The Hook-up Realm

I was thinking more about Katie Dobie's idea of exploring one’s humanity via hooking up, as I introduced in my hook-up positive feminists post of a couple of weeks ago. This is an issue that I have long felt a need to deal with squarely, speaking as Christian to Christian and as citizen to citizen to confront all of the ways that the hook-up culture is influencing people's thought and behavior. The key problem with hook-up ideas of sexuality, as Katie Dobie tried to argue for, is that you must lower your idea of your humanity to the common denominator that makes disposable sexual experiences possible. You must resign your humanity to the cynicism and ennui of the Darwinian world of failed relationships and, on some level, decide that your sexuality, and the intimate self that is wrapped up in it is not, in fact, precious. Then and only then will hooking up explore your humanity.

Then, again you’re not really “exploring” in a moving forward with both eyes open sort of a way. Rather you are acquiescing to what is in you as something that is bound to what is around you. In regard to the id, hook-up apologists deal with the sexual impulse as something that is either always good or at least unproductive to question, so they have a certain acquiescence to the sexual impulse as a juggernaut of nature. Operating with the idea that sexuality is the Schopenhourian “will to life” of nature, hooking up is based on the premise that one's conscious mind is only a passenger in the back seat of this “will to sex”, and one should not try to superimpose any mastery over it that would attempt to harness it or control it in any way.

I have written other essays on primalism as a social contract of people who have collectivized their id, networking together their acquiescence to the id as a personal in its personal form and in its collective form. As I’ve explained, it is a social contract that negotiates the advancement of every more diverse id-expressions into the fold of acceptance and ethical/social equivalence. It is a given that the “times” are always a step for the better, and not to be questioned, and represent an increment of progress is the unfettering of the id, personally and collectively. Here, there are no fixed values or meanings and the “times” is a sort of “Tao” of social and ethical wisdom that is in continual flux, as it is sorted and re-sorted by the collective, in a dynamic continuous revolution.

The acquiescence of the personal mastery of thought and dialogue to the collective id is both vaunted as an ethical system and is recognized as a juggernaut that should not be challenged. Primalists and hook-up apologists, after having vaunted the beautiful potential of hooking up as a rite of passage will, to one degree or another, recognize that people are marinated in an un-ending environment of targeted sexual imagery, what has been described as an “unchangeable channel”. The lone individual is climbing uphill to reject all of that imagery and the values therein. It is also a psychological reality that the “will to life” is also includes a powerful “will to fit in”. Put in simple terms, people do what people do.

In the hook-up realm, there is an interesting counterpoint that operates contra to the acquiescence to non-mastery, operating in cognitive dissonance. The hook-up realm operates on the premise that fixed, metaphysical ideas of meaning don’t exist, there is no inherent meaning that is granted to the act of sex itself or in any related sexual behavior that is once removed from the physical act. Having rendered any sexual experience into a blank slate in terms of meaning, the hook-up realm understands that sex has emotional consequences only according to the manner in which individuals subjectively connect or disconnect meaning from the act. In the midst of all that the individual is exempt from being expected to master in regard to his/her sexual nature, in the hook-up realm, the individual is given the prerogative to decide what the emotional consequences of a sexual act are by deciding how much he/she actually gives of himself/herself in the act.

This is the basis for the hook-up social contract regard sexuality in public space. The individual is granted the privilege to apportion sexual experiences into different levels of meaning to the act, ranging from deep meaning to non-meaning. Since there is no inherent transcendental meaning or symbolism in the power of sexuality, its power is available to be harnessed for any and all personal and collective social and economic purposes. Sexuality is thus “freed” from the constraints that it would have in a more structured universe, so that it is now available for experiences that range from the banal to the profound. It is this idea of mastery over sexual meaning that allows for a hook-up social contract that negotiates sexuality across the realms of commerce and personal relationships.

