It’s Not Fair!
As Pat and Lynne came into the house, Pat was smacking his lips saying, “Lynne, this candy bar is delicious. Too bad you can’t have one.”
Five-year-old Lynne broke into tears and said, “It’s not fair. I should have some candy too.”
In the kitchen, Mom heard the whole thing. “Pat, you’re fourteen and can mow lawns to earn money for candy. It would be best if you would share with Lynne. If you’re going to eat it without giving her any, at least don’t tease her with it. She’s right—it’s not fair for you to enjoy it and tell her how good it is if she can’t have any.”
Most of us would probably agree with what that mother said. We have a sense of fairness and would tell our children the same thing. But we do to our adolescents what Pat was doing to Lynne. We tell them how wonderful sex is and then tell them they cannot have any. This was not the situation as adolescence was being created. People then did not talk publicly about how good sex was.
The Joy of Sex
During the last half of the twentieth century we have made sex a topic of open discussion. Producers openly portray it in X- and R-rated movies and strongly imply it in PG-rated movies, especially those rated PG-13. Teens can find it not only in hard-core pornographic magazines, but in magazines at the checkout counter of the supermarket.
They also find it not only in novels, but also in nonfiction books. The Joy of Sex became a bestseller and was soon followed by More Joy of Sex. Then came The Joy of Gay Sex and The Joy of
Lesbian Sex. Children and adolescents do not even have to be able to read to get in on the current discussions of sex. Anyone who can turn on a television set can hear nearly any sexual topic discussed.
By 1970 Christians too talked openly about sex. In The Christian Family, Larry Christenson asked, “Isn’t there anybody around to say that sex is fun?” (Bethany, p. 22, italics his) In his pastoral advice to teens in The Stork Is Dead, Charlie Shedd asserted, “Sex is one of life’s most positive positives” (Word, p. 87, italics his). Almost a quarter of The Total Woman was devoted to sex, and that section ended with a chapter entitled, “Super Sex.” Other books had titles like Christian: Celebrate Your Sexuality, Intended for Pleasure, and Celebration in the Bedroom.
Today’s Christians point out that the Bible has many positive things to say about sex. Sex is not only for procreation and communication, but also for recreation. It is to be fun and to feel good. The Song of Solomon is dedicated to the joy of sexual love. In it both women and men are portrayed as enjoying sex greatly.
Referring to sexual intercourse with one’s wife, Proverbs says, “Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love” (Prov. 5:18-19, KJV). That is restrained King James English. Some modern translations are even more graphic.
You Can’t Have Any!
At the same time we tell adolescents how wonderful sex is, we tell them they cannot marry and have any. This is no problem for some people. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey found that about 3% of men under thirty-one reported frequencies of orgasm from zero to once in ten weeks for any five-year period. Other research has shown that perhaps about man in five and a larger percentage of women have little interest in sex. These individuals are happy, successful in their work, and are liked by their families. Sexual abstinence is certainly a valid option for a full life.
However, many individuals do not find this suitable. When Alfred Kinsey published his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Saunders) in 1948, people were shocked at the amount of adolescent sexual activity he reported. It was far more than most people had imagined. Regardless of the laws our legislators pass, adolescents are not nonsexual beings. They are adults with adult sexual desires. In fact, the adolescent years are the times of greatest sexual desire for some people, especially men.
Kinsey found the age of maximum sexual activity in men to be somewhere between sixteen and twenty years of age. The greatest number of “sexual outlets” (orgasms) occurred at about sixteen or seventeen in both married and unmarried men. If we assume that the fathers of these adolescents were between forty-one and forty-five years old, single adolescent men averaged nearly 70% more orgasms each week than their married fathers.
Not only was the total number of orgasms greatest during adolescence, but so was the number of sources of orgasm, such as intercourse, masturbation, nocturnal emissions, homosexual contacts, animal contacts, and so forth. The greatest average number of sources occurred between sixteen and twenty years of age. Among the younger-maturing men, 99.5% had a regular sexual outlet by the age of fifteen.
