Biblical Sexuality and the LGBTQIA+ Revolution with Nancy Pearcey

8:20PM Jun 9, 2022

Speakers:

Scott

Darrow Miller

Luke

Nancy Pearcey

Keywords:

nancy

transgenderism

people

apologetics

book

body

christians

worldview

world

questions

christian

god

true

language

called

truth

thought

christianity

story

view

In fact, you'll see secular websites now saying that transgenderism represents body hatred, they're using that term. Transgenderism is body hatred. So it's a wonderful opportunity for Christians to step forward and say that Christianity has a very high view of the body. We see the person as a psychosocial psychophysical unity. Christianity never divides up the body from the person. The body is part of God's handiwork. The physical universe, including our body, is part of God's handiwork and has dignity and value and significance because of the handiwork of a loving God.

Hi, friends welcome to a very special episode of Ideas Have Consequences. As Christians our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission and today Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.

All right, well, welcome again to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen and today I'm joined by Darrow Miller and a very special guest, Dr. Nancy Pearcey. Nancy, it's great to have you with us. I just wanted to give a little introduction for those who don't know Nancy Pearcey, and then obviously we'd love to hear a little bit more about you, Nancy.

But just by way of introduction, Nancy Pearcey is the author of most recently, the book titled "Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality" was published in 2018. She is a—I would describe Nancy as kind of a premier thinker when it comes to issues of worldview, apologetics, and the biblical worldview. Her other books include "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity" and "Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes." She has written many other books, including one that helped me a lot many years ago, called "The Soul of Science" that really looks at how modern science was the result or the fruit of biblical principles, biblical worldview principles. I just can't recommend any of her books enough. They're fantastic.

Nancy's been a visiting scholar at Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute. She has been a professor or is a professor of worldview studies at Karen University and the Francis A Schaeffer scholar at the World Journalism Institute. She's currently a professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University, and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. And I'm sure there's many other things I could say as well, Nancy, but just a little quick aside to my daughter, Kayla is a graduate. About four years ago, she graduated from Biola and went through the Torrey program and I think it was not too long after you'd left that. But anyways, thank you for your work with Torrey that was a huge blessing to Kayla. I know a lot of other students that have gone through that excellent program at Biola. So anyways, it's really thrilling to have you with us, Nancy. And as I say you've helped the Disciple Nations Alliance. You've helped to all of us in so many ways. We quote you all the time in our teaching. Your books have been so influential. And anyways, we just want to thank you personally for that.

Nancy, if I could just start by having you just share a little bit about your story. How did you get interested in the topics that you write about? I take it you weren't always a Christian, I think you became a Christian as a young adult. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your background.

Yeah, well, I'd love to tell you because I have found that the older I get, the more thankful I am. I started telling my testimony in virtually all of my presentations. You know, when I'm invited to give lectures at conferences and Christian universities and seminaries. I'm starting to tell my story a lot more because I think I'm more grateful the older I get that God got ahold of me and turned me around. But I was actually raised in a Christian home, it was a Lutheran home. I say that because it was more ethnic than Christian. I think, you know, my parents were both Scandinavian. And you know, if you're from Sweden, you're Lutheran. Just like if you're from Italy, you're Catholic. And it was, that's the kind of Christianity I grew up with.

In high school, I started asking questions about my faith. And the answer I got was, well, wait a minute, we're Swedish. And there were no answers to my questions. I asked a Christian college professor, point blank, why are you a Christian? He said, works for me. By the way, he was Lutheran. And I had a chance to ask a seminary dean, you know, again, another Lutheran. Because those were our circles. And I assume at the seminary dean, I thought, Well, surely I'll get something more substantial. And all he said was, don't worry. We all have doubts sometimes.

And so this was kind of the turning point when I said, I guess Christianity just doesn't have any answers. Very intentionally, walked away from my religious upbringing, about halfway through high school, and very deliberately started on a search for truth. I started walking down the hallway to the library of public high school I attended and pulling books off the philosophy shelf, because I thought, well, if I can't get any adults to talk to me about this, you know, isn't that the job of the philosophers? Aren't they supposed to be answering questions like, what is truth? And how do we know it? And is there a meaning to life? And is that a foundation for ethics? Or is it just you know, true for me, true for you?

