Thread by @sometimesalight

OK-AY, happy Monday morning & a thread on the #sexrecession, marriage, work, & men...

To understand the data re: drop in sexual activity among young people, we need to understand a key points about how human beings are made.

What follows are principles derived from paradigm of image bearing & Gen 1 Creation Mandate:

1. Human beings are designed for community, w/ family & home being most basic form of community we exist in.

2. Human beings' bodies lead them to family formation. Like the rest of creation, we reproduce ourselves in new beings through sexual activity.*

(**CAVEAT** Yes, I know about asexual reproduction & yes, sex is not ONLY about reproduction. Continuing on...)

3. Human beings are also made to exercise dominion (read: stewardship) over the earth. They are made to rule & reign.

4. These two impulses are not at odds w/ each other so much as bound up in each other. Ruling & reproducing are dependent on each other--perhaps even the same impulse w/ a private & public expression.

So what happens if we get these things wrong?
What happens if sex is divorced from community formation?
What happens if our work is divorced from pursuing the good of our families?

Here's what I'm seeing:

1) Sex divorced from family formation becomes a commodity unto itself rather than the way we bond to another human being & form lifelong ties. Sex is bought & sold to the highest bidder--only the fittest can achieve it.

2) Simultaneously, being deprived of family means we have less reason to work. A career or paycheck is not enough. We need more than something to work for--we need *someone* to work for.

3) And yet, it cycles round b/c our public work (ruling) is designed to provide for our private work. Broader economic struggles keep us from being able to pursue family b/c we can't afford it.

4) Young people today face a future where marriage & sex has been stripped of its social power, reduced to romantic encounters & finding "the one." They also face an economy that works against family formation.

(E.g. The lauded "success sequence" to help people climb out of poverty demands that they first give themselves to the marketplace before their own families. IOW if you're poor, you have to earn the right to have a family.)

So what's to be done? As a parent, I think about this a lot b/c I know this is the world my children are entering. I'm prepared for them to struggle to marry, to be forced to live at home longer than in the past, and if they do marry, to marry a person who already has children.

Here's what I think might help:

1) Be honest about state of things. Don't freak out or take the easy path of culture wars.
2) Teach a model of marriage that ties it to community formation. Think of our own marriages as belonging to our children, extended family, & community.

3) Fight against nuclear family model that isolates young couples & singles. Broaden our understanding of family.

4) Be willing to financially & emotionally support young people who want to marry & have children. Remember, our society is working against them, forcing them to priortize their public work in the marketplace. Stepping away from that will cost them.

5) Develop new models of discipleship & church life that account for the world we live in. We must give people alternative definitions of "success" that don't depend on idealized nuclear family or perfectly ordered finances.

This thread started w/ data about #sexrecession. Here's the point:

If sex is stripped of its power, why do it? Why take the risk of intimacy & exposing yourself to another person? Why take the risk of having a child you can't afford--especially when porn is available?

Sex is a powerful, beautiful, amazing act, but it only makes sense in a certain context b/c it was designed to work in that context. As that context crumbles, it will cease to make sense to people b/c it will require too much from them & return far too little.

(PS--I realized I didn't talk about how this uniquely affects young men. The sexual revolution uncoupled sex from family formation, but it couldn't uncouple women from pregnancy. Sure, BC & abortion, but women still have to carry children...

So while women still retain a link btwn sex & family, the weak biological link that men had was almost completely cut. Men have always had to actively commit themselves to a woman & children & in the past, they had social pressure to do so...

W/ sexual revolution, that social pressure was removed, leaving men untethered. Obviously, this harms women & children who struggle w/out the investment of men in their lives, but it harms men as well.

If our public & private work are designed to rely on each other, what happens to men when they are absolved from their private work? Among other things, their public work suffers. With less direction, motivation, & accountability, they drift.

What young men need most is to be drawn into community. Traditionally, this has happened thru marriage as they are drawn into the blessings of love & commitment to a woman & children, to work for them & to see their work live after them.

Neither the marketplace or relationships with other men can accomplish for young men what marriage & family can. Public work & male friendship are irreplaceable in their own way, but they cannot do what the call to family does for young men. Fin.)