, it might be helpful to consider these facts:
Masturbation’s effect on the brain:
FACT: The hormones released in the brain during sexual arousal cause a bonding to whatever we are looking at or thinking about at the time.
If these bonds are created while masturbating with fantasies or porn, they may ultimately cause us to become more sexually responsive to masturbation and its associated fantasies than to real sex. Not only will this make it much harder to stop those behaviors, but it can also make us less interested in initiating sex with our partner and less satisfied when we do.
FACT: A tolerance can be created to anything that causes a chemical reaction in our brain.
Fantasizing about sex and achieving orgasm through masturbation creates a chemical reaction that causes specific hormones to be released. If we masturbate enough, our bodies begin to believe that this elevated hormone level is the new normal and begin to require even more chemicals to achieve the same “high.” It takes more frequent or riskier behaviors to create those additional chemicals. As this escalation continues, many individuals actually lose their ability to function with normal sex.
FACT: Although any neuro-pathways that once fed a sexual addiction may have been dormant for a long time, they are still there and can be lit back up.
If someone has had a problem with pornography and masturbation in the past, returning to masturbation can open the doors to be tempted by pornography again.
In the next post, Masturbation: More Truth we’ll look at the potential affects of masturbation on other aspects of our life and relationships.With a clearer understanding of the potential long-term consequences of this form of sexual expression, we can begin to prayerfully consider whether a change in our personal belief about masturbation is in order.
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