And I very quickly decided that if there was no God, then the answer to all those questions was no, there is no meaning to life, there was no foundation for ethics. There's not even a foundation for truth. Because I mean, here I was, 16 years old. And already I was realizing that if all we have is—if all I have is my puny brain, and the vast scope of time and history and space, why should I think I have any access to universal, absolute, objective truth? Ridiculous. That's how I thought of it. It was ridiculous to think I could have any sort of objective truth.

And so it was several years later, I arrived at L'Abri in Switzerland. (We lived in Germany when I was a child. And so I had gone back. And that's how I ended up in Europe.) And I stumbled across L'Abri. And by that time, I was a complete relativist and skeptic and I was primed for the approach that L'Abri took, you know, the apologetics approach. And I was, and here is where Darrow Miller comes into the story. So L'Abri had—I was only there for a weekend originally, supposedly. And L'Abri had a short term discussion. That was a special they call them guest tapes. Because, you know, it was based a lot on the tape lectures that Schaefer and others gave. And so they had this, you know, the people were there for just a short time, they had like the tapes, the lectures that they thought would give you sort of the heart of the L'Abri message. And it was Darrow Miller, who was running the guest tapes. And running that discussion group for short term visitors. It was very obvious from the questions I raised that I was not a Christian. And so Darrow said, Well, you have a lot of questions. Would you like to stay?

I said, Yeah, I think I would. Because I was so impressed. I had never met Christians who could answer my questions. I've never met Christians who are aware of the philosophical issues that I was, by then, a totally immersed in. I got into philosophy not out of intellectual interest, but because like I said, these very intense personal questions about my own search for truth. And I had never met any Christians who could answer any of those questions.

And what was interesting about L'Abri is not only did they answer the questions, but they knew the questions. They not only knew the answers, but they helped me frame the questions. Because I didn't even have the vocabulary. You know, I was a relativist. But did I did I know the term relativism? No. They heard me talk and then they said, Okay, what you're holding is relativism. Now, we'll show you why that's wrong. And untenable. And so, I did stay. I stayed only a month.

The first time—I was there twice—The first time I stayed only a month, precisely because it was so appealing. That I was afraid might be drawn in emotionally. It was so attractive. Because not only for the apologetics, which was just totally striking. But also you know, Schaefer was known for supporting the arts. And I was at, I was attending the music conservatory in Heidelberg, Germany. So I was a violinist. So the interest in the arts was very appealing.

And then I don't know if you know this, Scott, but at that time—this was 1971—everyone, there was a hippie. Yeah. All the students were hippies. And back then those were the cool kids. And so I just thought, Who are these Christians, that they can even reach across that cultural divide to these alienated young people? Because nobody else at that time—nobody was doing that at the time.

Anyway. So I was afraid I might be drawn in just because it was such an appealing place. So I went back home, but because of L'Abri, I had learned that there was such a thing as apologetics. And so I read all Shaffers' books, and I discovered CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. And I sort of read my way, so to speak, I read my way back to God, and eventually decided I was intellectually convinced. And then I thought, Well, where do I find other Christians? Because I wasn't in a church or anything. I was just alone with books on apologetics. So well I knew some Christians back in L'Abri, so a year and a half later, I went back, and I stayed for months. And that's where I really got grounded in Christian worldview thinking.

And so the reason I'm so passionate about apologetics is it was so core to my own conversion. I did have—Francis Schaeffer was the first person who acted as a intellectual questions were valid. And who didn't say, Well, what's wrong with you? Why don't you have faith? Or maybe you have a moral problem? No, remember one of his favorite phrases was "We give honest answers to honest questions." And that's how he treated me. That's how L'Abri, the whole staff, starting with Darrow Miller. That's how they treated me like, Okay, you have valid questions. I had never encountered that before. So now that's what I want to do with young people. I have a passion for helping them when they have questions, genuine questions about the faith.

Darrow, do you have anything you want to add to your experience there with Nancy at L'Abri? I'm sure you have your own memories from that time together.

Well, as I was listening to Nancy, the thing that came to my mind, part of the thing that was so enchanting for me, and probably for you as well, was not just the people willing to open the Bible and answer questions, because I had been in seminary at that point and they were afraid of the questions I was raising. And I thought, How can this be? This is a graduate school for training pastors, church leaders, and they weren't comfortable with the questions I was raising. And so going to L'Abri and seeing this honest answers to honest questions. But the other part of it was just the richness of the community. And the people coming together in these homes in the Swiss Alps and meeting together for discussions around tables and the mealtime. And that was such a precious, precious time in my life as it was in your life. And it was a turning point for Maryline and I.

