Jessica grew up in the church during the True Love Waits era. She was told to wear shorts no higher than the length of a dollar bill above her knee, and to avoid mixed bathing and high school dances. If a teenager had sex, “grace was off the table,” she said. But at age fifteen, Jessica had sex for first time with a guy from school she’d only just met, in a Super 8 motel, with other friends in the room:
I had absolutely no identity of my own, and because I got boobs early in life, I was already reduced to believing that’s where my commodity and bargaining value was. I had a journal entry from years ago where I wrote down all the things I believed about myself, and it was awful. One of the things said: Boobs equal Value. I wasn’t taught differently, and the guys around me weren’t taught to value bodies, to steward them, to honor the image of God, or that sex is holy. We were told that sex is bad and wrong and sinful, and then BOOM, sex is—not quite a gift—but allowed for married people. I have a friend who spent her wedding night in the ER with a panic attack because she felt so wrong and sinful for starting to do something we had been told for years was wrong.
Jessica’s story crushes me. I weep, thinking about my future daughter. My future son. Wondering how I can communicate God’s holiness and his grace in equal measure; how I can teach them to live God’s sexual ethic without demonizing their God-created bodies and God-given sexuality. I want them to experience joy and peace and excitement and forgiveness. I want to teach them that sex belongs in marriage, without handing them shame like a rite of passage. Lord, help me. Help us. We want to honor you.
I asked Jessica, “What will you tell your daughter about sexual purity?” This is the question I keep returning to, because we can talk about the freedoms we wish we’d been granted. We can lament the stereotypes we are still trying to disentangle from truth, but when we look at our own children, our true sexual ethic comes out. How we want our children to live, sexually, is what we really believe about sexual purity. When our son hears his older sister crying in her room and asks us what happened on her date, when our daughter discovers her clitoris, when our son has his first wet dream, when our teenager is sexually harassed at school, when we find pornography in their search history, or when they ask us why they can’t have sex with their boyfriend or girlfriend—what will we say?
“First, I would teach her who the Father is,” Jessica told me, “not just what the rules are. His mercy, his patience, his kindness, his love, and his goodness. We would talk most about the Giver, but also about the goodness of the gifts, in their proper context.” She added that she would want to be very intentional about affirming her daughter every chance she got and “would plead with God to make her confident in her place as his daughter.” Third, she said that she would try not to respond to her daughter’s sins with shock. She would want her daughter to know that she can run toward Jesus when she sins. And she added: “I would tell her my story when she was ready to hear it.”
Jackie Hill Perry says that if she could teach her daughter anything about herself, “it would be that because a good God made the woman then being a woman [is] a good thing.”1 If I ever have a son, I want him to know the same, that God created man and called that creation good. God created them, male and female, and was pleased with the finished product. Whatever our physical insecurities—the things we wish we could change about our bodies—God made us, and he is pleased with his creation.
Our bodies are precious to him. It was not only Jesus’ soul pain on the cross that hurt God but the way his flesh was torn by thorns and nails, the way he was stripped, humiliated by public nakedness, and whipped almost to the point of death. Our bodies matter to God. What we do in our bodies matters to God. What others do to our bodies matters to God.
But even if we can convince our children that their hands are beautiful for coloring and writing and playing in the mud, that their feet will carry them to rivers, across basketball courts, and to school, or that their smile can light up a room and their tears are seen by a holy God, there are parts of the body that don’t feel as safe, wonderful, or holy.
While happily twirling in church, a little girl is told to put her skirt down so that her underwear is not on display. When a little boy goes outside to play, he is told that he must wear pants. We learn early on that certain parts of our body are to be kept hidden. We learn what modesty means in our cultural context. We learn about privacy and private parts. The mystery piques our curiosity. What is so special, we wonder, about this part or that part, that it must be kept hidden? Sometimes we are chastised for asking, for looking, or for wondering. Nakedness and curiosity, which were adorable in our early years, become a source of embarrassment. And our bodies absorb the shame.
It was not always this way. It was not until sin entered the world that Adam and Eve felt the need to hide their nakedness. And we too understand that our nakedness is not safe in a world filled with sin and selfishness. We do not live in the Garden of Eden. Our bodies, created good, have been used for evil. They have been abused. Our bodies, still good, are both what we use to bless others and also what we use to sin against them, against ourselves, and against a holy God.
In the Old Testament, the basic functions and responses of the human body pose a threat to the holiness of God’s house. In Moses’ law, if someone carries disease, touches a dead body, or produces bodily fluid, they are considered ritually unclean for days and must wash themselves thoroughly before entering the temple. But Jesus changed all that. He lived holy, died obediently, and rose in purity and power. Jesus is the only reason we can talk to God whenever we want. He tore the temple curtain in half. Whatever our state, we can boldly approach the throne of God because of Jesus Christ. In him, we have been made pure.
