9. After the Revolution
9
After the Revolution
Good faith Christians understand the relational consequences of sexual freedom and offer a better way.
I struck up a conversation with my row companion on a recent flight from Washington, DC, to Nashville. After catching a glimpse of the manuscript for this book, she was curious about my work. I did my best to explain that we are describing how good faith intersects the world as we experience it, that no issue is off the table, and that the best of faith applies to all of life. Then she asked, as if to stump me, “What should I say to my sixteen-year-old daughter about hookups? All her friends are so casual about them, but they’re shocking to me!”
Taken aback, and knowing (hoping) I have a few more years before I have to engage as a parent on that question, I paused to gather my thoughts. Stalling, I asked, “What’s your daughter like? Where does she go to school?”
“Rachel goes to a private school. She’s very focused on academics. She’s outgoing and social, and her highest priority is going to a great college. Most of her friends have the same goal . . . they see getting into an Ivy League school as their ticket to a great future. Everything else is secondary, including boyfriends.”
Recalling Donna Freitas’s book The End of Sex,1 I said, “Your daughter’s not alone. So many kids in college think it’s a normal expectation to hook up. But she’s facing pressure to do it at just sixteen years old?”
“Oh yeah! The other night Rachel was at a party with her friends, and three boys texted her to see if she wanted to go into a back room and hook up.”
“What did she do?”
“She told them no! But plenty of other girls didn’t.”
To anyone paying attention, it’s obvious that human relationships are bearing the brunt of the new moral code’s repercussions. When virtue is irrelevant and traditional morality is extreme, our children pay the price for a relational world with no boundaries.
Rachel’s experience mirrors that of many teenagers and twentysomethings these days. The modern hookup is nearly as casual as going for coffee with a friend was back when we were in college. In her book, Freitas details the incredible pressure on young adults to engage in casual sex with friends or acquaintances. Romantic relationships are an unwanted complication, the thinking goes, but sexual needs must be satisfied. Hookups are the solution, and anyone who doesn’t participate in them is just weird.
There are even rules to govern the madness. Rachel’s mom explained, “You don’t hook up with the same person two weekends in a row. If you hook up with someone this weekend, you take off the next two or you might start to have feelings.”
Intuitively, kids know sex is meant for a special relationship. But sexualizing friendships is the new normal. More than half of Millennials agree that “hooking up, or having occasional sex with a friend or acquaintance, is a low-risk way to meet sexual needs.” They are twice as likely as Boomers and Elders to agree with the statement.
But casual sex wrecks friendships. For all the momentary fun and exhilaration an afternoon delight may bring, jealousies, awkwardness, and confusion are the ultimate result. When two friends are caught up in the moment—following impulsive lust or just a longing to be held—their friendship faces almost certain ruin.
The longer the idea of hooking up is socially acceptable (and even encouraged) for adults, the more normal it seems to younger and younger teens. Our children are being trained to avoid healthy, intimate relationships at all costs. As we have argued, one of society’s highest priorities is individual pleasure—the right to do whatever you please—with no boundaries, no rules. Relationships are almost guaranteed to throw a wrench in those plans. Relationships lead to the painful death of self-focused pursuit.
Constant sexual activity removed from deeper connection is a dead-end road. And the fallout of hookups is leading scores of people to ask, “What good is sex if it only leaves a trail of pain, confusion, and broken friendship?”
This question presents good faith Christians a chance to offer a truly redemptive answer. If we don’t, many people will settle for an easier question: How can I enjoy the benefits of sex without the trouble of relationships?
Porn Nation
My son Pierce, who is twelve, often borrows my phone to watch basketball highlights, search top ten dunks, or catch the latest NBA game-winning shot. I keep my eyes on his search results to make sure he’s seeing only what he ought to see. He’s a good kid and I trust him. He’s transparent when things go wrong.
Recently, something went wrong. Handing over my phone, he said, “Dad, I was looking up basketball highlights on YouTube and this came up. I promise I didn’t click on it.”
His search had come up with much more than basketball highlights. I glanced at his top result: a barely dressed woman dancing to the latest Jay-Z song with basketball highlights somewhere far in the background.
A scantily clad dancer might not, strictly speaking, be categorized as porn, but I still don’t want my basketball-loving kid bombarded with images like that when he goes looking for cool dunks. How can a curious kid avoid this kind of temptation?