Passing laws to prohibit marriage simply did not stop sexual activity. God created us as sexual beings (male and female) in His image, and cultural restrictions do not abolish our sexuality. The fact is that the time of greatest sexual activity in males occurs shortly after puberty. Since our culture does not allow adolescents to marry and have sexual intercourse in marriage, they find other ways to express their sexuality. In fact, only a small percentage of either men or women have their first sexual orgasm in marriage.
Our secular culture has faced the problem of sexual frustration during adolescence and developed a variety of answers. Some people say that sexual intercourse between engaged couples is all right because they are going to marry anyway. Others say that sexual intercourse between individuals who care for each other is all right, since sex is a way of expressing love. Still others say that sex is simply a biological function and even love and commitment are not necessary. Of course, these answers are not compatible with biblical standards.
Unfortunately, the church has largely ignored this new problem created by the invention of adolescence. Christians continue to say that sexual intercourse before marriage is wrong (and it is), but they do not tell adolescents what to do with their sexuality. The church has accepted our culture’s invention of adolescence, but it has not told its adolescents what to do with their sexual desires. As Christian parents you must wrestle with this problem and help your adolescents develop a Christian view of their sexuality.
Sex in Your Sleep
If people are not regularly having sexual intercourse while awake, they are likely to have sexual orgasms in their sleep. These nocturnal emissions, or “wet dreams,” are more likely to occur in men than women. In fact, about one man in eight has his first ejaculation this way. Only masturbation is more common than this for a first orgasm.
About 83% of all men have nocturnal emissions and 99% of college men do. It is not college that causes them, but since most of them are single longer while they are in college, their bodies find some sexual outlet. Even though nocturnal emissions occur frequently in the late teens before marriage, they usually decrease or stop completely after marriage.
Nocturnal emissions occurred in Old Testament times, and are dealt with briefly in its early books. Unfortunately, in attempting to find what the Bible says about them, some Christians have taken verses out of context. Nocturnal emissions were clearly referred to only once. “If one of your men is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he is to go outside the camp and stay there. But as evening approaches he is to wash himself, and at sunset he may return to the camp” (Deut 23:10-11). Nocturnal emissions were rarely mentioned in the Bible, probably because people were often married at puberty and wet dreams were rare.
The man was referred to as being “unclean” or “defiled” because of his nocturnal emission. Some people have equated this with being sinful, but that is not the case. This referred to being ceremonially unclean and not allowed to take part in Jewish religious exercises. A menstruating woman was unclean for a week, and anyone who touched her or even touched something she sat on was unclean that day (Lev. 15:19-23). Note the variety of ways one can become unclean in the following verses and how one becomes clean again: uncleanness does not mean sinfulness.
He will also be unclean if he touches something defiled by a corpse or by anyone who has an emission of semen, or if he touches any crawling thing that makes him unclean, or any person who makes him unclean, whatever the uncleanness may be. The one who touches any such thing will be unclean till evening. He must not eat any of the sacred offerings unless he has bathed himself with water. When the sun goes down, he will be clean, and after that he may eat the sacred offerings, for they are his food. (Lev. 22:4-7)
Everybody Does It!
Someone said, “Ninety-five percent of men admit having masturbated, and the other 5% are liars.” Most sexual surveys agree with the 95% figure, but we must not conclude that the others are lying. Some men have less sexual desire, and others are having sexual intercourse regularly. Masturbation is not as common among women, but more than two-thirds of them have masturbated.
Masturbation is the chief type of sexual outlet during early adolescence at every social level. In fact, more than two-thirds of men have their first ejaculation this way, the most common way for them to start having orgasms. At its peak during adolescence, masturbation declines in later adulthood.
Sometimes masturbation is called “just a normal part of growing up.” Since we prohibit marriage so long after puberty during the time of greatest sexual desire, it is a part of growing up in our culture. It is not “normal” in the sense that it has always occurred, but adolescents in our society, unable to satisfy their sexual desires with a spouse, often masturbate. Masturbation by so many people is a result of our creation of adolescence.