Within the spectrum of sexual experiences that are available to Primalists, the sex at the less meaningful end of the spectrum would include the idea that "sex sells". The slightly more meaningful but not too meaningful sex can be understood in the realm of "exploring one's humanity" as Katie Dobie might define it, wherein sexuality is to be embraced as a personal thread of singular experiences. Primalists, believe that former aspects of the sexual id can be enjoyed, while the truly meaningful sex can be reserved for committed relationships.

"It's no big deal" is the hook-up way of saying that sex is not so precious as to be the exclusive realm of one level of meaning or another. For Katie, and those who argue as she does, there is nothing lost/diminished in the domain of the trust/commitment based sexual behavior on account of all the other non-trust/commitment based sex that is going on in tandem with it.

While a primalist might say, “Sex sells”, a primalist would not say that the “intimate part of my being sells”. This is based on a metaphysical claim concerning the nature of sexuality as being inextricably wrapped up with the dignity of our being in a manner that a primalist is not willing to make. Having eschewed this premise, the primalist can entertain a sense of mastery over sexuality wherein he/she has mentally divorced the intimate self from the experience. It is this divorce that is necessary for a primalist to be “outside” his/her sexuality enough to ostensibly master it. From this idea, one can be “outside” one’s sexuality enough to treat the experience of it as one would experience an endless bazaar that one can choose to indulge in.

Of course I am a critic of the hook-up realm because it plainly violates Jesus’ and the apostles teaching. That said, evaluated on its own terms, the hook-up realm crumbles on its own contradictions, because it assumes a individual’s mastery over sex that is inconsistent with the other tandem ideas of non-mastery. Here, the “mastery of the individual” is not predicated on any other effort of discipline for the individual or of any disciplined examination of the nature of sexuality as being connected with the profundities of one’s being.

As an expression of primalism, the hook-up realm is “post-rational”, dispensing with the value for the individual’s effort at disciplined thought as a means to sort out reality. It operates in its cognitive dissonance with a big "whatever" to the aspects of sexual non-mastery that operate in tandem with the ideas of sexual mastery. Having an ethical premium on not questioning the individual id or the collective id, primalists are interested in the appearance of “cool” over any reckoning with cognitive dissonance in the hook-up realm. There is a certain ennui, an ability to traffic in all of this that is given the status of "adulthood" and sophistication. Hook-up sex is also about bravado, and the power that people have when they appear to have mastered danger. This realm of un-examined pleasure, cool-pose and latent pain are all wrapped up in hook-up sexuality as a coin of the social realm.

It is my assertion that the pleasure of sex is, in fact, the pleasure of the intimate self jumping off a cliff into an unknown of fear and awe. The pleasure of sex is the rush of the most intimate part of oneself being either supremely validated or deeply rejected by another. That is it symbolizes the power of a bond of supreme trust. The physical consequences of the act, which are mitigated only by extensive modern technology, are symbolic of the degree of trust that is involved. The pleasure of sex is a profound "thrown-ness" of being as Heidegger would say. As sex is the act that is rife with potency and meaning, so are the acts, the foreplay, that are intended to operate in proximity to the act.

It is the nature of sex and sexuality that gravity and pleasure are woven together. Hooking is an attempt to extract the pleasure of sex without any true intellectual reckoning with its gravity. As such this leaves the hook-up apologists unable to deal with or explain the often destructive power of sex as anything more than an inevitable force of nature. Of course "nature" is a loaded term and can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, which, in the realm of disposable sexuality, usually means that sexual nature is lowered to the lowest common denominator of acquiescence and mental and spiritual non-engagement.

Any sexual encounter presents one with either a profound validation of ones being in all of its dimension, or a profound invalidation. Pseudo-validation is a form of non-validation that can be pleasing to the receiver. Pseudo-validation is the outward act of validating another with what would be done with a bond of trust if one were deeply trusted – except that it is being presented without any actual trust or respect. The pleasure of lustful sexual desire that one experiences with pseudo-validation is the extrusion of the pleasure through latent pain that comes at the expense of one’s dignity. Thus, the pleasure is not woven into a true exploration of one’s nature in the context of any lasting idea of purpose, dignity or meaning, but is something that is sought as an end in itself. As such, the pleasure is sought as constant nip of desire that demands an endless commitment to procure more of the same and justify more of the same.

