We live in a sexually broken society. Increasingly, sex is divorced from marriage, marriage is redefined, children are taught that gender identity exists apart from biological realities, and our culture struggles to even acknowledge that men and women are different. It’s a tragedy and one that requires the church to respond. Writing at The Public Discourse, Timothy O’Malley recently observed that at least one aspect of this sexual brokenness, “hookup culture,” is not simply about sexual excess, but is driven by fear of commitment and vulnerability, anxiety over the future, and ultimately, hopelessness. O’Malley argues that this anxiety and fear create a greater willingness to engage in casual sex. Behind much of the brokenness of the world around us is fear and despair.
O’Malley points out that, in order to respond to this, we need to commit ourselves to a high view of marriage and family. He writes,
What if religious and conservative higher education ceased speaking about marriage and family life as an accomplishment and began to treat marriage and children as that which enable human flourishing and a meaningful future?
All too often, marriage and family are treated as something extra, rather than something that is essential. God’s design for marriage, family, and sexuality is not the icing on the cake but necessary to human flourishing and part of the bedrock of a strong and stable society. The way that we orient our lives should reflect that. If we are going to address the sexual brokenness around us, we will need to point to a better way, not just with our words but with our actions, as well. This includes recognizing that without marriage and family, we cannot build a society that promotes human flourishing.
Sometimes the most compelling response we can give to an anxious world is to live a life of faith and hope, not shying away from God’s design but living in the confidence that, come what may, he is good and that marriage, family, and biblical sexuality are good gifts from him. O’Malley points out,
If hookup culture and the anxiety of introducing children into this world is about fear of the future, then we must uphold the gift of commitment, stability, and those small acts of love that no human being will recognize as an accomplishment worth fêting.
When the world around us is overwhelmed with anxious uncertainty, embracing marriage and family is an act of faith and hope, declaring that God’s design is good, that he is still at work, and that he holds the future. It is this kind of faith and hope that we must live out in answer to the sexual brokenness of the world around us.
This approach does not and should not exclude single people. Singles play a vital role in building healthy churches, communities, and families. The prolonged singleness that is bound up in an anxiety-driven hookup culture and the sexual brokenness that has been embraced as normal in our society is not the same thing as singleness that lives out God’s design for sexuality—chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage—and pursues the goodness of community, knowing that it is not good for man (or woman) to be alone.
Rather than recognizing that both singleness and marriage are good gifts, hookup culture fearfully rejects marriage and resentfully accepts singleness. At the heart of this rejection and resentment is fear and hopelessness, and we must point people to the ultimate answer to fear and hopelessness: the Gospel. It is through the life and death of Jesus that all things are being made new. When we are transformed by this hope, we are able to answer the fear and despair of the world around us, and we are able to engage with cultural issues confidently and fearlessly.
Engaging with cultural issues means speaking up in defense of the truth, as well as living out the truth. Answering hookup culture means going beyond simply knowing that God’s design is good, but embracing it in such a way that we orient our lives around it. And embracing the goodness of God’s design for marriage, family, and sexuality is an act of hope that speaks loudly in a world that is anxious and afraid for the future.
(Image Credit: Flickr, a4gpa, CC BY-SA 2.0)
