Chapter 4: If Your Right Hand Causes You To Sin
From People's Chosen God, by Chad Hayes
Readers who grew up in the white evangelical subculture will almost certainly have heard of Focus on the Family. This organization, founded by Dr. James Dobson in 1977, has been one of the most prominent voices in the evangelical world for decades. Dobson and Focus on the Family had an enormous impact on the beliefs that were instilled in me and millions of other children, evangelical or otherwise. I grew up listening to their Adventures in Odyssey audiobooks and subscribed to Clubhouse magazine. And my introduction to puberty was a Focus on the Family audio-cassette series that I listened to on a weekend trip with my dad when I was around 12. It talked about body hair and body odor and erections. It discussed feelings of sexual attraction—to girls, of course—and the importance of remaining abstinent until marriage. And then it talked about masturbation.
Masturbation was a topic that was rarely mentioned in my church or Christian school as I was growing up; in fact, this is the only time I recall it being openly discussed in this sort of context during my adolescent years. It’s an awkward thing for church leaders or Christian school teachers to talk about, not only because of the nature of the topic, but because there isn’t really a consensus on how to address it.
Some have argued that Onan’s sin in Genesis 39—one that God viewed as worthy of death—was masturbation, even naming this sin “onanism” in his memory. But an honest reading of the text makes it pretty clear that it wasn’t masturbation generally that angered God, but rather Onan’s refusal to perform his duty to impregnate his dead brother’s wife, instead “spill[ing] his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother.”1
When I was growing up, I thought Jesus was referring to masturbation in Matthew 5, when he equates looking at a woman lustfully to adultery and tells his followers, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”2 I wasn’t alone in in my conviction that the sin caused by one’s right hand in this context is a reference to masturbation. And judging by the ubiquity of eyeballs and hands among evangelical men, it seems that I also wasn’t alone in failing to apply the doctrine of biblical literalism to this particular passage.
Regardless of Jesus’s intent in Matthew 5, the consensus among white evangelicals on the permissibility of masturbation is that there is no consensus among white evangelicals on the permissibility of masturbation.3 Tim and Beverly LaHaye write in The Act of Marriage, “Is it wrong for a Christian to masturbate? There is probably no more controversial a question in the field of sex than this,” and conclude that “the Bible is silent on the subject; therefore it is dangerous to be dogmatic.”4 (Shockingly, they applied this same logic to abortion when this book was published in 1976.)5 In Real Marriage, Grace and Mark Driscoll describe the permissibility of masturbation as “a very difficult and complex question.”6 The authors of Every Young Man’s Battle write that “masturbation isn’t addressed in the Bible, so there’s no direct, definitive scripture that says the practice is right or wrong.”7 James Dobson’s stance is similarly hands-off: “Unfortunately, I can’t speak directly for God since His Holy Word, the Bible is silent at this point.”8 And Lewis Smedes, the author of Sex for Christians, says that “It all depends.”9
Depends on what, exactly? The authors of Every Man’s Battle shed some light on this question after repeating the party line that “Scripture is silent on the topic of masturbation.” They write that “isolated instances of masturbation to relieve sexual tension are okay, if you’re focusing on your wife, not some supermodel, during periods of separation or illness,” but they warn that “wanton masturbation, tied to pornography or whatever gets your motor running, is always sin, putting distance between you and God.”10 From what I can recall, the approach that Focus on the Family took in my intro to puberty audio-cassette series was that masturbation isn’t a sin, but—citing the passage from Matthew 5 above—that sexual fantasies are impure, so if you’re going to masturbate, just be sure not to have any sexual thoughts while doing it. While I’ve read that some people have the ability to masturbate without sexual thoughts, I’m certain that I’m not the only person that struggles to decouple those two things.