The emotional carnage of people caught up in continual hook-up relationships is when there is any discrepancy concerning the level of meaning that people are attaching to the act (it was a hook-up for him but a little more than a hook-up for her or vise versa). Or when people embark on a hook-up only to realize that they gave a little more of themselves than they thought they were at the moment, only to realize that they have left a little piece of themselves behind, or to realize that there were some other physical or emotional consequences that they didn't bargain for. These injuries to the self and recognition of non-mastery are recorded amply in music and art when they are not admitted openly.

Hooking up encompasses all that is done in reality and in fantasy, both physically and merely visually. A strip club offers one form or another of the GFE, the “girl-friend experience”, which can be understood as the “pseudo fore-play experience”. The visual tease of a strip club is a sort of pseudo-validation of pseudo-foreplay that says, “I'm allowing/trusting with the exposure of my intimate self, represented with my body, but not really. I'm invalidating your value as one who is truly worthy of my trust, though I am playing with your pleasing feelings of validation that extrude through the tease.” For the recipient, the emotional oscillation of pain and pleasure is intoxicating.

I am such a harsh critic of the fashion and advertising that accessorizes the hook-up realm for the marketplace because it is the “McVoyuerism”, the endless visual landscape of banal pseudo-foreplay of exposed and party exposed intimate body parts. This practice borrows from the sexual energy of porn and strip-clubs and is toned down just enough to be brought into all crevices of time and place. GFE fashion is one wing of the vast hook-up realm, as is porn and all other manner of amateur boffing, fondling and intimate exposure.

I believe that we are summoned to a realization of ourselves that involves our full emotional and mental engagement of our sexuality. Hook-up is an abdication of this summons for this reason: to treat sex as banal and "no big deal" is to treat ones intimate self as banal and "no big deal". It is the very nature of sexuality such that, were it goes, so does the intimate part of ourselves. Reckoning with this is the beginning of any serious understanding of sexuality.

In rejection of this, hook-up lust is like a wolf licking the ice of frozen blood on a knife, who does not realize that it is now licking its own blood as its tongue is being cut by the knife. The injuries to the self that one bears that one cannot face bond one to the illusion that it’s really “ok” and “no big deal”. Such is the power of sex, that the pleasure of sex, when gone awry, is powerful enough to bind one to delusions. It is no coincidence that the idea of a “hook-up” is not dissimilar to the drug language. Hooking up treats sex as a drug, as a sexual “fix”. And it often goes hand in hand with other drugs.

The only path out of hook-up sexual delusions is a journey into the realm of our sexual being that actually faces the spiritual, emotional and metaphysical cliffs we scale and bruise on. More to come on what that means.

Hook-up Positive Feminists

Intro

This blog part of a series where I am going out on a limb to confront certain destructive aspects of feminism and of the dessicated sexual values that are out there in our culture. While I am critical of the phalanx style culture war techniques that rely on politics, I do think that there is a role to play for Christians to confront destructive ideas that lie beyond the jurisdiction of explicitly Christian dialogue, wherein Biblical authority is agreed upon as a point of reference. I am still letting my thoughts gel on the ground rules for this sort of dialogue and how it fits in with Christian evangelism and the role of Christians in the world at large. So allow me to bracket that for a bit, while I examine some things.

These past couple of weeks have had many zeitgeist moments in regard to the sexual culture at large that I see as interconnected.

1) The American Psychological Association study on the ill effects of over-sexualization of young girls

2) Britney shaved her head and demanded that people stopped touching her.

3) The Delta Zeta sorority at DePauw University blatantly kicked out some “un-hot” women.

4) a new book called Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose At Both by Laura Sessions Stepp came out that follows in the footsteps of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy, and

5) An Independent lens documentary called HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes by Byron Hurt on PBS explored the reality of misogyny in gangsta hip-hop.

