I Gave Up Masturbation For Jesus When I Was 13

This is the true story how I gave up masturbation for Jesus when I was 13-years-old. Before getting into the thick of it, a little bit about me. My mother was the church organist/choir director at the Baptist church we attended. Dad was a deacon. And I took a certain amount of pride in regurgitating memorized Bible verses in my Sunday School class.

Simply stated, I was hip deep in Jesus.

If I were to go back in time and offer a suggestion to the church elders concerning the Sunday School curriculum, I’d say “You should talk a bit about masturbation. There needs to some sort of discussion about the act before a kid starts humping his mattress after watching Charlie’s Angels.” (I’m old. Here’s an update for the younger readers: There needs to some sort of discussion about the act before a kid starts humping his mattress after watching Niki Minaj on that YouTube video.)

The thing is the church I went to believed it covered all the masturbation education in these two verses from the New Testament:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Mathew 5: 27–28

See? Even thinking about having sex with someone out of wedlock is as bad as…