What does the Bible say? Although secular authors in biblical times wrote about masturbation, the Bible says nothing about it. Even Christians who condemn masturbation today agree that the Bible does not discuss it directly. Of course, the Bible probably does not talk about it because masturbation was apparently much less common back then—when adolescence did not exist and people were having sexual intercourse as married teenagers.
Unfortunately, people have often misinterpreted three passages in the King James Version as talking about masturbation. The first one was when Onan failed to carry out the Levirate marriage law (Deut. 25:5-10). “And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore He slew him also” (Gen. 38: 9-10, KJV). Masturbation was sometimes called “Onanism” and condemned as sinful because of this. However, today people agree that Onan practiced coitus interruptus, withdrawing before ejaculation, rather than masturbation.
“Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1, KJV). If you read the context and the verse in a modern translation, you will find hat this verse refers to evil in general being planned at night and carried out during the day. People who masturbated with their hands in bed in the morning probably projected what they were doing into the particular wording of the King James Version.
Finally, “abusers of themselves with mankind, “are listed along with adulterers, thieves, and many others as those who will not “inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9, KJV). Because of the misinterpretation of this verse, masturbation has been called “self-abuse” and condemned as sinful. Again, if you read this verse in a modern translation, you will find that it is not about masturbation, but about homosexual behavior.
What do Christians say? Since the Bible does not deal with masturbation, people have come to different conclusions about it. A hundred years ago it was condemned by nearly everyone. O. S. Fowler called it “the worst form of excessive and perverted amativeness.” John Newman said it was a “crime wholly unnatural and … worthy only of brutes like the dog-faced monkey.” In 1886 a doctor said that he effects of “this horrible vice are the more pernicious the earlier it is practiced.” Masturbation was blamed for causing nearly every disease from acne to insanity.
By the middle of the twentieth century physicians and psychologists found that masturbation caused neither physical nor mental illness. Rather than seeing it as harmful, people began encouraging masturbation. They said that it felt good, released tension, was legal, was always available, was not hazardous to health, and helped one learn to control orgasm.
Modern Christians have taken positions as varied as those held by secular persons. Some believe that masturbation is sinful. For example, widely read Christian author Jay Adams agrees that the Bible makes no direct reference to it, but in The Christian Counselor’s Manual (Baker) he has a chapter section titled, “Masturbation is Sin.” He believes that the following four general biblical principles apply: We must not be mastered by anything; it is adultery of the heart; it is not presented as a biblical option; and it constitutes a perversion of the sexual act.
Other Christians take the opposite position. For example, in The Stork is Dead, Charlie Shedd (Word) has a chapter titled, “Masturbation—Gift of God.” He writes that it can be a positive part of an adolescent’s total development. Perhaps past generations were just blind to the truth. Masturbation may simply be the “wise provision of a very wise creator” who “gave it to us because He knew we’d need it” (p. 73). Shedd advises adolescents to thank God for it and to use it as a blessing.
Still other Christians have treated masturbation as a gray area, neither clearly right nor clearly wrong. In his book Sexual Understanding Before Marriage, Herbert Miles (Zondervan) has chapter sections on “When is masturbation sinful?” and “When is masturbation not sinful?” He concludes that though masturbation may be sinful in some cases, when practiced on a limited, temporary basis for the purpose of self-control, guided by Christian principles, and with no evil results, it is acceptable. Obviously Christians do not agree about the rightness or wrongness of masturbation.
At Least, Everybody Thinks about It!
Perhaps not all adolescents daydream about sex, but almost all do. In the 1930s psychologists Laurance Shaffer and Edward Shoben asked nearly 200 college students if they had ever daydreamed about certain topics and if they had recently done so. Sex was near the top of the list, and there was little difference between the men and the women. Among the men, 97% reported having had sexual daydreams, and 74% reported having had them recently. Among the women 96% reported having had them, and 73% having had them recently (The Psychology of Adjustment [2nd ed.], Houghton Mifflin).
Why would almost all adolescents daydream about sex at one time or another? We imagine things we want but cannot have. Well-fed people do not daydream about food, but starving people do—even people on diets do. Adolescents are not able to have sex whenever they want it, so they have sexual fantasies. Because the church says they should not have intercourse, Christian adolescents may have even more sexual fantasies than other adolescents who are engaging in other sexual activity.
