Masturbation And Sexual Health

There might be only a few people at most who would still truly argue that masturbation leads to physical deformities or death, but the more popular charge against masturbation in some circles is that it emotionally or spiritually harms those who engage in it an arbitrary number of times within a given timeframe.  Thankfully for many, this is untrue.  There is only one condition under which masturbation is likely to be connected with issues negatively affecting one's life or mental health, and it is not one of regularly pleasuring oneself.

If anything, basic masturbation is more likely to impact mental health in a positive way, whereas there is no inherent physical health risk even from consistent masturbation.  Sexually transmitted diseases, by definition, cannot be received merely by masturbating, and no correlation between simple masturbation and physical health problems exists.  There is not even anything Biblically immoral about masturbating to imagery of the opposite gender in itself [1].  The context in which masturbation can be harmful, however, is when someone crosses the line past which the practice disrupts their obligations to others.

While this line is objective in that to cross it objectively hinders other aspects of someone's life, it is person-dependent in that the line allows for differing amounts of masturbation in different people's lives.  Beyond this, there is nothing morally harmful about masturbation itself--to oneself or to others--as long as a person is not objectifying any members of the opposite gender they might be imagining or looking at during the process of self-pleasuring.

It is completely erroneous to say that masturbation is harmful to a person's mental or physical health except in extremely abnormal situations.  For those who do misuse masturbation by engaging in it too often, the harm would not even come from masturbation at all, but rather from their own lack of self-control or commitment to social or work obligations.  Masturbation, left to itself, tends to have positive effects rather than negative ones!  This should not surprise Christians who are not hostages to legalistic asceticism.  God did not create human sexuality in order to condemn almost every single expression of it, after all.

The reason why masturbation is still treated as something that must always be secretive and discouraged by some in the Christian and secular world is not because it is emotionally, spiritually, or physically damaging (it is far from these things in most cases).  Prudery and a reluctance to challenge assumptions are to blame for the discomfort many Christians might associate with the practice.  Rationality and openness about the nature of healthy sexuality are the antidotes to this culture of prudery that even now still has power over people inside and outside of the church.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/masturbating-to-mental-imagery.html