Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (8 page)

A few weeks
later, I was sitting in a barber’s chair when my friend’s dad
walked into the shop. Being somewhat shy, I didn’t say anything. Because
of my wet hair and the barber’s drape around my neck, he apparently
didn’t recognize someone he’d met only one time. Sitting down to
wait his turn, he picked up a
Playboy
magazine. I was stunned! I
watched to see whether he was “just reading the articles,” but he
immediately turned the magazine sideways to catch Miss March in her full
glory.

Is this you? Is there a secret, dark side to your Christian
image? If you’re a teen, are you going on missions trips during the
summer but still fondling some girl’s breasts in the backseat of a car?
If you’re in college, are you leading a Bible study on campus but
fantasizing day and night about the naked women you see on the Internet?

Who are you, really?

A search for the comfortable middle
ground is an inadequate approach to God. We must count the cost of
purity—and pay it. If we don’t kill every hint of immorality,
we’ll be captured by our tendency as males to draw sexual gratification
and chemical highs through our eyes—something we’ll discuss in the
next chapter. But we can’t deal with our maleness until we first reject
our right to mix standards.

Before Brenda gave birth to our fourth child, I (Fred) became
convinced through prayer that the child would be a boy, our second son. I was
so certain of this that I told her and a few close friends that I was
sure
it would be a boy.

As delivery day neared, the pressure rose.
“Why did I tell everyone?” I whined. “What if it’s a
girl? What if I’m wrong?”

With the start of Brenda’s
labor pains, the pressure seemed to double every minute. Finally, standing
under the bright lights of the delivery room and watching Brenda bear down in
the last moments before birth, I knew the moment of truth was near.

The
baby came out face up.
Good,
I thought.
I’ll have a perfect
view.
Anxious, I gently urged Brenda, “Come on, sweetheart. Push a
little more.”

The shoulders emerged. Just a few more inches, I
thought. And then?
Arrrggh! What are you doing, Doctor?
He turned the
baby toward himself at the last moment, just as the hips and legs popped out.
Now I could only see the baby’s back.
C’mon, c’mon,
I cried out inside.

The doctor and nurse said nothing. It was
maddening! Methodically and efficiently, they dried the baby, suctioned the
throat, and slapped a silly little cap on the newborn. When the doctor finally
presented our new child to me, the legs were flopping apart. Immediately I
looked down; I just had to know.

“It’s a boy!” I
exclaimed. Most definitely.

And being a boy means having certain
qualities that come “hard-wired” with the package.

Why the
prevalence of sexual sin among men? We got there naturally—simply by
being male.

My son Michael is now nine years old, and his older
brother, Jasen, is seventeen, and I can assure you that both are definitely
males. As I raise them, I’m aware of the natural tendencies inherent to
maleness that will touch every aspect of sexual purity for them, just as they
do for me. In other words, our very maleness—and three male tendencies in
particular—represents the second main reason (in addition to
“stopping short”) for the pervasiveness of sexual impurity among
men.

Male Tendency #1:
We’
re Rebellious by Nature

When Paul explained to Timothy that “Adam was not the one deceived;
it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner” (1 Timothy 2:14),
he was noting that Adam wasn’t tricked into eating the forbidden fruit in
the Garden of Eden. Adam knew it was wrong, but he ate it anyway. In the
millennia since then, all of Adam’s sons have tended to be just as
rebellious.

Author George Gilder in his 1973 book
Sexual
Suicide
reported that men commit more than 90 percent of major crimes of
violence, 100 percent of the rapes, and 95 percent of the burglaries. Men
comprise 94 percent of our drunken drivers, 70 percent of suicides, and 91
percent of offenders against family and children. Most often, the chief
perpetrators are single men.

Our maleness brings a natural, uniquely
male form of rebelliousness. This natural tendency gives us the arrogance
needed to stop short of God’s standards. As men, we’ll often choose
sin simply because we like our own way. We think we’re different. We
think we can handle it. But as we saw in the last few chapters, mixing
standards and choosing our own way will ensnare even the finest Christians with
the deepest hearts.

Male Tendency #2: We Have a Strong,
Regular Sex Drive

The human male, because of sperm
production and other factors, naturally desires a sexual release about every
seventy-two hours or so. How does this cycle impact sexual purity of the eyes
and mind? It means your body isn’t reliable to help much in the battle
for sexual purity and obedience. We easily identify with Paul:

When I
want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight
in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body,
waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of
sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! (Romans 7:21-24)

Our bodies often break ranks, engaging in battle against us. This
traitorous tendency pushes our sexual drive to ignore God’s standards.
When the engine of our sexual drive combines with our natural male arrogance to
go our own way, we’re primed and fueled for sexual captivity. The means
of ignition, meanwhile, comes from the third male tendency, which is the most
deadly.

Male Tendency #3: We Receive Sexual Gratification
Through Our Eyes

Our eyes give us men the means to sin
broadly and at will. We don’t need a date. We don’t ever need to
wait. We have our eyes, which we can use to imbibe sexual gratification at any
time. We’re turned on by female nudity in any way, shape, or form.

We aren’t picky. It can come in a photograph of a nude stranger just
as easily as in a romantic interlude with a naked girlfriend. We have a visual
ignition switch when it comes to viewing the female anatomy.

