Last updated on October 1, 2020
Question:
I’m 16. I’m gay and I’m sure of it because I used to play with sex toys. I have injured my body with those sex toys. I also masturbate a lot. For the last four years or more I have tried to change myself. I read my holy books and other books, but I am not able to find any solution. All I know is that I don’t want to be gay because I love a girl truly. But this addiction is not allowing me to do anything else. Please help me or else I’ll be finished by this thing only. I can’t bear it anymore. I just want to end it. It’s like a devil that is getting stronger inside me and making me weaker. I’m not able to fight this monster anymore.
Please help me. Please.
Answer:
I must disagree with you. To be a homosexual is to have sex with someone of the same gender. It sounds like you have been tempted by these ideas and might even lust after them, but you have not done this. Therefore, you are not a homosexual, and telling yourself that you are is only lying to yourself.
I’m glad you stopped injuring yourself. It isn’t unusual for teenage boys to masturbate frequently as they chase after the pleasure of orgasm. It isn’t good for you as it can lead to the temptation to look at pornography, which is a sin (I Thessalonians 4:3-5).
Reading religious books isn’t going to solve your problem until you start living by God’s standards. “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:21-25).