What does the Bible say? Sexual fantasy is certainly nothing new, but such fantasy by large numbers of single adults is. The Bible says nothing specific about adolescent sexual fantasy. It could not, because adolescence did not exist.
While elaborating on the commandment against adultery in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). Notice that He was talking about adultery, not premarital sex. He was talking about sexual fantasy by married people, not adolescents. Since people could marry as soon as they became sexually mature, sexual fantasy before marriage was apparently not as widespread.
What do Christians say? Leading Christians disagree about sexual fantasy. Some say that if Jesus was equating lust with adultery after marriage, lust would likewise be equivalent to premarital sex. Some adolescents feel guilty if they have any thoughts about sex. I have known adolescents who struggled with sexual thoughts to the point of asking God to completely take away their sexual desires. A few years later, as their wedding day approached, they were glad that God had not answered their prayers.
Christian author Letha Scanzoni (Sex Is a Parent Affair, Regal) says that some sexual fantasies can be good if they are a way of planning for the future, a way of thinking how one would act before the experience occurs. She says that if one concentrates on the beauty of sex in marriage and does not imagine intercourse with an acquaintance, fantasy is acceptable.
Tim and Beverly LaHaye (The Act of Marriage, Zondervan) point out that sexual fantasy about your own spouse is not evil. Of course, this is no help to adolescents since they do not have spouses. All the LaHayes can offer single people is to “force your mind” to have only pure (nonsexual?) thoughts about other people. Obviously, Christians disagree about adolescent sexual fantasy.
What Can Parents Do?
The sexual issues are the most difficult problems of adolescence. We must remember that adolescence is a sexual event. By its very definition it begins at puberty, when people become sexually mature. It ends when society treats those people as adults, and one part of that is allowing people to marry and express themselves sexually with a spouse. Adolescent sexual issues are emotionally charged, the Bible is not clear on many of them, and Christians disagree.
Tell them they are normal. Guy, a Christian teenager, was angry with God. He said, “God is really cruel. He gives me these strong sexual drives but won’t let me get married. He must like to see people get frustrated.” What would you tell Guy? The main thing is to make sure he understands that keeping him from marrying is not God’s idea. In fact, before we created adolescence, he could have married.
You must make sure your teenagers realize that there is nothing wrong with them when they have sexual desires. Your adolescents may believe that they are oversexed, that they should not have the sexual desires they have. The problem is with their culture, not with them. Their new sexual desires are right on time, but their culture will not allow them to marry as teens and express those desires in marriage.
This does not mean that you approve of sexual intercourse before marriage. It means only that you accept the fact that strong sexual desires arise long before marriage is possible today. These desires are not sinful, but may lead to temptations that people of other times did not experience. The real problem is what to do with sexual desires, since society does not allow teens to marry.
Prepare them for puberty. Fourteen-year-old Ken woke up at 2:30 in the morning, realizing that something had happened. His pajamas were wet, but sticky—not like he had wet the bed. He thought maybe he was sick and could not urinate because he felt odd, but when he went to the bathroom everything seemed to be all right. He was frightened, but finally got back to sleep.
Sitting with her legs crossed twelve-year-old Clarissa noticed that when she swung one leg, it felt good. One afternoon while doing this, tension built up between her legs and suddenly something happened and she felt all relaxed. Her mother had talked with her about her menstrual periods which would start soon, and she thought maybe that was what happened. But that wasn’t it, so she was puzzled and a bit frightened. We need to prepare our adolescents for these orgasms. Teenagers who have them unexpectedly may be frightened and think that something is wrong with them.
During the nineteenth century some people called nocturnal emissions “vile personal pollutions” and saw them as sexual sin. They tried valiantly to stop these orgasms, but were largely unsuccessful in unmarried men. Some of these old attitudes are still around, and we must see that our teenagers are not troubled by them. We need to tell our teens that wet dreams are a sign of sexual maturity, not sin. They should realize they have so many of them because of the invention of adolescence. If adolescence had not been created, they would probably be married and having regular sexual intercourse with few nocturnal orgasms.
