Symposium: Life Lost in Living

This article is in response to “Why Hooking Up Is Letting You Down” by J. Budziszewski and is part of the symposium, “Sex and the Polis: Perspectives on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Ethics.”

Mr. Budziszewski notes that “83 percent of college women say marriage is a very important goal for them. Yet 40 percent of them engage in ‘hooking up.’” I’m guessing the numbers are somewhat similar among college age men, and I’m guessing they continue to exercise the same cognitive dissonance by engaging in the hook-up culture as well. But why is this? If they really want marriage one day, why engage in practices that will rot away any foundation upon which a marriage may be built?

Part of the answer may be found in Ryan Anderson’s article last week. If sex can be divorced from pro-creation and commitment, then so can marriage. If sex can be reduced to gratification, then marriage can be reduced to a contract. Perhaps there is no cognitive dissonance at work here. There is no inconsistency in believing that sex is separated from emotion and in turn believing that marriage is separated from sacrifice. The two flow together rather well actually. Lewis said the modern world would “remove the organ but demand the function.” In our day we have not only removed the organ, but have also completely forgotten the proper function.

This illustrates a point made by my Professor, Helen Alvare, that “words are currently useless. All the words we would ordinarily reach for are taken, and have suddenly been redefined.” Words like marriage and love have been butchered and mutilated beyond recognition.

It seems we are living in The Waste Land:

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images.”

But the world need not remain broken.  “All that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance.” Through the brokenness of the sexual revolution we can still begin to pick up the pieces. We can find the life we have lost in living.

Our mothers and grandmothers were right. We shall one day see this all too clearly, for “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where started, and know the place for the first time.”