For most evangelicals, it isn’t the physical act of masturbation, but the thought-crime of “lust” that is the issue. And while I rarely heard masturbation mentioned specifically as an adolescent, the necessity of avoiding lustful thoughts was a constant refrain. An industry, even. Every Man’s Battle, along with the other books in the series which has sold over 4 million copies, frequently employs the language of warfare with regard to maintaining mental sexual purity. The authors encourage readers to arm themselves with a “sword” and a “shield.” For the “sword,” they “recommend a single ‘attack verse,’ and it better be quick. We suggest the opening line of Job 31: ‘I have made a covenant with my eyes.’”11 (In this case, the selection of only a portion of a verse is purely for tactical purposes due to its brevity, and not so that it can be disingenuously interpreted; the verse in its entirety reads: “I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.”)12
As for the “shield,” they recommend 1 Corinthians 6:18-20: “Flee from sexual immorality…You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Because they are God’s property, married men are told that they don’t “have the biblical right to look at other women.”13 God paid for them, and they have no right to control even their own thoughts. Evangelical men are directed by the Apostle Paul to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,”14 and they are told that when faced with the decision of whether to engage in sexual fantasy or look at pornography, “You have no right to look at that or think about it. You haven’t the authority.”15
The authors write that “males receive sexual gratification through the eyes. Our eyes give men the means to sin broadly and at will. We don’t need a date or a mistress. We don’t ever need to wait. We have our eyes and can draw sexual gratification from them at any time.”16 And because sexual thoughts—again, viewed by many as equivalent to adultery—are often triggered by visual stimuli, they encourage men to “set up your first defense perimeter with your eyes” by “employ[ing] the strateg[y] of bouncing your eyes” away from lust-provoking things like magazine advertisements or billboards featuring attractive women.17
They encourage men to evaluate the situations in which they are most frequently “attacked” and take efforts to avoid them. These measures include tearing off magazine covers that feature “overtly sensual female(s)” and immediately changing channels when “assaulted by commercials showing a bunch of half-naked women cavorting on some beach with some beer-soaked yahoos”—or better yet, covering the hotel room television with a blanket to eliminate the exposure altogether. Men should “build a reflex action by training [their] eyes to immediately bounce away from the sexual like the jerk of [their] hand away from a hot stove.”18
But lust isn’t stimulated only by print and video media; there are actual women to worry about as well—“female joggers,” even—they’re a recurring theme in the book, perhaps due to the fact that one of the authors crashed his Mercedes while ogling one. Unfortunately, “we can’t eliminate attractive women from our lives,” but one of the authors has developed a strategy for managing the uniquely intense temptation posed by…receptionists: “When I see her standing, I avert my eyes even before she bends over. Or if I see her walking toward a file cabinet, I avert my eyes before she bends over for that file, leaving me that nice view of her rear end.”19
If contact with an attractive woman can’t be avoided altogether, men are encouraged to make themselves seem as undesirable as possible, so as not to arouse the desires of the woman and to avoid the consensual sex that would almost certainly happen if they let down their guard: “Always play the dweeb. Players flirt…learn to un-flirt. Players banter…learn to un-banter. If a woman smiles with a knowing look, learn to smile with a slightly confused look, to un-smile.”20 This approach presents women as sexual objects that exist to fulfill the sexual desires of men, while also implying to men that women are universally available to them, and it creates an environment that both fosters and obfuscates sexual abuse. Every Man’s Battle provides an excellent, albeit horrifying, example of how the evangelical approach to sex can lead to sexual abuse:
Consider Kevin, who is married with three kids. While working with the youth group at church, he met a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl. ‘She’s a knockout, and looks more like twenty…Sometimes I’d ask about boys she’s known and dated, and we’d joke and laugh a lot, but sometimes I went too far…Last week when my wife and kids were out of town, I gave this girl a ride home. We got talking dirty again, and somehow I bet her that she wouldn’t pull her pants down for me. She did. I lost my senses, and I drove her to a park and we had sex. I’m in real trouble! She told her parents about it, and they may press rape charges!21
This scenario, in which Kevin clearly groomed and eventually raped a child, is presented as an indiscretion. Kevin’s surprise that he might be charged with the crime he committed is the result of viewing his actions as sexual sin rather than sexual violence. And equating the sexual “sin” of lust, which many men “fall into” daily, to adultery minimizes the severity of other sexual sins, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse. I am in no way condoning Kevin’s actions or those of any other abuser, but it is important to note that evangelical teachings about sex create an environment in which sexual abuse is frequently not recognized for what it is, either by perpetrators or by survivors. I’ll return to this in a later chapter.