Confronting Katie Dobie of the Washington Post

I always like to read the Week magazine to get the pulse of the current zeitgeist. I read their review of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose At Both, which is a summary of several reviewers from periodicals from around the country. I have yet to actually read the book. Nonetheless, I have a take on what the issues are that one reviewer Katie Dobie of the Washington Post is reacting to. Katie Dobie is but one of many of the “hook-up positive” crowd now criticizing Stepp. Here is Dobie’s review of “Unhooked”. Please read it and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Read Katie Dobie’s article here

Now that you’ve read it, I want to deal with two of her points up front:

1) Sex in teens and 20’s, unlike sex for adults, is a path to understanding humanity not a path to true intimacy with another

2) The quality of one’s sexuality is not diminished by too much use

At the end of her article we get a glimpse how of a one night stand might increase one’s understanding of one’s humanity.

Why bring someone into your bed? Maybe because she is brilliant and has a whimsical sense of humor, or he is both sarcastic and vulnerable, and has beautiful eyes.

Is the sheer act of “going all the way” without any strings attached is somehow a path to humanity as Katie Dobie believes? Is sex intimate or isn’t it? If sex is intimate, how is treating is as though it were not intimate a path to some sort of enlightenment about one’s humanity? In truth, sex is the highest transcendent experience that many secular people have, and so having lots of sex is the closest thing that many people get to a religious experience, whereby they then turn fornication and adultery into a religion of self realization.

In truth, sex without love is not enlightenment. It is an act of seeking its pleasure and avoiding its gravity. In the realm of sex, a disposable sexual experience leaves one with the subconscious scars that the most intimate part of one’s self has been treated with less than the honor that it requires. Those scars are not felt consciously, but are sublimated because to recognize them would be too painful. Instead, one feels lust, which is the desire for sexual pleasure extruded through pain and numbness. It is a sadomasochistic impulse to conquer another sexually to validate oneself as a result of latent pain and rejection. Where is the humanity involved in this?

“The girls adopt the crude talk of crude boys: They speak of hitting it, of boy toys and filler boys, "my plaything" and "my bitch."

It is girls aping and trying to one-up the culture of sexual conquest established by cad boys and men.

The powerful pleasure of sex is powerful because it is connected to the core of our being. One cannot experience the power of sex without the core of one’s self being affected either for good or for bad. One cannot experience the high of a sugar rush without either being nourished with good sugars or being overloaded with bad sugars.

A jolt of serotonin in the brain can either be the result of an accomplishment or it can be the result of the drug ecstasy. The former experience of the high is constructive and the latter is destructive. The former experience of the high will bond one to the act of seeking more accomplishments and the latter will bond one to the act of seeking pseudo-wonderful hits of ecstasy. This is the nature of powerful emotions – they bond us to their source. That is why the beauty of sex happens when the pleasure bonds one to the best and highest expression of one’s self for another person in committed love, or else the pleasure will bond one to the quest for disposable sexual highs.

3) Love and sex do not necessarily co-exist

In Katie’s world, there is nothing lost if you have all sorts of sex and then decide that you want to have it with love. Here, the physical act means nothing in and of its self – it only has the meaning/consequences that people choose to subjectively apply to it if and when they are ready. If sex has no inherent gravity, why should a wife not be perfectly comfortable when her husband discusses with her the process of his exploration of his humanity through sex with other girls/women in his youth? Why should she be offended if he continues to have sex to explore his humanity with other women but he insists that he loves his wife. Or the porn star who says that she has sex for her job but makes love to her husband. This attempt to divorce sex from love is a wishful sense of mastery over sexuality that actually helps people to avoid the gravity of sex and the potency and symbolism that is encoded into the profound physical and emotional danger of sexuality. It is the danger of sex that is connected to its pleasure, as the pleasure of sex is the adrenaline rush of being placed in proximity to all of its risks.