But embodiment, post-Eden, is complicated. The days of happily wading in the kiddy pool, naked and carefree, are short-lived. Before our children start feeling the need to grab fig leaves to cover up, we have an opportunity. It begins with something as simple as the words we use. Do we talk about the human body with shame or joy? Do we use the right terms, or do we add embarrassment to certain body parts by veiling them in euphemisms? Each parent, of course, has to decide for themselves what is best. I don’t have children yet, and I imagine it would feel a bit strange to use words like penis or vagina with a small child. But part of the reason it would feel awkward is because I have it in my head that these are “mature” words, words they shouldn’t know until they get older. I think it’s important to ask myself why I feel this way.
One of the main reasons is that these words were not used in my family when I was growing up. We went with the classic peepee and weenie in my house (and some other, less traditional words too, but I will spare you those; feel free to pause here for a moment and chuckle over the embarrassing euphemisms your family came up with—we all had them). Our families weren’t wrong. If you use silly names with your children, you are not wrong. This isn’t a moral issue, and I have no desire to cause anyone false guilt over it. But I will suggest a few reasons why using anatomically correct terminology with your children could be a positive thing, thinking ahead to their view of their own bodies and sexuality.
One woman I interviewed explained to me why she has chosen to use anatomically correct terms with her children: “If I am laying the groundwork that even the language we use is okay, then when my daughter starts to have physical reactions—if she discovers that something hurts, or that something is pleasurable, she can come to me and ask: ‘Hey, what is happening in my body?’ And I can use the language she is already familiar with.” My friend Holly added that, as a nurse, using the correct terminology helps her when “telling kids about their bodies and what God designed each organ for.”
“If, God forbid, something sexual is done to my child,” one mom shared, “the only term that the law will accept is the anatomically correct one.” And this is the other reason. Using the right terms gives children the language to recognize and report sexual abuse. Thinking back to Abby Perry’s interview with Ruthy Nordgren, it stands out to me that Ruthy shared, “I didn’t understand molestation or rape. Not understanding made it possible for it to continue and turn into far worse.”2 While we may consider certain subjects or even words too mature for our young children, acknowledging these truths and the right terminology empowers them to report sexual abuse and to understand what is and isn’t appropriate as far as physical touch from others. I hate that sexual abuse exists. I also hate that young children too often do not have the words or understanding to seek help.
Joy Beth Smith puts it this way: “I’m not ashamed of having a nose. It’s simply part of my body, and I learned its name early. No one insisted I call it a smelly-smelly. In using nicknames, we infantilize our own anatomy, further perpetuating the culture of silence around sex—and sexual abuse.”3 And we further increase unnecessary humiliation over body parts that are not inherently sinful. It may seem like a small thing, but one step toward removing shame around our God-given sexuality is to talk to our children in clear, correct terminology about their bodies.
“It is not wrong to be a sexual person,” Rebecca Lemke writes.4 For some, this statement might give pause. The terms sexuality and sex are so often entangled in our minds, it can be hard to distinguish between the two. In her book Pure, Klein says: “most evangelical youth are a lot like I was in the years after I left the church—sexual, and ashamed of it.”5 It is not only sexual actions or sinful lust but the state of being a sexual person that causes shame for so many in the church. How can we talk to our children about what sexuality means?
Debra Hirsch is such a source of wisdom here. She points out that for too long sexuality has been viewed as “a dangerous paganizing force in our souls and in society” —something “unredeemed and unredeemable.”6 But is this how Christians should view sexuality? Nancy Pearcey believes that thinking about sexuality as synonymous with sexual hedonism is a “bleak, one dimensional view” that assumes “that sex is just a physical urge—that there is no deeper, more holistic yearning to connect with another person.”7
Not only is there a difference between sexuality and sex, there is also a difference between sexuality and sexual sin. Our children need to understand this distinction. They need to understand that their desire to be wanted and loved, to experience sexual intimacy, or the physical fact that their bodies experience sexual arousal, is not sinful. To be sure, these God-given desires can quickly become distorted by our sin and selfishness, but the state of being a sexual person is not sinful. More than that, it is good.
Are we preparing our children to expect their sexuality, or to be surprised and embarrassed by it? Do we only talk about sexuality in terms of sexual sin, or do we also talk about it as a God-created good? Perhaps we think that silence on the subject is safest. The sad truth is that many of my peers inherited more sexual shame from what was not said than what was said. Silence left room for secrecy, misinterpretation, and feelings of alienation. Surely if a subject was too embarrassing to talk about out loud, it was sinful to feel or be curious about.
The more our children are taught to fear sexuality, the more—not less—likely they are to struggle with sexual sin. Shame pushes people into dark corners, where sin breeds. Many of the women I interviewed admitted to me that their pornography addictions began as internet searches, born from a curiosity to understand things that seemed too embarrassing to discuss out loud, things they were ashamed to be feeling or curious about. If our children are, instead, equipped with an understanding that sexuality is universal and good, they are more likely to step out into the light with their experiences, questions, and struggles. If they know that to be human is to be sexual, then maybe—just maybe—when sexual temptation comes their way, they will feel less alone and more willing to ask for help.