The evangelical focus on avoiding lust is surpassed only by the need to avoid its visual manifestation, pornography. In his book Addicted to Lust, Dr. Sam Perry writes that while many evangelicals he interviewed saw masturbation as permissible, “Conservative Protestants tend to be unambiguously and almost unanimously opposed to pornography.” In all his research, he did not encounter a single conservative protestant that made “an allowance for the possibility that watching pornography might be morally acceptable.”22
Tim LaHaye called pornography “one of the most serious social scourges of our nation” and blamed it for “rising levels of venereal disease, child sexual abuse, homosexuality, divorce, rape, and social deterioration in America.”23 He claimed that “fully two-thirds of the sexual problems in marriage today can be traced to the use of pornography,” and that “if proper investigation were made…pornographic literature and movies would be declared the prime causes of today’s sex crimes.”24
Focus on the Family also proclaims that pornography is harmful for multiple reasons: “Any use of pornography is sinful and cripples the ability of the abuser to see sex and intimacy in a healthy and biblical light. It also subtly and increasingly changes the user’s perception of the opposite sex.” They warn that because pornography causes the brain to become “tolerant to the neurochemicals” produced when viewing porn, frequent use of pornography can lead to the wildly slippery slope of “frequenting strip clubs, seeking prostitution, engaging in affairs, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual aggression, sexual harassment or pursuing other sexual activities.”25
They present as an example Gene McConnell, the author of the article I quoted in the previous paragraph. Gene was “an ordinary businessman with a wife and daughter” whose “fascination with pornography became the fuel that caused his normal life to explode.” Gene recounts the story of how a journey that started with pornography led to “strip-tease or topless bars, then to massage parlors and prostitutes. Finally, I started fantasizing about what it would be like to actually rape a woman. I tried it one night when I saw a woman who ‘fit’ the scenario in porn. Fortunately, I didn’t go through with it.”26 Rather, after following the “young woman” to her car in a dark parking lot, forcibly entering her car “with the intention of raping her,” and putting his hands around her throat, Gene thought better of his plan and apologized before walking to his car and driving away. He was later sentenced to 45 days in jail for aggravated assault,27 and is now an anti-porn activist that refers to himself as a “former sex buyer.”28
But his story certainly isn’t typical. It seems likely that Gene, who was himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, had sexually violent tendencies already, which led to him both enjoying violent porn as well as playing out these violent fantasies in real life. There are plenty of ethical issues surrounding pornography, like the involvement of minors or victims of sex trafficking, whether the performers’ participation is truly consensual and if they are compensated fairly, the fact that a lot of porn portrays women as sexual objects and focuses on men’s pleasure, and how it influences attitudes toward safety such as condom use. But it doesn’t create rapists, and if anything, it may reduce the risk of sexual violence. A 2020 meta-analysis of over 50 studies over the past 40 years found no evidence that pornography causes sexual violence, noting that population-level research has shown that it may actually decrease it.29
Dr. Sam Perry, who has done a staggering amount of research at the intersection of evangelicalism and sexuality, writes that while evangelical men tend to view pornography slightly less than their non-evangelical peers, they are far more likely to report that they are addicted to porn. He recounts the story of an interviewee named David, who had become an evangelical Christian in college and “quit swearing, dipping, drinking, and philandering,” but had difficulty giving up pornography both after his conversion and after his marriage. Perry writes that “even though David seems to have regulated his habit of masturbating to porn to about fifteen minutes per week, and his consumption patterns do not seem to be escalating in intensity owing to desensitization characteristic of those with a dependency or disorder,” he still describes himself as “totally addicted.”