As for the married couple who don’t have sex very frequently, this does not negate the special role that sex has as part of the bond of marriage, as people who profoundly trust each other. So it is with the appetite of food, that the pleasure of food is part of the drive to nurture our bodies that we consummate with out knowledge of nutrition so that we seek nutritious food that tastes good. Having nutritious food that tastes good and that we enjoy in the company of others is the highest expression of food that is rooted in all of the biological and primal realities of food. To only seek good tasting food without regard to nutrition is self-destruction through food. As with food, sex is an appetite, wherein the pleasure of sex has a primal and biological dimension that is connected to our needs to bond and to trust and to procreate. The highest expression of sex brings all of these needs together in an experience that encompasses both the pleasure and the gravity of our sexual appetite.

Hook-up sex is banal, reality porn that no one gets paid for. A hook-up is an attempt to have sex without vulnerability and trust, which can only be established in commitment. It is un-examined pleasure stripped of beauty and extruded though the accressions of latent pain and numbness that increase as people continue in it. Hook-up sex is a drug, an opiate among many others, and it is sexual narcissism in its purest form. It is no coincidence that the hook-up generation is the most self-centered and narcissistic (see the recent study on this) because our sexuality cuts to the core of our being and our sexual choices cut to the core of how we shape our character. Dobie is concerned that if such shaming statements are made concerning hook-ups, then girls will just rebel, but that’s not excuse not to call a spade a spade.

Hook-up sex and hook-up fashion is devoid of the mystery and allure that defined sexiness according to older secular-consistent ideas of sexiness. It is a disposable experience to be forgotten en route to the next disposable sexual experience, or it is merely remembered as a notch in the belt of sexual conquest and vapid sexual validation. The highest expression of sex treats it as an appetite, uniting together the pleasure and gravity into a beautiful relationship. Hook-up sex is the cynical abandonment of that beauty. It is the junk-food, fast-food version sex and is just as unhealthy, if not more, as its food counterpart.

As for marriage, there are indeed conditional elements for a marriage to work that require the ongoing mutual commitment of both parties, which Katie Dobie is right to recognize.

However hook-up culture has an idea of marriage that marriage is a pleasure that one can indulge in among other forms of sexual expression. This version of marriage is more like an extended conditional hook-up that can end at any time within an idea of commitment that is ever more vulnerable and flimsy and subject to the whim of narcissistic people as our music and cinema celebrities so often demonstrate.

4) Hook-ups are a Darwinian response to a broken culture or a path to something new.

The Darwinian culture bit is the closest to the truth that Dobie gets, and if true, supports what I have been saying and helps negates her points that I have been summarizing in this post as points 1, 2 and 3. Hook-up is the fast food version of sex for people who cannot or will not stop to commit. In the Darwinian world, the preciousness of sex is diminished not due to exploration but for crasser reasons (why cook a meal at home with your family when you can stop by Jack-In-The-Box). Dobie insists that hook-ups are not a cause of the Darwinian world but merely an effect. In actuality, the same reasons that people hook-up are the same reasons that people have home-wrecking the affairs.

Exploring our humanity and our sexuality, when taken as an intellectually honest endeavor, is a life long process, and there are not neat divisions between youth and older adulthood. As a man gains power and status in his life he will be exposed to the availability of women who were unavailable in his youth. As he gets old and gray he may feel the need to validate his sexuality with a PYT. All this to say that if one does not establish a pattern of honestly and deeply exploring one’s humanity without using other people sexually before one is married, one won’t be in a position to do it after one is married. The higher the position of authority that a person has, the more the consequences will extend beyond the marriage (just as Bill Clinton). Shallowly exploring one’s humanity because of another’s nice eyes before one is married will set one up to do it, eventually, when one is married. To fail to recognize this is to treat sexuality as a toy and not as the potent, gravity laden thing that it is.

5) Hook-ups make sex less a commodity, while being worried about what you can offer a guy by saving your body makes sex a commodity.

Nice try Dobie. Hook-up sex does indeed make sex a commodity. It is reflected in the marketplace that both mirrors and encourages the social marketplace. Here, the realm of business makes “hook-up” fashion, advertising, and sexual products that accessorize the “hook-up” social realm where disposable sex is a “coin of the realm”.

