The Path To Masturbation and Pornography
This post is a little bit of a confessional for me and ripping away of the veil of pretenses. I have struggled with lust for most of my life. It was always my secret sin because as a girl growing up in a very strict Christian home lust was one of the worst sins I could possibly commit. I can’t tell you the number of times it was drilled into me at home and at church that I was to remain chaste, pure and a virgin until my wedding day. The only instruction that I was given was to keep my legs closed and I won’t bring dishonor to my God, family, and myself. This advice was extremely frustrating because although I and countless other girls were given the advice to keep our legs closed. The same due diligence didn’t appear to be given to the guys. There was this silent acknowledgment that boys will try and seduce me because at the end of the day boys will be boys. The problem is that this left me to be the sole gatekeeper to my chastity and didn’t address the issue of girls want sex too.
My experience growing up was something akin to living a double life. I had a heart for God and was very active in the church. I delighted in reading my Bible and learning about God and His ways. But on the other hand, I struggled at night alone in my bed with intense urges to masturbate. For the most part, I was able to keep the unexplained urges away until one night while watching tv in my bedroom I stumbled onto Cinemax at night. As I stared at the images on the screen I felt my conscience tell me to turn it off, that what I was watching was wrong. But at that moment something stronger than my conscience overruled it, and my body began to respond to what I was watching on the screen. That night led me down the path of being in bondage to pornography and lust.
Lambs to the Slaughter
I believe one of the biggest reasons why the instruction to just keep your legs closed fails to work time and time again, is because we live in a society that worships Love and Sex. In ancient times it was really easy to see what gods and goddesses reigned supreme in a society. Temples to goddesses of sex and pleasure were easy to find in times past. Although those societies have come and gone the spirits behind the deities still exist in our day. In today’s society, the worship of love and sex is saturated in our culture. Especially in American culture, the worship of love and sex is written about in our books, movies, songs, and fashion. In fact, it is not unusual for companies to advertise using a sexy model or actress because sex sells. The society we live in idolizes sex and as a result the spirits of lust and pornography reign virtually unchecked.
This is why giving a young girl or boy advice to just keep it in your pants or keep your legs closed never worked. Because even if on the outside a young person can refrain from sin, once you are behind closed doors like I was, the pull to masturbate (self-love) was always there. I was given physical natural advice to tackle a spiritual problem. Thus I never was told how to deal with this spiritual reality that was all around me. The more I watched porn and masturbated the more guilty and bound to sin I became.
Christian Watching Porn
I want to take a moment to talk about the corrupt nature of pornography in very real terms. When I first got hooked into pornography it was similar to the story of what you would hear a drug addict say about drug addiction. In my experience the initial climaxes I experienced when I was first watching porn were mind-blowing. But as time went on the intensity of the climaxes grew less and less. Which led me on a search for more intense pornography to get the same level of climax that I experienced in the beginning. This resulted in hours of watching pornography late at night and just like most drugs I couldn’t go to sleep at night until I masturbated. As I opened myself up to spiritual darkness each day, it led me down a path where masturbation wasn’t enough. I had to experience sexual interaction with another person. This led to phone sex on late night chat lines with complete strangers. The end result led me to want to meet and fulfill my sexual fantasies with another person.
During my descent into darkness, God never stopped reaching out to me to repent. I was still “saved” but my sin was separating me from the God I served. As time went on the thoughts and intents of my heart were on sex all the time. The irony of all this is that sex is a sacred act given to man by God himself. It is meant to be enjoyed wholeheartedly in the confines of marriage. What I found was that the reality of having sex never lived up to the fantasies I had in my head. I was never satisfied with my sexual encounters. It was by the grace of God that I didn’t get pregnant or catch a sexually transmitted disease. There was a part of me that was still terrified of being labeled a Ho, so I never racked up a high body count per se. However, the spiritual darkness grew within me every time I acted out on my lust.
Lust and Marriage
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