Not even a hint

It was not without some scepticism that I accepted the offer of a lend of Every Young Man’s Battle. I had seen copies of the books on the shelves of Toowrong, and, while I was admittedly curious about how (seemingly) the authors had written an entire book on masturbation and pornography, it did seem to be a bit redundant. Having read Every Young Man’s Battle (herein abbreviated to EYMB), I can understand its place and usefulness as a resource for Christian boys and young men, but can also see limits on the contexts in which it could be used, and limits in its fairly strongly-worded message.

The book starts from the premise that almost every Christian guy is going to struggle in the climate of sexual temptation and immorality of the fallen world. Fair enough, I say. It is impossible to escape such immorality, especially in the form of imagery – it’s on our TVs, our billboards, in magazines (even shopping catalogues, argues EYMB), on CD covers, and on the Internet. Clearly, it is difficult for Christians to stay pure and not drown in the sea of such images, and I suppose this difficulty may lead to Christians being tempted not only to engage with such images, but also to lower their standards of purity so that it doesn’t seem like such an unforgiving task.

The authors of EYMB (Steve Arterburn and Fred Stoeker) advocate for a standard of sexual purity set in Ephesians 5:3 –

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

Starting with this standard, Arterburn and Stoeker proceed to examine what they believe to be the biggest struggles for teenage Christian boys (namely, pornography and masturbation) and address these struggles through the application of certain tactics which, they say, will decrease the degree of temptation by changing one’s thoughts and behavioural patterns.

Overall, I guess the theology of their argument is sound. God wants His people to be holy and righteous, and part of that holiness and righteousness is indeed sexual purity. It is appropriate, then, to try and change our thinking and our behaviour to avoid sexual temptation (so that we do not sin) and aim to live in a Christlike way, honouring the Lord through our relationship with Him and our relationships with others. While Arterburn and Stoeker did employ a fair bit of ‘tossed-salad’ selection of Old Testament verses, trimmed of any context, to seemingly support their arguments, the underlying message appears solid. My difficulties with EYMB came in the particulars.

Firstly, the discussion of masturbation is extensive – perhaps too extensive, given that it occupies nearly a third of the book. The authors pull no punches in describing their own situations, including when they first learnt to masturbate and the decline in their own sexual purity which resulted. They also allow for some talk of the psychology of masturbation, including the substitution of false intimacy for real intimacy and why that might be occurring. Their general thesis seems to be that the male body should only require sexual release every seventy-two hours, and this should occur via nocturnal emissions (‘wet dreams’) unless there is some other release occurring (i.e. masturbation).

I think the biggest strength of EYMB is found in the blunt and honest discussion around this topic and the topic of pornography, as they have brought what is largely a controversial taboo out into the open. And, helpfully, they err on the side of encouraging young Christian men to aim to not masturbate at all, as they state that it is the lustful fantasising which is paired with masturbating, rather than the act itself, which is the problem.

But at the same time, others have commented that the candid language is occasionally graphic and can be unhelpful. Do we really need to read about how the authors discovered masturbation? Do we need a racy description of the pictures they masturbated to? My answer is ‘no’, though I suppose the authors are targeting those who are quite entangled in this particular area of sin.

Secondly, the range of tactics offered was fairly limited. In fact, I only really remember two – ‘make a covenant with your eyes’ and ‘stop feeding your sumo sex drive’. The former is derived from a single verse in Job, where Job states that he has made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at women – Arterburn and Stoeker argue that making a similar covenant means that young Christian men need to train their eyes to ‘bounce’ off anything which they might ‘lock onto’ in lust. Again, I felt that it was a bit odd to isolate one verse, but I guess the strategy in and of itself is fine, especially as it tries to train one’s eyes to quickly avert from something which might otherwise cause one to sin.

The sumo sex drive thing was all very American and affirmative, and a bit pop-psychology, but was also vaguely helpful. The authors believe that when men look at women lustfully, they store the images as memories, which creates a ‘sumo-sized sex drive’ which becomes gradually harder and harder to resist. By training your eyes to ‘bounce’ off women, the idea is to ‘starve’ the sex drive until it is more controllable. Again, the idea is good, as it targets the fantasising which underlies problems like masturbation, and aims to reduce the strength of the urge to act on such fantasising.

From memory, though, the authors stopped at suggesting that Christian men memorise a ‘sword’ Bible verse (to use in the heat of the moment) and a ‘shield’ Bible verse (to use when you know temptation is coming) as defences. I personally would have gone further and suggested ways you can avoid temptation entirely – for example, not using the Internet when you’re alone if you are tempted to use it to look at pornography, or not going into newsagencies alone if you are tempted to buy raunchy magazines. I think they may have touched on this, but I recall their main emphasis to be on tackling temptation when it hits, rather than avoiding it entirely if possible.

I also didn’t really like their suggestion that we should emphasise intimacy with God as a real replacement for the false intimacy of pornographic images which feed the sex drive. It seemed to me that they were perhaps equating a sexual intimacy with a very different kind of intimacy which we might experience with God – the fact that they suggested we sing love songs to God (and when they say ‘love songs’, they mean love songs) made me feel a bit creeped out. Perhaps it would have been better to focus on God in other ways than using mushy quasi-Christian lyrics, though maybe this is just my personal bent.

Anyway, overall, I think the book has a lot of strengths and can bring a lot to the Christian scene. As I said earlier, I think it’s best selling point is that it acknowledges two very big and very awkward elephants in the room of Christian living, and seeks to have an honest and candid (though sometimes overly so) talk about how Christians can get past the shame and keep each other accountable in striving for purity. It strikes me as the kind of book which has its place for young men in particular situations, much like the books a man might read shortly before getting married. Maybe worth borrowing from a friend and having a read, but make sure you return it – perhaps in a suitably-unmarked brown paper bag?