Nancy, I want to begin to talk a little bit about your most recent books, but I'm just curious, based on what you're talking about, in terms of your experience at L'Abri. You know, this idea that we can ask questions and you found it very refreshing to finally find a place with Francis Schaeffer and L'Abri where you could ask questions. Honest answers to honest questions. I mean, it doesn't speak well of the evangelical church. And, you know, we have our own kind of ideas that we've thought about in terms of why, you know, I don't think it's part of our historic legacy as the evangelical church that we don't ask questions. We're not thinking people. "Just believe" kind of people. "Just get people saved" or whatever it is. But it seems like that kind of came in at some point and became part of an evangelical culture. Do you still see the evangelical church struggling with that? Do you think we're coming out of that? What's your sense was of where we're at on this whole question of... I don't know what you want to call it. Intellectual curiosity and not being afraid to ask hard questions and to really engage in this way. What's your take on that, Nancy?

Yeah, that was one of the main reasons I wrote my earlier book, Total Truth, is I was trying to figure out why that worldview message was so difficult for many Christians to really understand and accept. By that time I had was the co author of a book with Chuck Colson, "How Now Should We Live?" And, you know, which was about Christian worldview and then my follow up was, why is this such a difficult message?

And so in, in my book, Total Truth, I looked at the history of evangelicalism in America. You see being raised Lutheran, I was raised more sort of classic European Reformation Christianity. And I discovered that American evangelicalism is different. It's not the same thing. And American evangelicalism arose largely out of the First and Second Great Awakenings. And on one hand, a lot of good was done through the awakenings, a lot of people did become Christians or were brought to a more genuine commitment to their faith. But it also had some negative baggage and the negative baggage was that it tended to redefine Christianity in terms of an intense emotional conversion experience. And you were a Christian only if you would have this particular intense experience.

And so it did downplay doctrine and Christian worldview, Christian apologetics, it downplayed the whole cognitive side of belief. That is the heritage that we're still dealing with, when you say "just believe" in that. By the way that's under the cover of my book Total Truth is "just believe" question mark. Because that is the message so many of us get.

And so we are still working against the heritage of the First and Second Great Awakening in its anti intellectual aspect. I do think, to answer your question entirely, though, is that there has been, largely because of Schaefer, there has been somewhat of a turn. And as the surrounding culture becomes more secular, people are starting to realize they need more tools, more apologetics tools for dealing with it, and especially when their children walk away from the faith.

You know, I homeschool both my kids and to my great surprise—even in the homeschool movement, these kids are not in the public schools, you know, they are more protected from than most—And yet I know many, many families who homeschool their kids and still lost their kids when their kids went off to college. You know, it's the same with Christian schools. So Christians are starting to feel feel the urgency that I haven't seen in the past to have better answers for the kids. And of course, today it's tying into our current questions. My current book is on homosexuality, transgenderism and so on. Now I never speak at any Christian church, school, seminary conference, Christian college, without some people coming up who are dealing with these questions quite directly. So parents start feeling the need for apologetics when their kid says, you know, when their daughter says I'm really a boy. Or when the son says I'm gay. Parents are really starting to understand the need for apologetics today like never in the past.

Hi, friends, I just wanted to take a minute during this break to turn your attention to how you can learn more about Nancy Pearcey and tap into her wealth of knowledge on apologetics and anything biblical worldview. First off her website is nancypearcey.com, where you can learn more about any of her books including "Love Thy Body", which if you haven't noticed yet, we cannot recommend highly enough. She is also on Facebook at Nancy R Piercey, where she posts regularly. I've included links to both of these in the show notes as well as links to any of her books. Lastly, if you're enjoying Ideas Have Consequences and want to help us share it, please consider sending this episode to a friend. And while you're at it, go ahead and click that follow button on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening.

Yeah, I completely agree with your experience. In fact, I'll just tell you a quick little story, just at the church I attend in Phoenix. A good friend, their daughter went off to Rutgers. She got a scholarship to play softball. And I think in her sophomore year, she reported back to her parents that she was exploring becoming a lesbian. And it just broke their heart and just put them into a bit of a crisis and I was able to give them your book, Nancy, "Love Thy Body." And I was so thankful for that, and I was saying, Here's a book that you can read, that'll help you understand not only what's happening in the culture, with the sexual revolution, and this whole, just enormous shift that we've experienced, that's led to what's happening with your daughter now, but what the Bible says about it. Right? What's true about these things? So that you have some equiptment that you can go back and talk to her and I'm happy to hear that some of those conversations have been happening and God seems to be working.