Hirsch points out that our sexuality is more than just who we’re attracted to, our sexual organs, or the act of sex itself.8 She says, “Sexuality can be described as the deep desire and longing that drives us beyond ourselves in an attempt to connect with, to understand, that which is other than ourselves. Essentially, it is a longing to know and be known by other people (on physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual levels). It thus forms part of what it means to ‘love others as we love ourselves’ (Mark 12:29-31).”9 This summary of sexuality is fuller and more reflective of the imago Dei than any other definition I’ve heard. God created us in his image and we are all sexual beings, which means that being sexual has something to do with how we image God. And while the desire to know and be known is certainly expressed in marriage and sex, if Hirsch is right, it can also be expressed through friendship and our church community.
Romance is not the only avenue to intimacy. By God’s grace, he has given us the body of Christ, the church. We may be single, widowed, or divorced, but the church is a place to carry our loneliness and desire for connection. We can sing beside one another, confide in our small group, have dinner together, and carry one another’s burdens.
In an episode of the television show New Girl, Nick discovers a lump on his neck. He needs an ultrasound to find out if it’s cancerous or not, but he is scared and doesn’t have any health insurance. His friends push him to get the ultrasound, drive him there, and when he gets done with the appointment, they are all standing there waiting for him. He fumbles through his wallet, trying to find enough change to pay for the examination, when the receptionist stops him to let him know that the bill has already been covered. He looks at his friends, and they smile back at him, explaining that they combined their money to cover his bill.
There is a reason so much of our favorite fiction revolves around friendship. I remember reading the stories of Betsy, Tacy, and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace as a child, then The Babysitter’s Club series as an adolescent, and watching shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends as a young adult. There was such comfort in the idea of a makeshift family of peers, people you could laugh with and lean on. Sure, some of the characters fell in love with one another, some broke up, while others got married. But there was a closeness there that so many of us longed for.
My friends have been God’s grace to me in every season of my life—whether I was dating, married, or single—or divorced, single, or remarried, for that matter. Every season. Friendship is so important in all our lives, and we don’t talk about it enough. Instead, Christian bookstores, summer camps, and youth groups harp on the topic of sexual purity, which pigeon-holes intimacy as something that can only be found in one relationship and one act. Thank goodness for my parents, who encouraged me to pursue friendships in my early years.
Dating has value but a narrower purpose: enjoying romance, learning how to navigate romantic relationships, or looking for a potential spouse (depending on the individual’s goal). But friendship isn’t dependent on romantic feelings. It is about living life with others and being there for them. Friendship is about the good and the bad days. The no-makeup days and the boring days. The day when his dad died suddenly from a blood clot. The day she lost her baby. The day he dropped out of school. It’s about being there for someone, regardless of how attractive they are or what else you have going on. In friendship, the focus isn’t on image, or impressing the other person, or the potential of getting a kiss, but on being present.
By all means, go on dates. But do not fall for the purity culture lie that dating, courting, or marriage have cornered the market on intimacy. Our view of intimacy is too narrow, too entangled with the act of sex itself, when we think that it can only be achieved inside a dating or married relationship. This distorted thinking makes cross-gender friendships seem like a threat to purity instead of precious gifts from God. And it leaves little room for the kind of intimacy we see in the early church, like in Romans 16, when Paul talks about his brothers and sisters with so much love and familiarity: sister Phoebe, bold Priscilla and Aquila, beloved Epaenetus, hardworking Mary, forerunners of the gospel Andronicus and Junia, and so on. Paul loves these saints like his family. He appreciates them, he knows them, and he affirms them without hesitation.
When marriage and sex become the goal of our lives, we can easily miss out on the intimacy of kinship and the joy of friendship in the church. One of my friends who is same-sex attracted and celibate told me that she believes we must work harder to see one another “with the eyes of God toward his image in them,” because this “is the most powerful tool against objectification we have.” Instead of hyperfocusing on the problem of lust, maybe we should start by talking about the value of our siblinghood in Christ and our shared identity as image bearers of God.10
We lose a great gift when we neglect cross-gender friendship. A woman I interviewed shared a story with me about her time at Bob Jones University, where physical contact between men and women was absolutely prohibited, aside from graduation day when hugs were allowed, and during Christmas chapel, when students held hands while singing a Christmas song. One day, before class started, her friend pulled her aside and told her that he had just gotten a call that his father had committed suicide. He wouldn’t be returning to school. As hundreds of students walked by, she listened to his grief with her hands at her sides. She wanted to hug him, to comfort him, but she didn’t. “There was nothing sexual about it, but we both knew that we couldn’t do anything or we’d get in trouble,” she said.
This is the loss we incur by oversexualizing cross-gender friendships and by fixating on lust instead of promoting familial intimacy. For believers, there is a place made just for this kind of love: the church. Sam Allberry says that just because a relationship is “non-sexual and also non-romantic doesn’t mean it lacks healthy biblical intimacy.” He continues: “Scripture shows us that such friendships don’t need exclusivity or improper physicality in order to become genuine and deep. Jesus testifies to this in how he describes his disciples as his friends (John 15:15).”11
The church is our home: a refuge for the lonely, the hurting, the tired new mother, the widowed father, the single and celibate. It should be a place where we can be honest about our longings, frustrations, and sins. Many of us are weary from fighting the flesh, and we are made wearier when we try to do it alone. Winner points out that “though we are willing to talk about sex from the pulpit, we are often less comfortable initiating hard conversations with our brothers and sisters about sex in people’s real day-to-day lives.”12 I know it’s awkward. I know we are only used to talking about sex and sexuality in certain contexts and in certain ways. But reading a book or article, as helpful as it may be, is different than having someone in your local body know your struggles. Because they will ask you about it. They will pray for you. They will look at you and know. It is a terrifying, vulnerable thing.
