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If you could have any wish come true, what would you wish for? When I pose this question to my students they often say things such as, “to be rich,” “to be famous,” or “to find the perfect mate.” But of all the responses I have heard, the words of Ashley, an 18-year-old high school senior, stand out most vividly in my mind. After I spoke on sexual purity at a Tuesday-night youth group, she came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, “If I could have one wish in life, it would be to go back four years ago and hear this same message. I might not have ruined my life.” Ashley simply said thanks, and then walked away.
I have often wondered what decisions Ashley made that caused such deep scars in her life. Was she struggling with guilt or depression from a seemingly “harmless” hook-up? Did she get a sexually transmitted disease? Did she have an abortion? My heart went out to Ashley because I could see the pain on her face as she so deeply regretted her past choices. Somewhere she bought a false idea about sex, acted on it, and now she is paying a heavy price. Ashley learned a painful, yet powerful lesson: ideas have consequences. What you believe about sex will affect your choices, and your choices will shape the direction of your life. Misunderstanding the purpose and nature of sex can have disastrous consequences. So, what is the purpose of sex? And how can we find true love in a hook-up world?
THE PURPOSE OF SEX
The Bible makes it clear that God has designed sex between and husband and wife for three primary reasons:
1. Procreation. It hardly comes as a surprise to most people to hear that one of the primary purposes of sex is to make babies. Genesis 1:28 says, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”
2. Unity. One of the most powerful aspects of sex is its ability to bond people together. The writer of Genesis says, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one” (2:24, NLT).
3. Pleasure. Believe it or not, God made sex for pleasure! Many Scripture references make this clear (Proverbs 5:18-19; Song of Solomon). God designed sex between and husband and wife to be enjoyable, but sadly so many young people today are settling for a second-rate experience rather than holding out for God’s best in marriage.
THE HOOK-UP WORLD
One of the greatest deceptions of our hook-up culture is the idea that sex is merely about pleasure. This is why comparisons are often made between sex and food. Eating is certainly one of life’s greatest pleasures (no one can beat my wife’s incredible spaghetti!). However, does it follow from this that anyone can eat anything he wants with a guarantee that he will never gain weight, get heart disease or high blood pressure? Of course not! One purpose of eating is for pleasure, but, like sex, it has other purposes and boundaries in which it is designed for. If you think sex is just for pleasure or individual fulfillment, you will most likely encounter disappointment, heartache and negative consequences in your life just as if you think eating is merely for pleasure. The hook-up phenomena ignores a crucial truth about sex—that it is not merely about pleasure, but also about procreation and unity.
The attempt to get around the unity aspect of sex is what troubles me so greatly about the “hook-up” phenomena among young people today. The idea of hooking-up is that two people can enjoy sexual acts without having any more ties to their partner. Some hook up for intercourse, while others hook up for oral sex. One young girl said, “People just get really weirded out by each other. Neither of the people are willing at all to talk about their feelings. That’s why it’s easier to hook-up with someone as opposed to talking to him.” Hooking-up seems to be a way to avoid commitment and painful breakup. The reality is that many young people report feelings of loneliness and regret after such encounters. The reason young people often feel empty after a hook-up is that they ignore the fact that sex creates a bond between partners.
SO, WHAT’S WRONG WITH HOOKING UP?
The underlying understanding of casual hook-up sex is that there are absolutely no obligations between the partners. We do what we want with no further constraints on each other. We simply have fun, and then go on our way. You continue on with your life, and I will continue on with mine. No harm done. So, what’s the big deal?
When I hear this argument from young people I ask them to consider the following example: Imagine you had a hook-up encounter with a student at your school. You continue on with your life as if nothing happened. But then, a few weeks later, the school newspaper comes out and he or she has written a cover story rating your performance. And then you walk in the gym and see a huge banner rating you. How would that make you feel?