But anyways, this is really real now for lots of people. I was curious, Nancy, to hear your thoughts on—because you've been writing about just biblical worldview. Just worldviews in general, apologetics, what is true, secularism biblical worldview, these different worldviews. And then you wrote "Love Thy Body," which was really about the sexual revolution. And then you've got an upcoming book, I believe that's on the subject of masculinity. So it's also touching on gender and sexuality. What caused you to make that—that they're not disconnected subjects by any means—but you are kind of going into one particular direction. Talk to us a little bit about that. What, what caused that for you, Nancy, to move in?

I'm glad you asked that, because it really is more connected than most people realize. So one of the ways to think about this is as building with two stories in it, so that in the lowest story, you have scientific truth, which is considered rational and true and empirically verifiable, scientific. And then those the upper story, where people put anything that cannot be known scientifically. So things like morality, and spiritual truth cannot be stuffed into a test tube, and studied under a microscope. And so people started to say, well, those aren't really true.

The backthought here, of course, is in most cultures, people thought the truth is a coherent whole. Christianity taught that truth is a coherent whole, that God has made everything. And therefore everything in the universe relates in some way to God. So the spliting of truth is really a more of a modern problem, starting with the scientific revolution. People began to say, Oh, the only reliable form of knowledge is what we know, scientifically. And so anything that could not be known directly by science was put into what Schaeffer called the upper story. Well, so my book, Total Truth, was primarily about that split. And Schaeffer used to say this is the main reason Christians have a hard time talking to their own children, and to the secular world in general, but including their own children. Because when they say Christianity is true, well if the concept of truth has shifted, then we're no longer speaking the same language.

Young people today, if you say Christianity is true, will automatically unreflectively throw it into the upper story. Well, okay. Oh, you mean true for you? Oh, you mean subjectively true. Oh, you mean, what gives you the ability to make it through the night. A personal comfort blanket. They automatically think that because they hold a split view of truth. And so Schaefer wrote a lot about how we need to address the concept of truth.

Well, so I delved into more detail. And in my book, Total Truth, talks about how the evangelical world came to have the split views truth, like I was saying earlier, but then I started looking at other fields, and finding out that if your view of truth is split, then everything is split.

And so it actually started, I guess, with my book, "Saving Leonardo," which is about the arts. And the first book I picked, the very first book I picked up in my research, was by the well known intellectual historian whose name is Jacques Berzon. And he said, modern art has been split into two streams. And he called them the naturalist stream, which is obviously the lower story, you know, what we know by science, nature. And what he called the idealist stream, the world of ideals, the mental realm. Truth, goodness and beauty. And I thought, Oh my goodness. The first book I pick up on the arts shows that the split view of truth is also reflected in the art. So then I wrote a whole book on that, which is my book "Saving Leonardo."

And then I picked up. I had written only one chapter on the moral issues. So I decided, I'm gonna go further with the moral issues. I picked up that and found the same split! Secular bio ethicist, like Peter Singer, who's at Princeton, you know, probably the premier bioethicists today, when dealing with topics like abortion, said, Well, there's a split between the body and the person. So a fetus can be human, biologically, physiologically, genetically human, but has no moral status and does not warrent legal protection. But at some point, so it's in the lowest story to use Schaeffer's words, you know, the fetus is just in the lowest story, just what we know by science. But then at some point, it jumps into the upper story, and becomes a "person" usually defined in terms of mental capacities, you know, the self awareness, and the ability for self reflection and so on.

And so I thought, Oh, my goodness, there it is. There's the upper lower story that Schaeffer talked about, but now applied to the human person. And so abortion was the issue where it's been applied to first. But euthanasia, obviously, is the same thing just in reverse. You lose a certain level of cognitive functional, you fall out of the upper story, and become merely a body. That's how Peter Singer puts it, you are now only a body. And at that point, your treatment can be withheld. Your food and water can be discontinued. Your organs can be harvested and you can be unplugged, because you are now only a body. You just in the lowest story, so you have no moral status.

