But I was having inner conflicts because of my religious upbringing. There was no question in my mind, at that time, that what I was doing was wrong. But I couldn't seem to help myself. I just HAD to masturbate from time to time or else I became miserable. I would try to quit, but then a couple of days later I'd do it again—or maybe two, three or four times on that day. I'd try to quit again, then I'd have a wet dream. It seemed about as difficult to leave alone as food.

Doubts started to build up about the sinfulness of something that was rapidly appearing to be a happy and quite possibly normal practice. By that time I understood the mechanics of reproduction and I knew that the white fluid contained sperm. I also knew that this was pumped into a woman's body through sexual intercourse. Obviously, intercourse would make my penis feel similar to those times when I masturbated. What was the damned difference between shooting the semen on my tummy or into the body of a woman? Why is one experience apparently all right with God while the other was not? It was almost as confusing as the concept of the trinity!

The whole contradiction reached a screaming denouement when I was about 15. I had a newspaper route and one evening, in a driving rainstorm, I was thinking of the right-and-wrongness of masturbation as I delivered papers. By that time I had experienced the fundamentalist conversion experience; I considered myself "born again." I desperately wanted to do God's will but this masturbation "sin" was my roughest stumbling block. I was failing God once, twice, sometimes three to six times daily. And, what's more, I was physically enjoying it. But, as preachers predicted, when someone does something which they are told is sinful, guilt keeps piling up.

As I peddled through my route the tears and sobs began to well up from the knot deep within my stomach. What was I to do? I had realized that it would probably be impossible for me to completely cease with my masturbating. But, then, I reasoned, what kind of a God did I have who would equip me with a healthy penis, lots of semen and good nerve endings to enjoy the sensation—and then call me a sinful brat for doing what came naturally? It just didn't seem right; something in this "masturbation is sin" rhetoric was dreadfully wrong. Dad had already told me that beating off would make me insane. Were all these confusing thoughts and emotions the onset of mental illness? Were my friends also going to go mad? Would we all end up in some sanitarium?

I still remember the house across the street from the fire station, now long gone. As I tossed Mrs. Henderson's newspaper onto her porch the tears were still flowing down my cheeks, mixing with the cold rain. With the toss of Mrs. Henderson's newspaper came my decision that I had to follow my body and not someone else's ideas. If I went insane, so be it. At least I'd feel good as I went mad. I was determined that my private playing with myself was going to continue regardless of my temporal or eternal fate. It just wasn't right to deny myself something that I truly enjoyed, something I was beginning to see as helpful and wholesome. My young mind went across a very long bridge in front of Mrs. Henderson's house. I had reasoned a difficult personal problem and come up with a logical solution. I had listened to the quiet voice of nature over the screams of hundreds of my dogmatic advisers. And as painful as it was for me, I had to confess that the God who had been painted for me just didn't fit with my own teenage reality. Over the years I've walked farther and farther away from that image of a snooping "genital guard" god.

The struggle on that newspaper route ended shortly after the decision in front of Mrs. Henderson's house. At the end of my route was a Mobil gas station. That night I parked my bike, ducked into the rest room, and paused a moment under the heat lamps. I was shivering cold and my clothes were entirely soaked; the warmth felt good. Quickly I went into the stall, pulled down my jeans and gently grabbed my cold and shriveled cock. It didn't take much manipulation to make it warm and erect. In a few minutes more my shoulders were thrown back, my penis pointing proudly up and out and my hand, fully encasing my meat, pumped furiously. A long stream of jism burst forth all over the toilet as my body convulsed in pleasure. After wiping up the mess, I reflected that I didn't feel a bit closer to insanity than when I started my route. If anything, I was leagues closer to sanity because I had begun the slow process of reclaiming my own mind and body.

As an aside, I refer readers to an excellent article written by Mark A. Taylor (republished in this website) which tells about how one young Idaho teenager resolved this masturbation-religion struggle by committing suicide. This sad story is repeated hundreds if not thousands of times each year simply because adults won't be honest with themselves or with their children. Masturbation is a part of life whether we like it or not. We have been kidding ourselves for centuries, living double lives: masturbating while we tell ourselves it's wrong. Then we inflict this confusion on our children.

For several more years I continued in my evangelical faith, even drifting for a while into charismatic Christianity (receiving the so-called baptism of the holy spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues and all the rest). My goal was to be a minister or an evangelist. But all the contention, the unrealistic inerrancy attitude toward an obviously flawed bible and the general lack of genuine joy in the evangelical lifestyle eventually led me into the Episcopal Church. I was a candidate for the priesthood when I finally decided I was living a lie. I left Christianity behind at that time and, for the first time in years, I felt a burden lift from my heart and mind. I'd been enslaved to a dogmatic system, which was strangling the happiness and reason out of me. There have been numerous intellectual reasons for this attitude shift, but it all started when, as a teenager, I recognized the incongruity of Christian teachings about the body and our sexuality. That is not to say that I made my decision because of masturbation; that was where the doubt started. You see, the church lied to me about my natural sexual feelings by telling me they were "impure," "best suppressed," "of the flesh," etc. I was specifically told masturbation was wrong and hazardous to my physical and spiritual health. Yes, these people were wrong and they acted out of misunderstood concepts of what the bible taught, but I had to admit that the experiences I was having with masturbation were absolutely not what I was being told they were. They were joyful, pleasurable, wholesome. I finally had to admit that I'd been lied to for whatever reason(s). And if I had been lied to about something as fundamental and as important as my own body and its sexuality, perhaps there were other things I'd been misled about as well. My search for truth began. I dearly wanted it to end up that my faith was correctly placed, but I had to finally admit that Christianity was false and that I had been suckered. A thorough study of the bible was what convinced me of that.

That departure from the church was 30 years ago and my life continues to get even better. Even though I have a regular sexual partner (my loving wife), I still enjoy masturbating. She enjoys masturbating, too. We do it in solitary; we do it together. It's a normal part of our lives and it can be a happy, rewarding part of anyone's life if we just give the pleasure police the finger!