You would likely be greatly upset by these actions. But the key question is “why?” What right do you have to be upset? If, in fact, a hook-up is merely about sexual pleasure and there are no further obligations between partners, then your partner can do whatever she likes with the encounter. If you don’t like it, you should have chosen somebody else to sleep around with.
When you stop to think about it, you realize that she violated a sacred trust between the two of you. Common decency prevents most people from doing such a hurtful thing. Why do we consider this to be common decency? The reason is because sex creates a shared space between two people. The sexual act creates a “we” out of two “I’s.” The sexual story becomes our story. And this is the way God designed it to be. When two people have sex they are uniting themselves in body, soul, and spirit. This is why I so often hear young people who were sexually active say, “After we broke up, I felt like I left a piece of myself behind.” The bonding created by sex is the glue that helps two spouses stick together for life.
DON’T BUY THE LIE
Don’t buy the lie that a hook-up encounter will fill up your heart. The Bible offers a much more fulfilling view of human relationships. Don’t allow one moment of “pleasure” to spoil a lifetime of real pleasure with your future spouse. Imagine yourself a few years down the road when you are married to the one you love: Do you want to have to tell him/her about your past sexual encounters? Do you want images of other people you have slept with creeping in on your intimacy with your spouse? Probably not. We are most fulfilled when we follow God’s plan for sexuality. After all, He created sex in the first place and knows what’s best for us.
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I discussing love relationships and finding “the one,” Dan Savage said we never find “the one,” we find a 7.6 and round up. And that we know the other isn’t the perfect one, but in rounding up and treating them as though they are, that is a loving gesture in and of itself.
It is funny how we all run around our entire lives looking for love and never seeing that we ALREADY HAVE what we are seeking and want so desperately from another.
Guess what? YOU ARE YOUR SOULMATE!!!
It doesn’t really matter if I love you or if you love me. What matters most is if we love ourselves, because the love in our thoughts is a catalyst for the love in our lives, because love is attracted to itself.
The Course says that “If you don’t love like God loves, who created love, then you don’t know what love is.” And God loves everyone, all the time, right? Wow, that’s really different, isn’t it? So to love specific people and not others isn’t love at all, but merely selfishness.
Love is a choice we make; we choose to love someone or we choose not to. It’s not like liking someone, where we don’t have a choice. We like someone or we don’t instinctively. But we can choose to love anyone; we can hope the best for them and treat them with respect and consideration, and never with harm.
We all know how to love, but we only do it sporadically–even with those we cherish most. We must practice loving to get any good at it. Love’s a muscle that, once strengthened, is the most powerful tool in your toolbox for life. Because love works, and nothing else does.
So learn to love yourself and throw away all the unloving thoughts about yourself that people have heaped on you throughout your childhood. “Seek no more for love, but extend your love to others, or love will be unable to find and comfort you.” Give to others what you want for yourself: it works like a charm. If you stop and think about it, you are receiving now what you have been giving. It is in accepting the truth of what you’ve made of your life that you will be able to make lasting change. So when you feel that pang of awareness, know that it’s just a growing pain that tells you you’ve transformed and moving beyond your own limitations.
God bless you, now and all ways. : )
to esther– prayer–father God i pray for her right now i pray for peace and comfort and surround her at this time with your loving arms of love. i pray all of this in JESUS name amen. may i suggest to maybe to a person an one on one at http://www.truthmedia.com/ talk to a mentor. i am praying for you i feel for you from sharon
Sex is a great bond between two honest n inloved individuals..i took it 4 granted n 4 pleasure or insecurity n am really sufferin cos i engaged wid e wrong person
Hi Barry, so what do you do to get beyond the ‘hook-up’ culture and to find your soul-mate?
Ts o find my soul mate thats wat i wish for every day……
hi John,
Thank you for raising some important questions. You sparked me to pose some questions too: What do you think is God’s purpose in designing us to be sexual creatures? Why do you think God has reserved the pleasures of sex for within marriage?
