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Promiscuity isn’t dignified or meaningful. For the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.

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Call it wishful thinking, but recently Marc Ambinder in The Week proposed that there could be such a thing as “dignified promiscuity.”  Writing in the Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith admits that the hookup culture has been bad for women, but that women can find meaningful sex in a non-marital relationship without resorting to chastity.

Well, as my friend Matt Anderson pointed out in response to Smith, this sort of “make your own meaning” approach to sex ultimately fails. As Matt says, “if you have to resort to describing your sex as ‘meaningful,’ then maybe it’s because functionally it’s not.”

Our imposed meaning will never live up to the meaning given to it by God. As ethicist Oliver O’Donnovan once wrote: “When erotic relationships are conceived merely as relationships—with no further implications, no ‘end’ within the purposes of nature—they lack the significance which they need if they are to be undertaken responsibly.”

Well said. For ThePointRadio.org, I’m John Stonestreet.