Hookup Culture: Have We Lost Traditional Dating? (Part 1)

The scriptural definition for marital intercourse, which expresses the one flesh union of husband and wife is defined as knowledge. “Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived” (Gen. 4:1). In other words, “Adam loved his wife Eve and she conceived.” The sexual act is not a union of bodies based on instinct (animals), but a union of personal-bodies based on the choice to love. Animals can’t raise their copulation to the personal level because it’s impossible by their nature to know and be known, but it is possible for humans to lower their nature and have impersonal sex  like animals. This is what the sexual revolution has given us; impersonal sex without knowledge of the other. 

I recall a friend who told me that one morning when she was a freshman in college, she woke up and saw her roommate lying in bed with a man. They hooked up. After he left, my friend asked, “Who was that guy? What’s his name?” She replied, “I don’t know his name. I don’t know him.” My friend recoiled and knew in her gut that something was amiss. 

To say it bluntly, ‘hooking up’ is careless and shameless sex, and if we are honest with ourselves, we are acting more like animals than human beings with dignity. We are using each other. Objectifying each other. How did we get from, “Don’t talk to strangers” to, “Feel free to be naked with strangers?” Then we huddle in our friend groups and ask, “What’s your ‘body’ count?” Or as someone I knew from college put it, “How many people have you treated like a piece of meat?” When we take a deeper look, the hookup culture cares more about what another person’s meat can do for your piece of meat. Hooking up exposes our naked body and in turn our souls, to be falsely seen and known or in other words, to be used. 

In the deepest recess of our hearts, don’t we want to be known, more than we want pleasure?