As an $8 billion business, porn is one of the fastest-growing segments of the entertainment industry. Porn is consumed by more than fifty million Americans.2 To put the size and scope of the skin business in perspective, the industry’s income rivals that of iTunes digital merchandise sales and the US bottled water industry.3
These estimates don’t even account for ubiquitous free porn available at the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger. In October 2015, Playboy, the iconic porn magazine that introduced the world to the centerfold, announced it would no longer feature fully nude photos. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. It’s just passé at this juncture,” Playboy’s chief executive said.4
For most young people, porn is just a normal part of adolescence, like acne or orthodontics. Too much makes you creepy, but a regular dose is okay—healthy even. In a study with Josh McDowell Ministries, we found that, among teens and young adults, using porn squeaks into the top five on a list of possible immoral actions—and ranks lower than not recycling. What does America’s next generation consider to be immoral?
What used to be a niche product—delivered to subscribers by mail in carefully anonymous packaging—has gone mainstream, beamed into every household and smartphone and tablet and laptop with an internet connection, often (thanks to pop-up ads) whether you like it or not. Furthermore, the moral stigma against porn and “soft porn”—sexual images and situations on TV and in movies and video games—is loosening its hold on people. More than half of US teens and adults say, “It really doesn’t bother me” to use porn.
Making objects of women or men is no longer something to be ashamed of, and the resulting consumable products are reshaping the imaginations of millions. Our collective culture has been lured into believing that, as long as I’m not hurting anyone, it’s okay to indulge myself. Fulfilling my own sexual desire is just easier and less complicated than involving a real-life human being. Porn is even better than hookups at taking relationship out of the equation.
Yet most people also recognize the adverse effects of widespread porn use. Seven out of ten US adults, eight out of ten practicing Christians, and nearly all evangelicals say porn’s impact is negative. It affects young people and adults. Everyone is exposed to one extent or another, even if they don’t seek it out.
But the biggest losers in our porn-infested culture are not the many millions of porn users, both male and female, whose brains and souls are being warped and calloused. The biggest losers are those we should cherish most: our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters.
Women Dehumanized
All-out access to sex is not an equal opportunity. Women do the lion’s share of the work, as airport magazine racks and roadside billboards will attest. Female bodies are the focus of our culture’s sexual obsession. Eight out of ten US adults and nine out of ten practicing Christians agree that our culture objectifies women’s bodies.
Look no further than the hack of AshleyMadison.com for a cautionary tale about the foolishness of objectification. Millions of users, the vast majority of them men, were exposed for pursuing “discreet” sexual encounters with married women—who were actually, the scandal revealed, computer-generated “engager bots,” little bits of messaging software designed to make men feel like they were engaging with a flesh-and-blood woman. Desiring a no-strings-attached rendezvous, more than thirty-seven million men were swindled.5
Society’s dominant message about women is clear: women exist for men’s pleasure.
[It is] primarily through the bodies of girls and women that this culture’s sexual expression takes place. And it is largely the bodies and lives of girls and women that suffer the consequences through their vulnerability to unwanted pregnancy, greater susceptibility to venereal disease, pressure to look and act like a porn star, and more frequent victimization by sexual assault, rape and sexual harassment.6
Viewing another human being as an object erases the image of God. It is not only a sin against that person but also a sin against that person’s Creator. Human beings are body, mind, and soul. Emphasizing only one aspect dehumanizes. Dehumanization is what our culture’s sexual obsession does to women.
Recovering Intimacy
People today have nearly unlimited access to casual sex via hookups, porn on demand, web cams, sex toys, masturbation, and countless other options that give them a physical high. Access to orgasms is not the problem.
Easy access to casual sex, porn, and images of naked bodies creates a kind of boredom with the whole idea. The majority culture has become robotic in its thinking about what is meant to be a deeply emotional encounter designed by God to take place in a covenant relationship. It’s no wonder the gloss is wearing off. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, says, “The church should prepare for the Sexual Revolution’s refugees.”7 Instead of intimacy and emotional depth, sex any way you want it leads to anxiety, depression, loneliness, and insecurity. For some, sex is no longer worth the trouble. Anything more than a one-night stand or porn on demand requires a relationship, and the cost of a relationship is simply too high.
The need for good faith is enormous.
Being truly known, loved, and accepted is what we all long for. We are designed to experience deep and lasting communion with others, but our culture corrupts this divinely given desire and turns it into a quest for sexual experience.
This is where good faith has a lot to offer. Not just dos and don’ts and purity laws, which tend to be the church’s simplistic answer. We must witness to God’s intention for human relationships. We must model it, teach it, and walk alongside those who are relearning it. And our churches must be safe houses for “refugees” to discover intimacy through relationship as God intended.
In fact, we believe Christian community—the household of God—is the only remedy for the relational and sexual sickness that has infected the culture. How we address matters of sex and sexuality must embody love + believe + live. We need to love others well and see them as made in the image of God, even when they screw up and let us down. In terms of belief, we have to articulate a biblical vision of healthy sex and sexuality. And we must be willing to live out our love and belief in community with real people.
God’s household offers life after the sexual revolution. But our idea of “family” must expand to make room for everyone who needs healing.