I am just as uncomfortable with this idea as you are. I would like to keep my most personal struggles a secret from those who see me on a regular basis. Being known is terrifying. But one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to live in humble vulnerability in our churches. They should see us drawing close to our brothers and sisters in Christ in love and purity. We can model for them what intimacy within the body looks like. We can lead the way.
Sometimes this will look like confessing our struggles out loud in a small group, or asking for prayer for something that’s hard to admit. It will look like seeking wisdom from the body before making important decisions. It will mean having church members into our homes, eating, drinking, and laughing together, celebrating together, and grieving together. When our children see that love and intimacy are not only found in marriage but also in the church, they’ll know that there is always a place for them to go with their loneliness and longings.
It’s clear that we need a whole-person theology when it comes to sexual expression. “Christ did not die to redeem us in part,” Perry says, “neither did He rise so that we might have life in portions.”13 In other words, the pursuit of holiness involves the soul and the body. The two are connected. What we do in the body matters to God. What Jesus did in his body mattered—so much that we now have access to eternal life through his physical death and physical resurrection. A right view of the imago Dei means that we look at ourselves and others this way: as a body and a soul, made in the image of the holy God. This is where our conversations about sexual purity must always begin.
Hooking up. I recently scanned the “Sex and Relationships” section of Teen Vogue to see what was happening in the cultural conversation surrounding sexuality for teens. Just a few minutes of scrolling lead me to the following article titles: “How to Get an Abortion If You Don’t Want to Tell Your Parents”; “Queer Sex 101: How to Have Sex and Do it Safely”; “What to Say—and Not Say—When Your Friend Tells You They Have Herpes”; “How to Sext—Safely.”14
Sexual ethics in America today have been largely reduced to a matter of safety and consent. And while sexual expression should never be about less than safety and consent, for Christians it has to be about more. Pearcey discovered in her research that modern hookup culture centers around the skill of separating what one does with their body from what they do with their emotions. The typical rules of hookup culture are to avoid emotional attachment, relationship, commitment, and exclusivity. “The script is that you are supposed to be able to walk away from the experience as if it did not happen,” Pearcey concludes.15 Enjoying multiple sexual partners without getting emotionally entangled means learning how to separate what you do with your body from what you do with your heart.
What a contrast to God’s design for sex within marriage! Married sex takes place in the context of commitment. It says to another person, “You can trust me with your body, your heart, and your life because I am pledged to you. We are one.” It often involves pleasure, but it is about faithfulness, unity, and service. It is about being there for them before and after sex, when they get home from work, when they’re sick with the flu, struggling with depression, or unsure of where they belong.
By God’s design, sex also introduces the potential of children. While procreation is not always possible, nor is it a requirement in marriage, children are a tangible illustration of the unifying nature of sex. Sex is meant to tether two people together. Even without children, trying to disconnect sex from commitment and emotions is biologically difficult because, as Pearcey points out, sex is known to produce attachment hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin.16 While hookup culture attempts to reduce sex to a mere exchange of consent and sexual fluids, God invented sex to bond two people together.
Pornography. Barna surveyed almost three thousand Americans, both adolescents and adults, in a study that came out in 2016. Young adults rated failing to recycle and the overconsumption of water and electricity as more immoral than viewing pornography.17 While it is encouraging that this upcoming generation cares about the environment, it is deeply troubling to see such cavalier attitudes toward pornography.
However, it isn’t surprising. Have you watched any sitcoms recently? Characters talk about pornography with a chuckle, as though it’s not only something everyone does but something we need no longer blush at. In an episode of the show Friends, which began in the late 1990s, Chandler quickly changes the channel when his girlfriend walks into the room so that she won’t catch him watching porn. But in a recent episode of New Girl, which began in 2011, a group of friends watches pornography together on their living room couch. One character complains, but it’s a lighthearted, humorous scene.
But even in secular culture there are those waking up to the fact that pornography is not an innocent pastime. Actor Russell Brand, who believes that sex should be about intimacy and mutual consent, has lately been speaking out against pornography. In a video on his YouTube channel, Brand admits that he has been awash with pornography since he was young and has struggled to give it up entirely. He says it has made objectifying women easier. For example, instead of wondering about what a woman is like “as a soul, as another person,” he says that, too often, he dwells solely on her body. He hates this and urges others to look at the research coming out about the damaging impact of pornography on our brains and relationships with others.18 Viewing pornography “literally changes the chemistry of our brains.”19 In pornography, you can own someone in your mind, sexually, without their permission, and without caring about them as a human being or image bearer of God. Pornography reduces our neighbor, who we are called to love, to a sexual object.
