The Peaks and Troughs of our Hypersexual Age

A few years ago, while celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary, my wife, Esther, and I stayed at the base of the twin mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb, the mammoth ski resort on Canada’s West Coast. Our hotel was right at the foot of the ski fields, so that these huge mountains shot straight up outside our window.

The view was spectacular, and it was mesmerizing to watch the many gondolas and chairlifts climb the slopes before passing over vertiginous ridges and out of sight. As the spring sun glistened off the icy slopes, it was easy to forget that this is rugged terrain, exciting and terrifying in equal measure.

Deaths are common during the ski season here because of the huge off-piste area and constant avalanche risk. Looking up at the awe-inspiring scene that morning, I was struck by the parallels between this environment and the state of relationships today, even within the church.

Like those imposing mountains, love and romance have become alluring but risky places. Our culture’s romantic idealism encourages us to boldly explore the boundless playground of sex and Divine Sex relationships. Yet we quickly succumb to “exposure” when faced with the corrosive elements of our culture’s hypersexuality and its fatalism about lasting commitments. This combination of factors has turned romantic relationships from places of adventure and exhilarating risk into crevasses of death and despair.

Having tossed away the map and abandoned the network of chairlifts and gondolas that could orient us and safely guide us in our sexual lives, our culture finds itself lost and desperate in a veritable whiteout. The prevailing wisdom says, “Find your own way,” and yet these mountains are no place for the creative novice. The evidence is in, and it’s compelling. Our cultural experiment has left a trail of relational wreckage, and it has left us in a state of denial about where we stand.

…All this unfolds against a backdrop of failed marriages that, over several generations, has undermined the imaginative possibility of marriage as a permanent form of relationship. This cultural environment makes the Christian vision of sexuality and marriage seem naive, unreasonable, or at least unworkable as a real-life philosophy—even for many Christians. And yet in the midst of this cultural fatalism lies the strong hope of the Christian vision of relationships.

In our hotel room that morning, I read about the origins of the Whistler ski resort. In its beginnings in the 1960s, critics argued that these mountains were too hostile for a commercial ski resort; they were simply too inaccessible, wild, and unpredictable. But through a massive network of roads, chairlifts, and gondolas, an otherwise impenetrable context has become an exhilarating place to explore and enjoy—even becoming a venue fit for the Winter Olympics.

We face a similar challenge in relation to sex and relationships today. With lifelong committed marriages no longer considered “natural,” we are tempted by the warmth of the spring sun to get involved and explore—and yet the weather seems to quickly change as we find ourselves getting deeper into uncharted territory.