Be available to talk with your teenagers when they are ready. You may feel like talking during the day or early evening, but they may want to talk later. As one father put it, “My teens don’t even seem to be able to carry on a conversation before midnight.” You will get much further talking with them when they arrive home late at night if they are ready to talk than if you try to wait until morning because you are sleepy. When they wake up, they often have little to say and do not want to listen.
Be sure they understand that people are different. Puberty comes at different ages. It comes as early as nine or ten in some girls and not until as late as seventeen or eighteen in some boys. Some are tall, but others are short. Some are fat, and others are thin. Some have strong sexual desires, while others are relatively uninterested. Teenagers need to realize that they, like other adults, are varied.
Share your struggles. As I teach adolescents and talk with them, I find that they most often say, “I just wish Dad and Mom would share their own struggles with me.” Your teenagers want to know about your struggles with your own sexuality when you were teenagers. You may seem to present an image of a person who had no sexual conflicts as a teenager, and they have a hard time believing it. They want to know that you experienced adolescence and really understand what they are going through.
They also want to know what struggles you are having now. Since the Bible does not say anything about masturbation and Christians disagree, they want to know where you stand on the matter. They want to know if you have reached any conclusions. Your conclusions or current thinking can be of real help to your teenagers. Of course, you must be careful what you say. Sexual orgasms are not evil in themselves. Putting a load of guilt about sex on your teenagers will probably not help at all. If they are already masturbating, the guilt may increase rather than decrease it. God did not condemn masturbation in the Bible, but neither did he encourage it. It has become an expected part of growing up only with the invention of adolescence.
Warn them that fantasy is forever. Remember the rabbi in chapter 1 who said he was superior to his colleagues because he had married at sixteen, and he would have been free of sexual fantasy if he had married at fourteen. Memories are permanent, and adolescent sexual fantasies often reappear later, in marriage. Even when they want to think about their spouses, those old thoughts may return to plague them. Old habits are hard to break, and when problems come in their marriages, people are likely to return to their adolescent fantasies.
Many adolescents turn to pornography while masturbating and to stimulate their fantasy lives. This may lead to wrong conceptions of sex and should be avoided. The people in the pictures in the magazines do not even look like real people because makeup artists work on them before taking the pictures. Adolescents who have fantasized while looking at these pictures may be disappointed in what real people look like.
Sex researcher Shere Hite noted that pornography often shows “women writhing and arching like wild horses during orgasm” (The Hite Report, Dell, p. 152). She noted that most women become tense and rigid and lie stiff and still during orgasm. If they move at all, it is a spastic type of movement. Adolescents who fantasize about sex from pornography may be disappointed in the actions of real people. They need to be warned about the misconceptions pornographers are giving them.
Furthermore, pornography loses its appeal. The 1970 Commission on Obscenity and Pornography exposed college men to pornography for an hour and a half a day, five days a week, for three weeks. On the first day the acid phosphatase levels in the urine (an index of sexual arousal) nearly doubled. The second day it was only about a third higher, and it continued to drop as the experiment went on. The first day the men looked at the material 84% of the time. Then each succeeding day they spent less and less time with it. It lost its appeal in a matter of days.
New material results in sexual arousal, as anyone who uses pornography can tell you. That is why magazines such as Playboy, Playgirl, and Penthouse can successfully publish a new magazine every month. The old ones no longer arouse the people who bought them, so they sell the old ones to used bookstores and buy new ones. Theatres have to schedule new X-rated movies every week because the old ones lose their appeal. Adolescents who use pornography are setting themselves up for needing a new sexual stimulus every few days or weeks, not for a lifetime of marriage to one person.
In an experiment at Arizona State University men and women viewed either nudes from Playboy, Playgirl, and Penthouse or slides of abstract art. Then they evaluated their own mates. Those who had seen the nudes rated their mates as less attractive sexually, and said they felt less love for them. Sexual fantasy makes real people less desirable. Adolescents should know that.