So abortion and euthanasia were the first places where it was obvious that the split view of truth had been applied to the human person. And then I took it further into homosexuality, transgenderism, the hookup culture, and so on, and showed how that same split view of the human person helps us to understand the secular view on all of these cutting edge moral issues. So if there is a common underlying—you know, Schaeffer used to say, one reason we are not very effective as Christians is because we tend to memorize individual arguments for individual issues. Bits and pieces he called it. Well, there's an underlying worldview to all of these moral issues. And it is a split in the view of the human person that correlates with a split in the view of truth that Schaeffer talked about.

I'd like to get you to talk more about that, Nancy, because I think this idea of this split is new for a lot of people, you know, can you just go into a little more detail, especially on the issue of sexuality? How does somebody with that split mindset, see the issues of sexuality and sex, gender and these kinds of things? And how does that differ from how we should? What's true from the Scriptures? And just from creation? Just talk a little bit more about because I think that's new for people, this idea of this two stories, at least for a lot of people.

Yeah, a lot of people are starting to pick up on it because of transgenderism. You know, that's where it's the most obvious so why not start there? The transgender activists argue explicitly, that your biology, your body has nothing to do with your authentic self, with your gender identity. That is not part of your authentic self. There was a BBC documentary that says at the heart of the debate, is the idea that your mind can be at war with your body. At war! And in that war, of course, it's the mind that wins. It's your internal sense of self.

And so kids down to kindergarten today are being told that their body tells them nothing about who they are. Which is why you can read news accounts now the kids are coming home from school, saying you know, mommy, my teacher told me just because you have girl parts doesn't mean you're a girl. Just because you have boy parts doesn't mean your boy. There was a case in the news where the parents were taking the school to court over emotional distress. Because the daughter came home saying Mommy, what am I? The little girl literally said to her mom, please take me to a doctor so we can find out what I am.

So kids today are being told that their bodies has nothing to do with who they are. Which is an extremely negative view of the human body. It says your body is irrelevant, insignificant, meaningless, disconnected from who you really are. And so that the main message that Christians should be offering is, why accept such a demeaning view of the body?

I've read an interview with a 14 year old girl, who had lived as a trans boy for three years from age 11. And then at age 14, recovered her identity as a girl. And in the interview, she said, The turning point came when I realized, and this is a direct quote, When I realized it's not conversion therapy, to learn to love your body. And this interview came out after my book, but it would have been a great interview, great quote, for a book titled "Love Thy Body." And this was on a very secular liberal website. So what it means is that even secular liberal people are starting to recognize that at the heart of this debate is the split between the body and the person and the denigration of the body as not being part of your true self.

So in fact, you'll see web secular websites now saying that transgenderism represents body hatred, they're using that term. Transgenderism is body hatred. So it's a wonderful opportunity for Christians to step forward and say, Christianity has a very high view of the body. We see the person is a psychosocial psychophysical unity. The Christianity never divides up the body from the person, the body is part of God's handiwork. The physical universe, including our body, is part of God's handiwork and has dignity and value and significance because it's the handiwork of a loving God.

But I am finding it a little bit difficult for Christians to really get their mind around this message because we're so used to thinking that Christianity is otherworldly, right? That we don't think this world has much value or significance. One of my students put it this way, growing up in the church, I was always taught "body bad, spirit good." And so it's a little difficult for us to learn a new language. I find that when I speak to Christian audiences, I spend a lot of time just saying, You need to learn a new language. That we value the body that God has called us to live in harmony with our body, that we are meant to respect our biological sex, that we are to welcome who we are as God's handiwork. I kind of give them phrases like this that they can use when they're talking to Christians. And by giving them literal language, phrases, like "Respect your body as God's handiwork."

I just think it's so important. And we come at this same issue, sometimes through our background in Christian relief and development. And when we first started this work many years ago that we saw the same split between the higher and the lower, you know, the spirit is higher and the body is lower, or really anything in the created order, it's the idea it's fallen, and it's passing away. But the spirit is going to be saved and go to be with Jesus in heaven. And so, consequently, when it comes to things like poverty and relief and development, those things don't matter that much, people are hungry, because it's not that it's not important. I mean, most Christians would say, yeah, it's in the Bible, but it's not as important as saving spirit or saving soul.

So I think, yeah, we really are coming out of a time as evangelicals where we have to kind of rediscover this bigger, biblical worldview that doesn't make those kinds of divides. The way you're describing it, this is kind of the way I've been thinking about it. I'll run it by you, Nancy, and both you and Darrow would love to get your thoughts on it.