“You have a crush on a girl? With a little bit of persuasion, you can convince her to send you a topless photo. You get to experience her body—and probably personal pleasure—without intimacy, without physical proximity, without any of the embodied risks of physical sex. You give nothing of yourself,” says Roxanne Stone with Barna research regarding teenagers and “Porn 2.0.” Barna’s research shows that 62 percent of adolescents and young adults admitted to having received “a nude image from someone else via text, email, social media or app” and 40 percent said they have sent a nude image at some point.20
Stone points out that the younger generation has a “morality of self-fulfillment,” viewing good and evil in relation to its societal impact. “Watching pornography,” she says, is viewed by adolescents as an “individual choice. Affecting no one but me.” But we do not understand pornography if we think it’s a victimless industry, or that viewing it doesn’t hurt anyone. It has been proven over and over again that “porn fuels the demand for sex trafficking.”21 It has also been proven that it hurts our relationships with one another, sexually and otherwise.
And we have misunderstood what sexual purity means if we think that viewing pornography is an innocent expression of our sexuality. Twitter polls can only tell us so much, as they show us sample size but not demographics, but I decided to ask this question: Have you ever viewed pornography as a way to satiate sexual desire so as to avoid the temptation to have premarital sex? 141 people responded and 22 percent admitted that they have viewed pornography for this purpose.22 Pornography may seem like a loophole when it comes to satiating sexual desire outside of marriage, but sexual purity is not achieved by finding ways to hide or isolate lust.
Samuel L. Perry notes that the rise in pornography usage is not only due to society’s acceptance of it but its “accessibility” and “anonymity.”23 It is one of the easiest sexual sins to hide, and according to Perry’s research, Protestants are “losing the battle with pornography,” not so much in regard to exposure to pornography but addiction to it.24 With such an emphasis on virginity and appearing pure, purity culture rhetoric may have pushed some Christians into deeper hiding when it comes to the use of pornography. Sin breeds in the darkness, and sadly pornography is something we can look at, on our phones or laptops, in secret.
“We are naturally curious about sexuality,” one parent told me, explaining that her approach is to ask her children about pornography so that she can help them, not punish them. She tells her children that “Satan is a liar and sin is a liar. And our thoughts and hearts and sins will start to tell us ‘No one else will understand. You can’t get back from this.’ But the message of Jesus is always ‘it is safe in the light.’ We have to tell kids that they will be safe in the light.”
It is safe for you to come into the light as well. While there is an undeniably casual attitude toward the use of pornography in our culture today, I noticed a very different attitude throughout my interviews. The Christians I spoke with did not try to excuse their behavior. Rather, it was clear that their struggle with pornography was a huge source of shame —especially for women who had the added layer of embarrassment over struggling with a so-called man’s sin. A few admitted that their shame has created a cycle of sin, where the more ashamed they become, the deeper they delve into pornography as a coping mechanism. We are not loving the church or our neighbor if we think shame is the solution. We must give our brothers and sisters permission to step into the light of transparency and forgiveness. We must put our arms around them and tell them that they don’t have to fight this sin alone.
Masturbation. Jude Law plays Gigolo Joe in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Joe is a robotic male prostitute who tells his customer: “Patricia, once you’ve had a lover robot, you’ll never want a real man again.”25 Similarly, masturbation gives us the ability to achieve orgasm without any communication or vulnerability with another human being. You can take what you want, how you want it, whenever you want. It reminds me of Burger King’s old slogan: “Have it your way.” In both its convenience and the feelings of regret Christians often feel afterward, masturbation is the fast food of sex.
In this section I will be talking about masturbation in terms of the private, solo act—not something mutually agreed on and performed inside marriage. If there is one struggle that came up over and over again in my interviews, it was solo sex. Even though it is seldom talked about, masturbation is one of the most common sexual struggles for Christians, both for singles and marrieds. And one of the struggles surrounding masturbation is the silence of Scripture on the subject. Not only are we hush-hush about it in our Christian circles, it is also difficult to find any passages in the Bible that address it.
What is debatable is whether or not masturbation is always accompanied by sinful lust. For example, it is quite common—though rarely discussed—for toddlers to discover masturbation as a source of self-comfort and enjoyment.26 Some married couples who are forced to spend a great deal of time apart might agree to use individual masturbation, with their spouse in mind, as a way to connect with one another long distance. And I know Christians who view masturbation as a gift to be practiced with self-control, the same way one might indulge in a piece of cheesecake or a glass of red wine. Others see it as black and white, believing that masturbation is always a sin, no matter the circumstance or motivation. I believe that we can, in good faith, land in different places on this issue.
But I will share my perspective, as if we were all sitting together at a Bible study, with our notebooks, coffee cups, and pens scattered around—and I hope your thinking about the subject will not end with my words. I believe that while masturbation might not be a sin in every circumstance, it deserves to be questioned. Like all our practices, we need to ask ourselves if it brings glory to God. Can we masturbate and honor God at the same time? Does masturbating align with God’s design for sex? Does it help us love our neighbor? Do masturbation and lust go together for us? How we answer these questions will reveal our motives, goals, and heart before God.