On the topic of guys, I included hip-hop documentary in my zeitgeist list in the Intro. I recognize that there is much, much more to say on the larger topic of hip-hop. The documentary explored where the sexual culture of hip-hop where hooking-up and the mutual objectification of men and women as sex objects goes hand in hand. The documentary featured women in both hip-hop music videos and at a hop-hop spring break where flashing and groping were de rigueur. In these environments, women were shown willingly or self-deceivingly participating in a culture that is based on men validating their masculinity by scoring hook-ups. This vision of hip-hop Gomorrah is one snap shot of a culture mutual sexual conquest run amok. It is one of the more obvious caricatures of the hook-up zeitgeist as a male playground of pleasure that has been extruded through neurosis, latent rage and tough pose that has been reinforced in part by the adversarial environment of the ghetto, corporate America, and black male ghetto culture.

The hook-up apologists might like to believe that this hip-hop groping is an aberration on the beautiful possibilities that lie in the youth hook-up culture. In fact, when one does not pursue commitment with another person, one will not pursue respect. It is the difference between being a lover and a player, and hook-up culture is the culture of players. The hook-up realm of sexual conquest is as antithetical to men being encouraged to unite pleasure and gravity in commitment to and respect of women as it is for women to do so for men. This is true, even, as Unhooked and other studies have explored, there may be some unique emotional consequences for women.

The sorority kicking out the un-hot women is the compliment to the hip-hop gropers. More specifically it is a compliment to the culture of male sexual conquest and disposable sexual experience of the fraternities that that sorority was trying to impress. The culture of wealthy/middle male sexual conquest is, by the way, intimately connected to that of the hip-hop realm. As the documentary explained, the purchasers of gangsta hip-hop are largely white middle class young people.

6) The hook-up generation might find its way to intimacy is no less probable that that they will be relationally stunted

While it is possible that certain individuals will stumble into lasting love from having hook-ups, I think that these will be the exceptions more than the rule.

PROLOGUE

To believe that the advancement hook-up sex in our society is “progress” is to subscribe to a belief system that I call “continuous revolution”, which is an aspect of a belief that I have discussed called Primalism. “Continuous revolution” is the triumphalism that says that anything that is new is better than anything that is old. As part of Primalism, continuous revolution says that more and more diverse forms of latent and primally existent human expressions must be always continually brought into the fold of social acceptance. In the realm of sexuality, continuous revolution says that marriage is but one form among many equally wonderful sexual expressions.

For Dobie and those who think like her, there are no amount of studies that will ever convince her otherwise. It’s one thing when the Heritage Institute funded study concluded a couple of years ago that a large fraction of sexual active teen girls have contemplated suicide. The Heritage Institute study was dismissed by the hook-up positive crowd as being partisan. It’s another thing when the American Psychological Association says something along the same lines about the effect of over-sexualization of young girls. As it is true of the recent Unhooked, any study that confirms an old fashioned idea of sex and commitment will always be old-fashioned even if the study is fresh and recent. In regard to sexual values, “hook-up positive” feminists will assert continuous revolution ethics even in the face of a plethora of contrary scientific and empirical data and over anecdotal cultural data. Here is the NY Times book review of Unhooked by Stephanie Rosenbloom who, discussing Stepp’s critics says,

But no studies draw a line between the hookup culture and either clinical depression or a lifetime of remaining single, the critics point out.

They will look to any other external existing failure of society as alternative to looking at neurotic sexual expression that has gone off the rails. They will assert continuous revolution sexual ethics even as a sorority does less to hide its shallowness, even as the hip-hop groping continues, and even as the poster girl for hook-up goes off the deep end and shaves her head.

A Crisis of Cultural Hermeneutics

Just underneath my link to the Habits for the Journey with Jesus, I have added a link to a paper I have spent the last several years thinking about, and the last several months writing. It is called A Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church, and I am sure that it will be very controversial to many readers.