But when you talk about transgenderism, especially, the way I've tended to think about it is, we moved from the pre modern to the modern to the postmodern. You have these shifts, and in the pre modern, it was a unified world, right? There wasn't a divide between heaven and earth. And God was the authority that made sense of everything and His Word made sense of everything. But then in the modern world, now it's science and reason, right? That's going to be, as you say, the upper story, that's going to be the thing that's going to define what's true. And then if you want to talk about religion, or faith, or belief, that's fine, but that's your subjective personal belief that's not going to tell us what's true anymore. What's going to tell us truth is science, right? And reason.

It's kind of this idea of truth becomes very limited to just what we can learn through science so to speak. But that includes things like male and female in the body, right? There's a biological reality to that. But when you get to post modernism, they just reject even science, you know, everything becomes subjective, you know, we can't know truth in any way, there isn't truth out there that we can know. So, to me, transgenderism, that is kind of the perfect, postmodern kind of case study, in some ways, because it doesn't matter what the science says about male/female chromosomes and things like that. It only matters what I think, right? That's all that matters, what I think about my body, and if I'm a male, and I think that I'm a female, that's all that matters. And you have to affirm that. So to me, it's kind of this classic case study of post modernism lived out, you know, this transgenderism. So anyways, any kind of thoughts or reaction? That's how I see kind of where we're at right now.

The only thing I would add that there is a dependent relationship between modernism and post modernism. And so we can't miss this. Because there have been Christians who have today who are trying to write books and articles on post modernism, without realizing that it depends on modernism. Yes, it is modernism that first said, the body has no significance because it is the product of mindless, purposeless meaningless forces, right? Therefore, the body has no meaning or intrinsic purpose. And so it was modernism that gave rise to post modernism. And if we don't keep—we still have modernism we still have Richard Dawkins.

Yes, yes. Yeah. And it's interesting to see I've often been interested in this debate that's going on now, between the modernists and the post modernists. Without you know, without them realizing just what you said, Nancy, that it's actually the reduction of everything to science and getting rid of God, that just is gonna lead to post modernism, you know, of course.

Let me give you a great quote on this because it really encapsulates it. So you probably know the somewhat well known intellectual spokesman, Camille Paglia Well known lesbian feminist. By the way, she now calls herself transgender. After identifying as lesbian for a long time, she identifies as trans. But she has a quote that I use because it encapsulates how post modernism depends on modernism. And here's how she puts it in one of her books. She says, on the one hand, the reason we know her... Christians quote is sometimes because she's somewhat of an iconic, classic feminist. She says, sex is not just a social construction. No, no, no nature made us male and female. She even says, humans are designed, (She actually uses that word,) humans are designed for sexual reproduction.

So then you the natural question would be well, then how do you defend being lesbian? And now even trans, and listen to how she puts it. She says, okay, sure, nature made us male and female. But why not defy nature? And that's her word. She goes on to say, after all, fate, not God has given us this flesh, we have absolute claim to our bodies, and may do with them as we see fit. So do you see the logic there? She's basically saying that if our bodies—if nature itself, and therefore our bodies—are products of mindless, purposeless forces, then they have no intrinsic purpose that we are morally obligated to respect. They give us no moral message. They tell us nothing about who we are, we may do with them as we see fit.

So that is the logic connecting the modernist worldview. In my book, I have a quote from I think its from The New Yorker, saying that the statement of faith of the modernist is that nature is a product of mindless, purposeless forces and that Homo sapiens, you know, has no intrinsic purpose. And the implication therefore, is we can invent our own purpose. You know, that nature becomes this raw material that humans can impose their own purposes on. And that logical connection is what we really need to understand if we want to understand the secular mindset.

Schaeffer was right. It's both lower and upper story. I don't think we've gone from modern to postmodern. I think Schaeffer right. The both of them have been there from the beginning, it just depends on which ones in the headlines, right? Moral issues have always been in the upper story. So no wonder post modernism is upper story. So no wonder now, those are the headline issues, because the moral issues have always been upper story.

But science is still completely lower story. Like I said, we still have our Richard Dawkins. So they're still both there. And so Christians really need to come back also with a strong message about nature, that nature does exhibit a plan, a purpose, a design, that eyes are made for seeing, ears are made for hearing. Fins are made for swimming, and wings are made for flying. In fact, the development of the entire organism is directed by an inbuilt plan or blueprint. DNA. Science itself give evidence that there's a purpose, a plan, a design, in nature. And so what Christians are saying is that we will be happier and healthier when we live in accord with that plan with that design. So again, it's a positive message. It's not just a message of, it's wrong. It's a sin. Don't do it. It's no, we're going to be happier when we live in accord with the design that's built into who we are.