Our hearts often deceive us, especially when we want something badly enough. If you have masturbated, you’ve probably gone through a list of justifications that sound something like this: “I just needed help falling asleep,” “I needed to get it out of my system,” “I didn’t want to bother my spouse,” “I was lonely,” “It was too late at night to text my accountability partner,” “I was listening to my body,” or “It doesn’t hurt anyone.” And brother or sister, I hear you. You are not alone. The struggle is real.
One woman I interviewed shared that masturbation was something she used to cope when growing up in an abusive home. “It was one way I could have control; a way I could connect with myself.” For some married couples, masturbation may seem quicker and easier than asking their spouse for sex. Some use masturbation as a form of stress relief, while others use it to deal with their lust, hoping to shorten the struggle. Many have become addicted. Winner points out that “God’s creation, including human bodies, is good, but it does not follow that everything bodies do is good.”27 Our ability to achieve orgasm is a God-created miracle, but does this mean that we have the right to seek it out whenever we want?
I believe that solo sex says to God, “You are not giving me something I need, so I’m going to take it.” And this attitude is so hard to keep from spreading like a cancer. Not just in the act of masturbation, which quickly becomes addictive, but in other areas of our lives. Eve Tushnet argues that instead of allowing celibacy to drive us “to pour ourselves out for others” or accepting “all the hard, weird, disappointing realities of sex and marriage,” masturbation teaches us to view our sexuality selfishly.28 Masturbation is something we do by ourselves, with ourselves, and for ourselves. Instead of taking our loneliness and unmet longings to God in prayer, we seek only our own relief. Instead of giving our spouse the opportunity to know us and serve us, we forsake grace and do it ourselves. Instead of benefitting from the lessons we might learn from self-denial and self-discipline, we take what we want, when we want it.
In the same way we need to walk in the light of fellowship with struggles like pornography, we don’t have to wrestle with masturbation alone. The place to start is to talk to God about it. Tell him everything and ask him to convict you rightly. Then bring it into the light of fellowship by confiding in a trusted friend, mentor, or small group. If you are convicted that masturbation is a sin for you, here are practical ways to resist the temptation, whether you are married, single, widowed, same-sex attracted, or whatever your situation.
Train yourself to respond to the temptation by finding a place where you cannot masturbate (for example, take a walk outside).
Tell God about it. Tell God how frustrated you are to want something so much and not being able to satisfy it. Pour out your longings, disappointments, and ask him to help you through this trial—whether it lasts five minutes or much longer.
Take preemptive action by considering your entertainment habits. Are you watching movies, videos, and TV shows that increase your temptation to masturbate? Cut that entertainment out of your life temporarily or permanently, as wisdom dictates.
Replace lies with truth. Do you have the power to say no? Yes. Will it be difficult? Yes.
Find someone you trust to confide in about this struggle. As them to ask you about it periodically. Be honest with them. Ask for prayer when the temptation arises.
Whatever you think about this issue, be willing to ask yourself these questions. It is good for our souls to wrestle with these things in light of God’s commands, his love, and his mercy. Ultimately, I hope you know that there is forgiveness at the cross. There is no limit to what God, in Jesus, can forgive. If you fell off the wagon, it doesn’t mean you can’t start fresh today. And if you fall again today, it doesn’t mean you can’t start fresh tomorrow. His mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness.
I am not the first person, nor should I be the last, to point out that asking “how far is too far?” in regard to sexual expression is probably not the right question. Regardless, it is the question our children will ask because they are human and it is reasonable to wonder how much and what kind of physical affection they can show outside of marriage. It’s not an easy question to answer, is it?
Too many of the Christian authors I read as an adolescent tried to answer this question with a list of rules that all Christian teenagers were supposed to follow such as: don’t date until you’re ready for marriage; save your first kiss for the altar; if you’re going to kiss, don’t do it horizontally; never be alone together in a car; never be alone together period; don’t pray together—spiritual intimacy leads to physical intimacy; always pray together—prayer keeps lust at bay.
You may notice that some of the rules contradict each other. It was a choose-your-own-adventure situation—whichever book was “trending” in your youth group or church at the time—that was usually the purity standard for all. In my home church, there were a few different books making the rounds, so we had families who would only let their children “court”—where parental involvement was key—while others were reading books by Eric and Leslie Ludy, Elisabeth Elliot, and Joshua Harris, so they thought dating was permissible but serious—meant only for the purpose of finding a spouse. You could kiss and cuddle but only if you thought you were going to marry that person.
The impression we got from these books, whether the authors intended it or not, was that if we followed the rules exactly, we would succeed in sexual purity. The possibility that there may never be a wedding day wasn’t even a footnote, and the same-sex attracted and those harmed by sexual abuse were rarely, if ever, acknowledged. While these authors had a noble goal and some wisdom to offer, gray areas were painted black and white. Instead of being encouraged to develop individual discernment and face our own personal struggles with lust head on, many of us followed the rules laid out for us and learned how to look pure without actually practicing purity.