Women
seldom understand this because they aren’t sexually stimulated in the
same way. Their ignitions are tied to touch and relationship. They view this
visual aspect of our sexuality as shallow and dirty, even detestable.
“When I first heard about how men are, it seemed so wild and unlike
anything I could imagine,” said my wife, Brenda. “I had a hard time
believing it and occasionally even wondered if men were making it up. I
don’t want to sound mean, but because women don’t generally
experience this problem, it seems to us that most guys don’t think about
anything but sex.”

Because women can’t relate, they have
little mercy on us and rarely choose to dress modestly. Walking the halls of
any public high school in America can leave a guy gasping for breath! But
visual sexual gratification is no laughing matter in your fight for sexual
purity. Given what the sight of nudity does to the pleasure centers of our
brain, and given the fact that it’s pretty easy to see many naked or
near-naked women these days, it’s no wonder our eyes and mind resist
control.

We’
re Talking
Visual Foreplay

Let’s restate this third natural
male tendency in different words so you don’t miss the point:
For
males, impurity of the eyes is sexual foreplay.

That’s
right. Just like stroking an inner thigh or rubbing a breast. Remember:
Foreplay is any sexual action that naturally takes us down the road to
intercourse. Foreplay ignites passions, rocketing us forward by stages until we
go all the way.

God views foreplay outside marriage as wrong. We get a
glimpse of this in Ezekiel 23:3, where God, portraying the waywardness of His
chosen people, uses the picture of virgins in passionate sin: “In that
land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosoms caressed.” If
you’ve ever argued that God doesn’t address “petting”
in the Bible, let this verse serve as a corrective to your thinking. Just as
instructive is the overall thrust of New Testament teaching on sexual purity
(which we listed at the end of chapter 3) and the application of those
standards, mentally as well as physically. From God’s viewpoint, sex is
far more than being inside a woman.

What acts constitute foreplay?
Clearly, caressing the breasts is foreplay. Why? Intercourse is sure to follow.
If not with her tonight, then at least with masturbation later back home. If
not with her tonight, then maybe tomorrow night when her will has
weakened.

Masturbation while fantasizing about specific girls or over
certain pictures is the same as doing it. Remember the standard Jesus set?

You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But
I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28)

For married men,
lustfully thinking of another woman is the same as having physical adultery. If
that’s true, then for single men, lustfully thinking of women must surely
be the same as doing it as well. How much more so if you’re masturbating
while you do it!

What else is foreplay? Mutual stroking of the genitals
is foreplay. Even stroking the top of the thigh can be foreplay. (Young men may
not see it that way, but fathers do! If I saw a boy stroking my
daughter’s thigh, I wouldn’t just wink and turn away.) When a girl
lays her head in the lap of a teenage boy, that’s foreplay. You may think
that’s a mild form, but that’ll get your motor running at levels
too high for young motors. Even slow dancing can be foreplay if certain parts
of the body are in close contact.

This isn’t to say that young
couples can’t relate physically in ways that aren’t foreplay, such
as holding hands, walking arm-in-arm, or even engaging in a short kiss. But
heavy kissing around the neck and chest leads naturally to taking off some
clothes, which leads to mutual masturbation, which leads to intercourse.

You may be asking, “What does all of this have to do with my
eyes?” Impurity of the eyes provides definite sexual gratification.
Isn’t that foreplay? When you see a hot movie scene, is there a twitch
below your belt? What are you thinking when you’re on the beach and
suddenly focus on a jaw-dropping beauty in a thong bikini walking past you? You
gasp while Mission Control drones, “We have ignition!” You have her
in bed on the spot, though only in your mind. Or you file away the image and
fantasize about her later.

You stare at a sexy model and lust. Your
motor revs into the red zone, and you need some type of release or the
engine’s going to blow. You’re preparing your body for intercourse,
even if it’s “false intercourse” with a jar of Vaseline.

No doubt about it: Visual sexual gratification is a form of sex for men. As
males, we draw sexual gratification and chemical highs through our eyes. Alex
remembers the time he was watching TV with his sister-in-law. The rest of the
family was at the mall.

She was lying flat on her stomach on the floor
in front of me, wearing tight shorts, and she’d fallen asleep watching
TV. I was on the chair, and I happened to look down and see her upper thigh and
a trace of her underwear. I tried to ignore it, but my heart started racing a
little, and my eyes kept looking at the back of her upper thigh. It got so
exciting that I began to stare and get really excited. I had to release it
somehow. I masturbated while she slept, right out in the open.

In
Alex’s case, impurity of the eyes was clearly foreplay, which led to
further sin. It’s critical to recognize visual sexual impurity as
foreplay. If viewing sensual things merely provides a flutter of appreciation
for a woman’s beauty, it would be no different from viewing the awesome
power of a thunderstorm racing over the Iowa cornfields. There would be no sin
and no problem. But if it
is
foreplay, and you
are
getting
sexual gratification, then it defiles your body and your relationships:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his
body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received
from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God
with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)

And it’s certain that
you’ll be paying a cost that you may not even be aware of:

Do
not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who
sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction.
(Galatians 6:7-8)

Our eyes,
then, explain why no one escapes, and the problem never goes away without a
fight. Before we experience victory over sexual sin, we’re hurting and
confused.
Why can’t I win at this?
we think. As the fight wears
on, and the losses pile higher, we begin to doubt everything about ourselves,
even our salvation. At best, we think that we’re deeply flawed, or worse,
evil persons. We feel very alone, since men speak little of these things.