But while David “feels ‘totally addicted’ to pornography,” Perry writes, “his life does not fit the clinical pattern of addiction. Porn use is not destroying his life in practical ways. In all other areas of his life, in fact, David is a fairly well-ordered man. He is healthy, successful at work, an attentive husband, an involved father, and a valued leader in his church community.” In contrast, in Perry’s interviews with men that were not conservative protestants, “not one labeled himself addicted to porn, even if he watched porn almost daily.”30
Despite the ubiquity of ads for websites offering porn addiction treatment that I’m now getting after researching for this chapter, porn addiction isn’t recognized as a diagnosis by the American Psychological Association, and those who feel addicted to porn are far more likely to feel that way because of cultural reasons rather than clinical ones. The focus on avoiding pornography within the evangelical subculture is suffocating. It’s discussed constantly, and there’s a whole industry around it. There are hundreds of books and Bible studies. There are accountability groups where men meet to discuss how they are doing in their battles against lust, and browser add-ons that will forward your internet history to an accountability partner.
I never looked at actual porn until I was in college; the lingerie pages in my mom’s J.C. Penney catalogs were the closest I got. But even that caused crushing guilt and shame, as every time I sought out pictures for sexual gratification, I was sinning against God in a way that was so repulsive to him that he sacrificed his son to atone for my sins. Every time I jerked off to the swimsuit page I had torn out of a SkyMall catalog, I was driving those nails further into Jesus’s hands and feet.
I completely understand David’s feeling that his inability to give up porn makes him feel like “a failure as a Christian” and a “horrible hypocrite.” Perry attributes this to verses like 1 John 3:6, which says, “No one who lives in [Christ] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him.” He writes, “Confronted with this teaching, recurrent sin in a professing Christian’s life is a serious problem.”31 “The spiritual harm of pornography” for conservative protestants, according to Perry, “comes not necessarily from the porn use itself but, rather, from the moral incongruence resulting in the mental stress religious persons feel—often manifesting itself in guilt, shame, and withdrawal—for violating their own deeply held moral values.”32
Yeah, that tracks.
If pornography addiction is eventually determined to be a thing, the diagnosis would require more than just frequent porn use. There would need to be a pattern of escalation, a lack of ability to control the behavior, as well as significant negative legal, financial, occupational, or relational problems. And I’d argue that the relational problems would need to include something other than one’s partner objecting to pornography use altogether, just as we would never diagnose someone with addiction to alcohol for having an occasional glass of wine just because their spouse didn’t like it.
But the fact that many who consider themselves addicted to pornography don’t have a true addiction doesn’t mean that it isn’t problematic. Because lust and pornography are equated to adultery, many women view their husbands’ pornography use as equivalent to a sexual affair with another woman. Many Christian books about recovering from infidelity speak “about pornography use and having a physical affair with another woman as virtually interchangeable.” Because of this, Perry writes, “wives are not only caught off-guard by their husbands’ pornography use but also can seem almost as devastated as they would be if they had discovered an affair with someone else.”33
Perry tells the story of one of his interviewees whose wife was “prone to jealousy and suspicion (perhaps not without justification),” and had gone through his internet history to see what sites he had visited. “He came home from work to find his bags packed and on the front porch. Attached to one of his bags, his wife had left a note explaining that she had discovered his pornography use, that she was hurt, and that she did not want him to come inside.”34
There is potential for pornography use to damage relationships in which the partners are not conservative evangelicals. For instance, it’s possible that if one partner consistently chose to masturbate to porn when the other partner wanted sex, this could cause conflict about their sexual relationship. But it’s also possible that for partners with mismatched sex drives, masturbation to porn could fulfill the needs of the higher-demand partner while not pressuring the lower-demand partner (almost always assumed to be the woman) to feel obligated to have sex more than they desire.