Distinguish between temptation and sin. Tired of studying, Woody was letting his gaze wander when he noticed how attractive Eloise looked today. Suddenly he realized that he had an erection. He had not meant to do anything wrong, but he felt guilty. Had he lusted and sinned? That afternoon he went to talk with his youth minister.
The minister pointed out that when Jesus talked about lust in the Sermon on the Mount, He was not talking about passing sexual thoughts. That verse might better be translated to say that if you “look at a woman in order to lust after her,” you have committed adultery with her. That is, the purpose of your looking is to lust Furthermore, the word for lust is a very strong word meaning to desire greatly, not just noticing that the person is sexually attractive.
Adolescents should not feel guilty for having sexual thoughts or sexual arousal. Most people who understand the difference between temptation and sin can tell when they have crossed the line. Adolescents are adults and will have sexual desires and sexual thoughts. Only they can tell when they get into sexual sin.
You can control much of what comes into your home that would be likely to lead to sexual temptation. Magazines, records, television shows, posters, videos, and so forth are often the source of such temptation. You can keep such things from your home and ask your adolescents to do the same. This itself can help your adolescents control their thought lives. The Apostle Paul gives good advice when he says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Phil. 4:8). The best way to keep from thinking about wrong things is to think about right things.
The sexual activities discussed in this chapter are all solitary ones. They do not involve other persons. Ideally sexual activity implies commitment and communication in marriage, but our culture makes that illegal, so our adolescents satisfy their sexual desires by themselves. You can help them deal with nocturnal emissions, masturbation, and sexual fantasy.
2005 Update
When I wrote this chapter in the 1980s the Internet was not available to the public, so pornography was not available to people there. Nearly everyone is now aware of the vast amount of pornography on the Internet available anonymously to anyone, including adolescents, with Internet access. Although people generally agree that the vast majority of adolescents have been exposed to this pornography, no one knows how many, how often, or to what extent they have. International research is difficult, if not impossible, to conduct because there is no way of getting representative samples of youth worldwide. Even just doing such research in developed countries is difficult.
Since such pornography is so prevalent and adolescents are almost sure to find or get it at some time, parents need to tell them what to do when that happens. If the pornography comes within an email, they should delete it permanently immediately without replying to the address to “unsubscribe.” Such a reply lets the pornographers know that they have found a “live” address, and they will distribute that address to others and flood it with much more pornography. When this happens and the flood of pornography becomes too great, parents may have to get a new email address. Opening attachments on email from people they do not know or even from familiar addresses if there is not a personal note about the attachment from that person, are very dangerous. Not only may they open pornography, but their computer may get a virus or a worm.
Since nearly everyone will inadvertently hit a pornographic site while surfing the net, teens need to know what to do. The best thing is to instantly click the “back” button on the screen. Certainly they should not click on anything that will go to other places on the site. Sometimes clicking on an innocent looking link or mistyping a URL of a known site will also result in an unwanted site. Filters to limit finding pornographic sites should be set on search engines as well as your own server. The most common way Christians become addicted to pornography is to look at it “just to see if it is as bad as people say.” Teens should never to do this, because they will probably never be able to get the images and thoughts out of their minds.
Chat rooms and instant messaging are related ways to feed fantasies. Relationships with others can be formed, and teens have no idea who is sending them replies. Many people have unwittingly developed relationships with sexual predators and even made arrangements to meet them. This is even more dangerous than walking up to a stranger on the street and making an acquaintance. At least then one can see whether the person is male or female!
You can help your adolescent who wants to quit the habit of accessing pornographic sites by using some of the services available that report all websites accessed to accountability partners. These services report all websites visited from a given computer to that partner or partners. Deleting cookies, histories, etc. cannot stop the report, so the person who wants help will be confronted by the partners. These services are found at www.covenanteyes.com, www.netaccountability.com, and www.xxxchurch.com. Of course, if a person wants to access pornography, he or she can just find another computer to do so. A person who has repeatedly accessed pornography and tried repeatedly to quit will probably find it impossible without help from someone else.
Many other suggestions are in the brochure titled “What Missionaries Ought to Know about Internet Immorality” at www.missionarycare.com. The same information is in a chapter in the e-book, What Missionaries Ought to Know, on the same site.