One difference between a serious, long-term relationship and marriage is the covenant. God is a covenant God, and we are called to be people who live in covenant with Him, of which marriage is a human reflection.
Blessings,
Kate
This article diverts from waiting for sex until marriage and talks more along the lines of why it is not okay to have random hookups. I know God wants us to wait for marriage to have sex, but when you are in a serious long term relationship and have mutual trust and respect with your partner but are obviously too young and far away from marriage, what are the repercussions of having premarital sex? The problem of STDs are taken out of the picture, and with very simple precautions the problem of having to get an abortion can be eliminated. The one problem I see that still exists is that if this is not the person you end up marrying and spending the rest of your life with, then you will have regretted these sexual encounters and will compare your new sex life with your old one and the bond that you create with your spouse will not be the only bond like this that you have made.
good article, thank you for posting it
Hi Wendy, You ask an excellent question – are two people who are committed to each other for life married in the eyes of God? No, they are not. Marriage is a legal issue as well as religious one and it’s very hard to separate one from the other. Yes you can have a legal wedding with no religious aspect at all, but no you cannot have a “spiritual” wedding with no legal documentation (unless you are talking about plural marriage in the FLDS church). In biblical times marriage was actually MORE formal not less. In those days breaking off an engagement took a formal, legal proceeding and that was before you even got married. Feeling married is not enough. Being committed is not enough. And speaking your marriage vows to each other in private without an officiant also doesn’t count.
You asked if there is a hierarchy of sex, if there are acts other than intercourse that count or don’t count. There are always going to be a lot of opinions on this but generally speaking when it moves under your clothes you’re getting into very intimate territory. Many couples find that the best laid plans of “only going so far” get overridden pretty quickly once hormones get involved. It’s pretty simple, if you’re committed to not having sex before marriage then don’t see how close you can get to that without falling over the edge. More often than not you’ll find yourself waking up somewhere you never intended to be.
God does not ban sex before marriage because He’s a killjoy, or because He wants to set up really hard tests or because He is against fun. It’s there for your protection. Sex may not seem like a big deal, but it is a big deal. It was always meant to be a big deal. As I read your comment it sounded to me a bit like perhaps you were a responsible 17 year old looking for a loophole. I don’t have one to give you. In my own experience the things I’ve had to try and talk someone into, the things that I had to justify or bend or stretch to fit rarely turned out to be good ideas.
The standard is no sexual intimacy before legal marriage. Anything less than that is a compromise.
I completely agree with the fact that sex creates unity, but what about other sexual acts? Would you say that they’re at the same magnitude as having vaginal intercourse? After all, that form of sex is what has been engrained in our basic human needs, as you said for procreation.
Also, in the time in which the bible was written, say you have a 17 year old couple. The two hypothetical individuals would most likely already be married, thus sex would have occurred in an “appropriate” setting. Isn’t there something to say about that and today’s opinion of sex?
Additionally, as unlikely as it may seem, fashion that you have two at least semi-responsible teenagers today, both 17 years of age. Both teenagers are fairly certain that who they’re with will be who they’re with for the rest of their lives, excluding a handful of years for college. Would these two be married in the eyes of God already? As marriage is mainly a legality in modern society. If it’s on paper, it’s official. It didn’t used to be like that, am I right? In biblical times, it was not so formal.
Sara, I am happy for you that you found your husband and I am sorry that your expectation is for Christians to be judgmental. I am curious that you said, “I wasnt proud of myself”. Was that in regard to the hook-up? Why do you think you felt that way?
Not a Christian so maybe your judgments don’t apply to me, but a cheap hookup while traveling is how I met my husband. I wasnt proud of myself, and was angry with him for breaking our agreement that it was just casual sex, so he had to work hard to convince me to meet him for coffee when he visited my city later, and then to even consider an actual relationship once he moved there. It wasn’t a pretty start, but 15 years on, we’re going strong. Good thing we’re not Christians, eh?