The authors of Every Man’s Battle compare a man’s sexual appetite to bowls, all of which are intended to be filled by his wife. If a man needs ten bowls of steamy goodness each week, but has been getting four of those filled by gazing lustfully at billboards or “female joggers,” some adjustment will be required when he commits to “starve” himself of other sources of sexual gratification: “With your whole sexual being now focused upon your wife, sex with her will be so transformed that your satisfaction will explode off any known scale.” That’s all well and good for the man, but their language is a bit different when discussing the effect of this commitment on women. Fred Stoeker, one of the authors, had previously been “drawing so much sexual gratification from these ‘innocuous’ sources that, once they were removed and the whole sexual burden was placed upon [his wife] Brenda, she felt it.”35
The “whole sexual burden.” Evangelicals believe that a wife is responsible for fulfilling all of her husband’s sexual needs (and other types of needs as well). You may have noticed that there was no mention of the wife’s “bowls.” Women are told from adolescence that men are initiators and have more robust sex drives. Men, likewise, are told that same thing and taught that their wives are responsible for meeting their needs. Many don’t consider marital rape to be possible, as the wife has a duty to fulfill her husband’s sexual desires. Consent is never discussed because it is irrelevant in a framework where sex is forbidden outside of marriage and a duty within it. When a husband has an affair, the wife is often blamed for not doing enough to keep him satisfied. This view objectifies women and is simply unrealistic, especially when taken to the extreme that, according to Martha Peace, a woman’s husband should be “so satisfied with her love that no one else would even get a second glance from him.”36
Because of the fictional belief that women aren’t “visually stimulated” and are universally sexually docile, the vast majority of the books, Bible studies, and accountability groups about pornography and masturbation are targeted to men, for whom sexual sin is both condemned and expected. A man that doesn’t struggle with lust or pornography is viewed as abnormal, as a man’s sex drive is an expression of God-ordained masculinity. Contrarily, women who struggle with sexual fantasies or view pornography, which many of them do, are not provided either the support or the validation that men receive from their peers and churches. Most, if not all, of the pastors or other leaders at their churches are men, and many women don’t feel comfortable going to them with these struggles. Masturbation is rarely offered to women as an option, even if they are able to avoid sexual thoughts or masturbate while thinking about their husbands. The result of this, as Perry explains, is that women who masturbate or view pornography are uniquely harmed by evangelical messaging about sex because they “experience the guilt and shame of committing sexual sin but also they are forced to deal with the social challenges and intrapersonal turmoil of sinning against their gender—sinning ‘like a man.’”37
Much of the harm caused by pornography to evangelical individuals and marriages is caused or exacerbated by the way pornography is demonized. Perry explains that “watching porn when you are a conservative Protestant who is married to another conservative Protestant simply has more negative repercussions on the quality of your relationship than it would for Americans who do not hold such strong moral opposition to porn.”38 Feelings of guilt and shame “stem less from the action of viewing sexual images or masturbating to them than from what those actions mean for individuals and their community.”39
There is evidence that in heterosexual relationships, pornography use is correlated with lower marriage satisfaction in men, but not necessarily in women. Roughly 70% of married men who don’t use porn report being “very happy” in their marriages, compared with 60% of men who do use porn. For women, about 60% are “very happy” in their marriages, whether they use porn or not. These numbers are from a single study, but the trend is widely supported by other pornography research. But whether pornography use in men causes lower marital satisfaction is not nearly as clear. That could be the case, or men who are less satisfied in their marriages may be more likely to turn to porn. Or, as is almost certainly the case, it could be a little of both.40
Perry suggests two possible causal mechanisms by which porn use could lead to lower marital satisfaction. First, it can “shape the cognitive lenses through which viewers interpret their social lives.” Viewing porn creates expectations about body image and sexual behaviors that their spouse may not be able to or willing to fulfill, and may lead to dissatisfaction with a sexual relationship that doesn’t closely resemble the ones they view on their computer screens.41
Second, porn use can cause conflict between spouses because of differing opinions about “whether to use pornography and how much is too much.” Perry writes that “some studies show that couples who use pornography together or at least openly communicate about it are better off.” The association between porn use and lower marital satisfaction is especially strong for men “who attend church more frequently and who hold a higher opinion of the Bible” or who are married to women that are more religious, while for couples that don’t “morally object to pornography use, their marital quality was essentially unaffected by their viewing frequency.”42
Far more damaging than the use of pornography itself is the secrecy and dishonesty that surrounds it in evangelicalism. Open and honest communication is crucial to having a healthy relationship, and the demonization of pornography creates a situation in which it’s often impossible. One of Perry’s interviewees, whose porn use had caused marital conflict in the past, stated, “One of the many downsides about keeping my porn habit hidden from my wife is that I can’t take really drastic steps to stop it. She would know something’s up. I can’t join a recovery group at church. Cuz she’d ask why I need it all of a sudden.”43 And he feels like he can’t be honest with her because, as Perry explains, “Conservative Protestant women are twice as likely to divorce their husband because of his pornography use. And it’s not because their husbands are looking at porn any more often than non-conservative Protestant husbands. It’s because they draw a hard line, and they consider pornography use not just analogous to but literally adultery.”44