When I was a high school teacher, I watched how my students found ways to technically follow the school dress code while still expressing low-key rebellion. They would wear crazy socks under their slacks or huge bows in their hair. One day, a girl showed up with zombie eyes because she had put in fake contacts. My point is: we find loopholes. The young woman wearing long skirts and saying no to dates might also be maintaining a very active sexual imagination. The young man who boasts about saving his first kiss for his fiancée might also be looking at pornography on his phone at night. Sometimes lists of extrabiblical rules actually give us the opportunity to look and feel spiritual when we are really living in unrepentant sin.
I remember hearing about an evangelical megachurch in Southern California that decided to put a note in their church bulletin asking female congregants to refrain from wearing shirts and dresses with spaghetti straps to church. Abby Perry gives us some insight into the kind of logic behind decisions like this: “If boys saw bra straps, they’d think about bras. If they thought about bras, they’d think about breasts. If they thought about breasts, they’d be tempted to lust, and that would be our fault.”29 This thinking says: rules are the solution. Rules about modesty, rules about dating, rules about kissing. Lust is solvable if Christians would only follow the rules.
Beloved, our hearts don’t work this way. If we want to sin, we will find a way. If lust is our goal, we will meet that goal, inside or outside the rules. In a world where pornography is just a few clicks away and the media constantly promotes sexual exploration, the temptation to sexual sin meets us at every turn. It is not hard to find ways to sin sexually. Asking the women at your church to cover more of their shoulders is not the solution to sexual impurity when the billboard on the way to church features a woman’s cleavage and the strip club down the street is lit up like a Christmas tree.
This doesn’t mean that rules are wrong. Parents and institutions must have them. But if our desire is to teach our children how to live truly holy lives from the heart, we must understand the limits of our lists. If our desire is that they continue in purity long after leaving our care, we must teach them discernment, honesty, and how to search their own hearts. Legalism creeps in when we put our human rules about hugging and kissing on the same level of authority as Scripture. And lazy spirituality results when we teach our children that following our rules is all it takes to honor God.
Our children can make it to their wedding day as virgins and still be caught up in sexual sin. In encouraging virginity, we must also be honest about this: that appearing pure isn’t the same thing as pursuing sexual purity. We can fool ourselves, but we can’t fool God. I wish someone had told me how much sexual purity has to do with being honest with yourself. Because, though I have always been good at following rules, I have often fallen short of God’s sexual ethic.
I got the chance to think through purity culture rules versus personal discernment when I dated the second time around, after my divorce. Having been married before, I knew more about what was sexually tempting for me and what wasn’t. I knew what my boundaries needed to be. If you talk to your friends about their individual temptations to lust, you might be surprised at where some of them draw the line and others don’t. There are certain things we can probably all agree invite sexual temptation, but other things really depend on the individual. It’s important to remind our children that in dating it is not only their unique temptations to sexual lust that matter but their partner’s also. While they might be able to kiss passionately without being tempted to have sex, the person they are dating might find this difficult and discouraging to their pursuit of purity.
When it comes to holiness in sexual expression, we must first look to God and his Word. There are clear guidelines there: sex is for marriage between one man and one woman. Outside of that, we must ask ourselves if we are loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and body and loving our neighbor as ourselves with our sexuality. Asking this question provides us with a pause before action. It is in this pause that we create space to consider our motivations, our neighbor, and God’s glory. I often pray, God, give me that moment of pause, to recognize temptation to sin when it is happening. Then, give me the power, through your Holy Spirit, to do the right thing.
If you are a parent, you might be skimming this book for practical advice. I get that. As you have no doubt gathered, I don’t believe there is a universal set of extrabiblical rules that we should be handing every teenager, assuring them and ourselves that following them will guarantee sexual purity. I will leave your house rules up to you, but here I want to offer some practical advice about how to go about initiating conversations about sexuality with your teenagers.
I should state that I am not a parent yet. I hope you will find my advice helpful anyway, as it is drawn from years of working with teenagers and a decade spent teaching high school students. During lunch I would open up my classroom doors and invite my female students to eat with me. We usually talked about their friends, future plans, and the TV shows they were watching, but sometimes they wanted to tell me about who they had a crush on, their fears about dating, and even about their childhood sexual abuse, their addiction to pornography, or their regrets over going “too far” with a guy. It was incredible to me what they would share during a twenty-minute lunch break, under iridescent lights and over mediocre sandwiches.
Be a listener. Maybe you already feel like you’re a good listener. In fact, you would like to listen more, if only your son or daughter would let you in. But a good listener is not just someone who invites conversation. Good listening has to do with how you respond after they share their heart with you. If your teenager tells you about a problem they are having, you are probably going to want to respond with advice and offers to help. This is natural and loving. Of course we want to help! We don’t like to see anyone, especially our children, struggle.
But this is often where we lose them. They wanted to be heard. They wanted to feel safe enough to say something out loud. Just sharing took all the courage they could muster, and now they just need to know that you still love them. Often the best thing we can do after someone shares their heart with us is to thank them. Pause and affirm their bravery. Then, remind them that no matter what they are struggling with, have done, or have had done to them, you love them and always will.