I love that. Nancy,

I'd like to go back a few minutes. Nancy, you were talking and you're just sort of touching back on it now, you were talking about the church is beginning to realize the importance of apologetics again. And I wanted to bring in the concept of language as we look, when you change a culture, you first change the language. And we are, as Christians, we have a vocabulary. A biblical vocabulary that very often we jettison very quickly and, and absorb or accept the language of the culture or the language in which the culture is starting to move. How do we as Christians, how do the people that are beginning to wake up to these things, how is it that we're to deal with language in this world? Do you understand what I'm asking?

Yeah, I focus on that a lot. I found, you know, as I started speaking publicly on these issues, especially as Christian groups, I had to come back to language over and over again. And, you know, I have to end with "Okay, now, what do we do practically?" Practically, we need to change our language. We need to learn to talk about the value and dignity of the human body. I've been a little disappointed that even people writing on this subject and I won't name names, (because only a few people have started writing on transgenderism from a Christian perspective,) but they all deal with it as just, you know, how do we talk about the upper story? And we talk about, you know, our sense of self? Well, no, it's the body that's the issue. All of these issues. All of these issues involve a denigration of the body, saying the body is not important. It's not part of our authentic self.

Let me take a slight detour on to homosexuality because transgenderism is more obvious, it's less obvious with homosexuality. Since that's an awfully big issue in the church today, too. How does how does this denigration of the body play out in homosexuality? Well, even my homosexual friends agree that in terms of biology, chromosomes, anatomy, physiology, males and females are counterparts to one another. That is how the human sexual and reproductive system is designed. To embrace a same sex identity, therefore, is to say, why should I care about my design? Is to contradict that inherent design. It is to say, "Why should my body inform my identity? Why should my biological sex as a male or female have any say in my moral choices?"

So once again, it is a denigration, a disrespectful view of the body. It is saying that yes, I'm naturally oriented because of the way God made me, I will be naturally oriented to the opposite sex, but why should I care about that? So once again, it's not quite as extreme and obvious as transgenderism. But again, it's a denigration of the body. And so as Christians who... The most difficult mental shift I've seen in Christians is, hey, the way to answer these issues is to have a higher view of the body.

And Darrow, one of the things that we need to do, one of the easier way to kind of get a handle on it is to get in touch with our own heritage. Go back to the early church, the early church also faced worldviews that denigrated the body, the material world, like Gnosticism, and Neo Platonism, and Manichaeism. Remember, Augustine was a manichaen. And all of these worldviews, all of these "isms" denigrated the material world as a realm of death, decay and destruction. And they defined salvation as escape from the material world. And Gnosticism even said, there were many levels of deity and it was a low level deity, it was an evil god, who created this world, because no self respecting God would get his hands dirty mucking about with matter.

So the early Christians had to take a stand against that. And they had to say, no, no, no, it was not an evil, low level deity who created the world. It was the supreme deity who was a good God. And therefore, this universe is inherently good. And actually, the greatest scandal historically was the incarnation. Because that said, it said that the supreme deity had entered into the material world, and taken on a physical body. So the incarnation was the greatest affirmation of the dignity of the human body. And then, when Jesus was executed on a Roman cross, we might say he did escape from the physical realm as Gnosticism thought we should aspire to do. But what did he do then? He came back.

In a physical body, exactly. Here, touch my hands, feel my side.

Give me a piece of fish to eat. Yeah. To the Greeks at that time, this was not spiritual progress. This was regress. Who would want to come back to the realm of the body? And then, of course, at the end of time, what's God going to do, he's not going to scrap the material world, as if He made a mistake, the first time around. He is going to renew it and restore it and create a new heavens and the earth. And we will live on that new heavens and earth, in restored physical bodies, all the way back to the Apostles Creed, the affirmation of the resurrection of the body. So what I try to help Christians to understand is that what an incredible heritage we have, this is a higher view of the material world than you find in anywhere. Anywhere. Any religion, any philosophy. And we don't realize what a treasure we have. We should just be so overwhelmed with joy.

Not only do we not realize it, we've kind of given it up, and we've become kind of Neo Gnostic. And so we're at a time where we have to recover that and so that's why I just thank you so much for the work that you're doing to help us to recover this powerful, biblical truth that affirms God's creation, including our own bodies.