Focus on the Family’s website tells the following story about a man whose porn use had a significant negative impact on his life:
I wanted real relationship with my wife but I didn’t believe that I could be transparent with her. If I were real, that would be relational suicide. I believed the only way to meet my needs and be loved was to hide that ugly part of myself and find my own secret path to having my needs met. I thought I needed something that would not require me to risk rejection, something that I could control. I wanted something that met my perceived needs without ever having to risk my heart…I carried so much hate and disgust for myself. The shame and fear kept me from seeking help…Eventually, my sex addiction cost me both my family and my church family. The weight of my shame became unbearable, and I wanted to die.45
This story is soul-crushing, and sadly, there are thousands more like it. Countless marriages have ended not because of an affair with another person, but because of the thought-crime affair of watching a video of consenting adults having sex. I have to wonder how things would have gone for this couple if porn use hadn’t been taboo. Perhaps this man wouldn’t have suffered through years of crushing shame. In a less sexually repressive environment, perhaps he and his wife could have just communicated openly about their individual sexual needs, desires, and fantasies; maybe they’d have found out that they both like proverbial piña coladas and getting caught in metaphorical rain. Perhaps they could have agreed that, so long as they were still having regular and fulfilling sex together, whatever each individual wanted to do with their own body was perfectly fine.
But they can’t do that. This is one of few areas where white evangelical theology affects men negatively, in addition to everyone else. Many people experience crushing shame for having natural sexual desires, or guilt for acting on them in a way that affects literally no one else. This messaging harms those that take their faith seriously more than those that don’t. Many have lost otherwise healthy marriages or ministries because of pornography. But the prohibitions against lust and pornography are a necessary part of purity culture, which is a tool that allows the Bible to be weaponized to keep everyone in their place. So all that is collateral damage.
Turn the page to Chapter 5: Biblical Family Values, or go back to the beginning and start with Chapter 1: Original Sin.
Genesis 38:8-10 (NIV)
Matthew 5:27-30 (NIV)
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 42-47.
LaHaye, Beverly, and LaHaye, Tim. The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love. United States, Zondervan Publishing House, 1976, pp. 268-269.
LaHaye, Beverly, and LaHaye, Tim. The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love. United States, Zondervan Publishing House, 1976, pp. 235-237.
Driscoll, Grace, and Driscoll, Mark. Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together. United States, Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 2013, p. 183.
Stoeker, Fred, et al. Every Young Man's Battle: Strategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation. United States, WaterBrook Press, 2009, p.107.
Dobson, James C.. Preparing for Adolescence: How to Survive the Coming Years of Change. United States, Baker Publishing Group, 2005, p. 68.
Smedes, Lewis B.. Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living. United States, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994, p. 221.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p.113.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 145.
Job 31:1 (NIV)
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 146-148.
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV)
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 146.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 65.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 125.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 126-130.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 132.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 175.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, p. 159.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 38-39.
LaHaye, Tim. Sex Education Is For The Family. United States, Zondervan, 1985, p. 196.
LaHaye, Beverly, and LaHaye, Tim. The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love. United States, Zondervan Publishing House, 1998, pp. 215-216.
Covey, Sean. The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens. United States, Simon & Schuster, 2006, p. 259.
Ferguson, Christopher J., and Richard D. Hartley. “Pornography and Sexual Aggression: Can Meta-Analysis Find a Link?” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, vol. 23, no. 1, Jul. 2020, pp. 278–287.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 57-73.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 59-60.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 74.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 134.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 117.
Stoeker, Fred, and Arterburn, Stephen. Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. United States, Crown Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 137-140.
Peace, Martha. The Excellent Wife: A Biblical Perspective, Expanded Edition. United States, Focus Publishing Incorporated, 2005, p. 121.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 90-106.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 126.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 64.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 119-120.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 122-123.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 123-124.
Perry, Samuel L. Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants. United States, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 144.