What is it to dress in a sexually suggestive way? What does it mean to be modest? Why does modesty matter? To what extent is any idea of modesty/sexual suggestiveness a convention subject to change and re-negotiating and to what extent is it not? How are the wider culture's justifications for what it wears connected to other powerful trends and ideas? It is my overall thesis that far too many people in the church are not even equipped to ask these questions. While I assert that immodesty is a problem, I also assert that the problem of immodesty is the manifestation of a far deeper problem within Evangelical Christian discipleship.

As I explain in A Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church, the problem of sexually suggestive clothing in the culture at large that has crept into the church is related to a larger crisis in the church. This crisis involves the question of how the church should relate to the ideas that are encoded into the trends that have arisen in the wider culture.

It is my thesis that sexually suggestive clothing has found its way through a crack in the church that exists between a) the "culture warrior" tendencies of the church to fight and resist the wider culture and b) the "seeker sensitive" tendencies of the church to want to hip and relevant to the "times" in order to function within and relate to the wider culture. In this crack between these two tendencies within the church lies an inability to truly take the trends and ideas captive -- to extract any claims to truth that exist within these sundry ideas and trends while avoiding the rest.

It is my overall thesis that many within the church have employed "street postmodernism" (also referred to in my essays in March and April 2006 as "primalism") to negotiate change because they have not developed a Christian discipleship that is capable of negotiating change from a Godly, disciplined perspective. It has been the Evangelical Christian tendency to fight culture wars without seeking to find the kernels of truth in sundry trends. This culture warrior tendency has created a void in the intellectual aspect of Christians' discipleship to know how to take the complexity of life captive to Christ. In this void of knowing how to confront complexity, many Christians have adopted street postmodernist ideas.

Street postmodernism is summed up as a populist attempt to handle complexity by having individuals abdicate their individual perogative to think and to judge by looking at what the "times" are doing. "Who's to say?" and "Times change" are the key slogans of this belief system. It is my thesis that the intellectual undisciplined "culture warrior" approach to the culture and the intellectually undisciplined "street postmodernism" have been allowed to co-exist together in the minds of many Christians because neither approach to the culture demands very much intellectually from the individual. Many Christians harbor elements of both "culture warrior" and "street postmodernism" without having the mastery over their thoughts to reckon with the cognitive dissonance that exists between these two approaches to the culture at large.

It is my thesis that immodest clothing among Christians-- clothing that has not been the target of culture warriors and clothing that is considered a staple of human, secular freedom by postmodernists-- has not been met with the proper "net" within the church whereby it can recognized and held captive for examination. Even as I am trying to grasp the problem of immodesty, it is my goal to construct the "net", where the questions of modesty and sexual suggestiveness -- and any other question under the sun relevant to Christian discipleship-- can be held captive so that the issues can be examined properly from all angles.

A Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church is constructed around a long series of objections to my assertions about what is modest/sexually suggestive. All of these objections have come from fellow Christians, and all of them emanate from a street postmodernist secular worldview. I want to explore the roots of this worldview and the claims to truth--and therefore to power-- that it has. As I deal with these objections, one by one, I am confronted with what one iMonk describes as a "post-evangelical wilderness". In this "wilderness", it has become clear to me that many Christians have lost their way in the endeavor to take all of life captive to Christ. To point the way out of this wilderness, I want reconstruct a Christian approach to examining the culture on the ruins of the "culture warrior" approach and the failed strategies of phallanx style political and culture warfare that have accompanied the culture warrior approach.

For the particular issue of immodest clothing, I want to recognize the wilderness of street postmodernism that has crept into Christianity, and carefully extract any pieces of truth that exist within street postmodernism, "seeker sensitive" and "culture warrior" approaches to handling culture, change and complexity. Upon doing so, I want to argue for what I consider to be a reasoned and Godly way that these pieces of truth fit together into a prescription for Christian modesty and Christian liberty and sound Christian intellectual inquiry into the issue.