Christians, Sex and the Hookup Culture

It's 2011, and we are fully entrenched in the "hookup culture." This generation has turned sex and romance into something ordinary, casual, and free from commitment. Laura Sessions Stepp, in her book Unhooked, found that hookups left most young women unsatisfied, though they are unwilling to admit this to their peers. And the enormous stress our culture puts on physical and sexual beauty belies any notion that sex is not big deal.


Romantic love is an object of enormous power for the human heart and imagination, and can excessively dominate our lives. Romantic love can become idolatry when its sole purpose exists to fill the inner emptiness of our lonely hearts. It is so powerful, it can function as a kind of drug to help us escape from reality. For example, a woman who feels she has to hang on to a man so she can face life and feel good about herself, even if the relationship is abusive; the older man who walks out the door of his marriage to chase a younger skirt in a desperate effort to hide the reality that he's aging; the fit-and-studly college student who finds a woman desirable only until she hops in bed with him a couple times, after which he loses interest in her. For him, women are simply a convenient commodity to help him feel desirable and powerful. The fears and inner emptiness in these scenarios make romantic love a narcotic. The behavior, folks, is that of an addict.

Here's the true picture: No person, not even the best, most beautiful, smartest, most talented, or creative can give your soul all it needs. You are going to think you have gone to bed with a "Rachel," like Jacob did in Genesis 29, but wake up next to a "Leah." This disillusionment is there in all of life, but it really hits us the strongest in the areas in which we most set our hopes.  

When you finally get it, there are four things you can do:

1. Blame those things that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones. This is what we call spiritual addiction. It's the road to continued idolatry.

2. Blame yourself, tell yourself that you're a failure and that something is wrong with you, and believe that everyone else is happy except you. This is the way of self-loathing and shame.

3. Blame the opposite sex, and curse the ground he/she walks on. This is the way to becoming hard, cynical and empty.

Or...

4. Reorient the entire focus of your life toward God.

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, states, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world [something supernatural and eternal.]

Portions of this blog excerpted from Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.

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Marcel Schwantes is a Christian Life Coach, Trainer and Speaker. His practice is available to clients via phone and internet. Visit his website at www.marcelcoaching.com