Being a good listener doesn’t mean that you never give advice, guide, or correct your children. And of course, if they are in trouble, it is absolutely your job to protect them and report any abuse to the proper authorities. But when it is not a case of abuse, when your teenager is confiding in you about their struggle with masturbation, their attraction to people of their own gender, or what they did with their boyfriend last night, you have to be willing to allow for some silence, some space in between their vulnerability and your plan of action. First Thessalonians 5:14 says: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all” (ESV). Our children don’t always need us to tell them what to do. Sometimes, they just need us to be present and listen.
Avoid expressing shock. I am a very expressive person. People often tell me that I can’t hide what I’m feeling because I wear it on my face. The first time one of my students told me what had happened to them as a child, how they had been sexually abused, it was everything I could do not to burst into tears in the middle of their sentence. It’s not that weeping over someone else’s pain is wrong—in fact, sometimes this is exactly what Scripture calls us to do. But I was being asked to listen to someone’s story, and I knew that they wouldn’t continue if they felt their pain was hurting me.
When teenagers ask certain questions, it can stop our hearts and cause our minds to race about why they might be asking that particular question. This is probably one of the reasons they seldom ask their sexual questions out loud. They are worried about how it will come across. They are embarrassed by their curiosity or lack of knowledge. If we can do our best to hold our shock at bay and hear them out, I believe the teenagers in our lives will feel more encouraged to share with us.
One of my favorite college literature professors used to say, “As Christians, sin should always offend us, but it should never shock us.” I think our children need to know that we will always guide them to God’s Word and his standard but that their sin doesn’t shock us. That we believe the Bible when it says that each of us sin and fall short of the glory of God. When our children fail in purity, we will be disappointed. We will be grieved. But what they need to know more than anything is that we love them, and that God does too—that he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and quick to forgive.
Utilize their entertainment habits. One way I would engage my students was by using what they were already watching, reading, and listening to as a jumping-off point. I didn’t like that my eighth graders were watching the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, a show about a group of thirty-year-olds who talk openly about sleeping around and watching pornography, but I overheard them talk about the show and decided to use it one day as a chance to talk about biblical sexuality. I asked, “So, how do you feel about the way sex is portrayed in that show?” And a conversation ensued.
Another time I heard a male student singing a song with lyrics that objectified women. I’d heard it on the radio the day before. I asked him, “What do you think about the way that song portrays women?” This brought up other similar songs and movies, and ultimately resulted in a conversation about how we need to view one another as image bearers rather than sexual objects.
Did something happen in the news recently? Have you overheard your kids talking about a certain movie? Use what they are already interested in to start a conversation about how sexuality is depicted, what they think about it, and how God’s Word would speak to that issue.
Don’t make sex an idol or a dirty word. As Christians talking about sex, we tend to fall into one of two traps: we either demonize it or idolize it. Sex is not a dirty word. But when we talk more about the ways sex has been perverted and distorted than the God-created good of sexuality, we risk vilifying it. On the other hand, sex is not God. Within marriage, it is a gift, but it is not to be worshiped. It is only a shadow, not glory. In her book Things Your Mother Never Told You, Kim Gaines Eckert observes that:
We have begun worshipping the creation, sex, rather than the Creator God (Romans 1:25) . . . but neither our identity as sexual beings, nor the gift of sexual pleasure, is the thing itself. God has created us for union with himself, and sex and sexuality are signs that point us toward that ultimate good. Sex is wonderful, but it is not the ultimate. When we mistake it for such, we are bound to be disappointed.30
Somehow—and the balance is difficult to strike—we need to help adolescents understand that their sexuality is good but also that expressing it in a God-honoring, neighbor-loving way will be difficult. Viewing our bodies, sex, and marriage biblically is a lifelong challenge, one that takes work, active obedience, and leaning into the body of Christ. The fight is worth it, regardless of what we suffer or gain, because God’s glory is worth it.
If you let teenagers talk honestly with you, you’ll end up weeping with them over sexual abuse and their shame over sexual sins. You’ll find yourself getting to encourage them as they fight addictions to pornography, habitual masturbation, and lust. You will get to pray over them and love them as they question their sexual identity, the goodness of their bodies, and whether or not it is really worth it to lay down their lives in order to pick up the cross of Christ. It won’t be easy, but God will be with you.
1. If you ever have children, what will you tell them about sexuality and sexual purity? Or, if your children are older, what did you tell them? Would you do it differently now?
2. What should we tell children about their bodies? What is your opinion about using anatomically correct terminology when talking to young children about their bodies?
3. Can men and women be friends? Why or why not?
4. What would you say to someone who refuses to “press into the church” because they have been hurt by the church?
5. What are some practical things we can do in our local churches to make them a home, a family, and a refuge for those who enter?
6. How do hookup culture, pornography, and masturbation distort God’s intended design for sex?
Separate into smaller groups and discuss a pop culture artifact (for example, a song, movie, TV show, video game, news story) that could be used as a jumping-off point to start a conversation about sexuality with teenagers. What different topics might this artifact bring up? What guiding questions could you ask? Get back together as one group and discuss what each group came up with.