Question:
Hello,
How do I get sexual thoughts out of my head, especially homosexual ones? It feels like when I quit masturbation for three days, my lust for men and sexual desire gets stronger. I came to you for answers because I’m a Christian. I’ve spoken with my preacher about homosexuality before. Each time, I leave the conversation so smug and ask myself, “How could anyone be gay?” Then, I commit sinful lust in my mind a few hours later. It seems no matter what, I cannot get sexual desire out of my head for more than 50 minutes at a time while I’m in Bible study.
When I see an attractive man online, I try to look away, but my dopamine levels go up, and I’m drawn back.
My longest streak of no masturbation was two weeks. I try to remind myself that I should remember my body is the temple of the Lord, but it’s so hard to remember when I feel so lustful. Ultimately, I pray for peace of mind and get 10 minutes of purity, but after that, my desires pump back up. I discovered that while praying and meditating on the scripture reading, my mind is taken off of the lustful desires. When I vent or do something else, it works for a second, but these thoughts haunt me. And when I commit them, I feel no godly sorrow.
I am a young Christian. I was baptized last year, but these problems keep piling up on me.
Please help. I feel my heart is getting ripped apart.
Answer:
It sounds like we have several issues that should be addressed. One thing that helps is to address each issue separately. When you pile them all together, it becomes difficult to sort them out.
It is very common for men to mix up their need to ejaculate with issues of lust and pornography. Therefore, we need to first talk about basic male biology. The male body produces semen constantly in glands called the seminal vesicles. Eventually, the seminal vesicles get full, and you have to ejaculate to get rid of the excess. To handle this need, as the seminal vesicles get full, they send out hormones that raise your desire for sex. In response, your mind drifts to sexual topics. You can redirect your mind to other topics, but it will soon drift back to sexual topics. As the seminal vesicles get near their capacity, it becomes increasingly more difficult to keep your mind off of sex. As a result, a guy ends up masturbating or experiences a wet dream, which in reality is masturbating in your sleep. The ejaculation relieves the pressure in the seminal vesicles a bit, and the cycle repeats.
The average young male ejaculates twice a week. This is why you struggle to avoid masturbation for more than three days. However, adolescent males go through frequent spurts when the seminal vesicles appear to be in overdrive. During those times, more ejaculations are needed to keep yourself under control.
This then leads us to the question of whether masturbation is sinful. Since this has been discussed before, I want you to go through “Is masturbation considered a sin?” Make sure you take your Bible and read the passages for yourself. What I hope you learn is that masturbation is not directly condemned or accepted. However, many things associated with masturbation, such as the use of pornography to get yourself sexually aroused, are condemned.
I’ve noticed that people often go overboard trying to remove what they think is a sin from their life. This is not to say that a little bit of sin is acceptable in anyone’s life, but we do tend to impose extreme rules upon ourselves — rules that we cannot meet because they are man-made in origin. Then, when we cannot keep our man-made rules, we decide we are failures and give up. That is why Solomon warns, “Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself?” (Ecclesiastes 7:16). Paul puts it this way, “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations– “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using–according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:20-23).
When you try to give up all ejaculations, your body conspires against you. It has to have relief because the seminal vesicles can only store so much semen. When you eventually give in, or instinct takes over and causes you to ejaculate, you decide you are a failure. The cure for this is to accept the fact that you are a male and you ejaculate. Stay away from pornography and lust for sexual sins, but when you need relief, there is nothing wrong with masturbating. You should not be chasing after masturbation, but if you need to ejaculate, it can be used.
Next, we need to address the problem of lust, but we first need to define our terms. Lust is a strong desire to sin — to the point that you justify the sin in your mind. As we noted, all guys experience a desire for sex. But a guy who takes that desire and wants to have sex without getting married is indulging in lust. Sin is never justifiable, but a guy involved in lust is looking for ways to sin and get away with it. This should not be confused with temptation (the realization that you could sin but don’t accept it).
You are being tempted by homosexuality, but you haven’t given in to that temptation. Looking at men as sexual objects is fueling your temptation. Men tend to be visual, but you are removing the essence of seeing people as real people and encouraging yourself to see people as mere objects. Instead of caring about others and what is best for them, lust encourages men to think only about themselves and what gives them a greater sexual high.
A common mistake is assuming that if your penis is erect, then you are wanting sex. It is hard to differentiate sexual desire and sexual response, especially in the teenage years. However, the fact is that your penis gets hard for a variety of reasons, of which sexual desire is just one. Yet, because of the assumption, you unintentionally train yourself to get sexually excited by specific images and thoughts. The good news is that what you have trained yourself to do can be untrained with some effort. The first task is to stay away from the internet when aroused. You can’t “accidentally” look at inappropriate images if you don’t have access to them. Also, read “Is there a way to get rid of homosexual attraction?“