So I have to tell you, when I tell people about this, I quote somebody named Darrow Miller. Darrow Miller makes a point that the early church has this wonderful treasure, and largely gave it up and absorbed much of the Greek worldview. Right? So he sometimes says, we gave up the Great Commission, and we teach the Greek commission. Do you remember ths Darrow? You said that in our classroom when you visited. I remember it from then. We teach the Greek commission and so to understand why Christians lost it, they lost it all the way back in the middle—well, Middle Ages, at least at that time, many of them were already absorbing that dualism that denigrated the material world from the Greek worldview.

Yes. I still want to go back to the language part. Nancy, how do we use language to reinforce biblical truth and biblical holism? Because the tendency is to absorb the language of the culture. And when we absorb it, we use that language in our discussion. And that creates a disconnect between what we believe we say is true and the language that we use doesn't affirm that. So how do we bring language to bear consciously to fight these trends?

Yeah, yeah. Let me give you an example. So I was invited to keynote for the Christian Medical and Dental Association. So there's all these Christian doctors and psychiatrists. And so a psychiatrist came up to me afterwards and said, so I have a patient who's female, and she identifies as male. So what do I say to her? And I said, I basically restated, "Love thy body. Take your identity from your body, respect your body is something that God's made. Live in harmony with your body." And she came back with Yeah, but she says this is her authentic self, that she really feels like a male. So I restated, take your identity from your body. We're meant to live in harmony with our body.

And I gave examples. One of the examples I like to give is a woman who lived as a transgender male for 10, she passed as a male, for 10 years. Laura Perry is her name. And after 10 years, she became a Christian. And at first she thought she could continue living as a man, you know, sanctification takes a while. And here's how she put it, she said, I aspired to be a real man of God. And it took a while but one time when she was praying, she seemed to hear God say to her, you cannot claim to love me, and yet reject my creation. And she understood that meant, her body was God's creation. And that was a turning point.

So I gave examples like that, it means loving God's creation. And this psychiatrist, back to the CMDA, the psychiatrist who came up to me, literally, about four times came back with "But..." and use the postmodern language of "Yes, but she feels her authentic self is really male." And we stated about five times before she finally said, "Oh," she hit her head like that, "Oh, love thy body." It took five times of restating it, giving examples, restating it before it penetrated the language of "Oh, yes, but this is my authentic stuff. This is my true self." No, you are meant to live in accord with your body.

I'll give you a few more stories just because people connect with stories. There was a woman who lived as a lesbian for several years, who wrote up this story, became a Christian and eventually, as she put it, to my great surprise, I felt a twinge of heterosexual desire. And eventually ended up marrying a man and has two children now. But here's how she puts it. She said, I came to trust. Here's the language, I came to this is a direct quote, "I came to trust that God had made me female for a reason. And I wanted to honor my body by living in accord with the creator's design." Isn't that wonderful language? That was how we should be talking about it.

That's my point. What is the language that we use? Because we get in these discussions with moderns and postmoderns we get in these discussions and the discussion takes place within the framework of the language that they use. And how do we...

And I'll give you one more. So this is one of my favorite stories. It's also in the chapter. All of these are in "Love Thy Body," my book, "Love Thy Body." But one of my favorites is an extended anecdote of a young man named Sean. Sean was exclusively attracted to other men. You have to say that these days because if somebody leaves their homosexuality, often they'll be told, Oh, well, you weren't really exclusively homosexual to begin with you were really bi. Bisexual. So he makes a point of, no, I was exclusively attracted to other men. And what's interesting about Sean's story is that he grew up in a gay affirming family, and attended a gay affirming church. So he doesn't think there was anything wrong with him with sexuality. Because that's another thing people will say is, oh, well, you were driven by self loathing. And he had no self loathing. So but today, he's married and has three children. And by the way, he's a Christian ethics professor in London. Sean Dougherty is his name. At any rate, so why did he change then? It was a change in his understanding of the body. He said, I came to realize that God had made me male, which means I was physically, genetically, physiologically organized, ordered. My body was ordered toward sexual relationships with a female. And he said, I didn't try to change my feelings directly, which rarely works. He said, But I came to accept that God had made me male, and that this was a good gift from God. That's his exact words, I came to accept that my male body was a good gift from God. And once I did that, he said, eventually, my feelings started to follow suit. And so that's another way of changing the language. I tell people, at the core of this debate is the question, are we the products of mindless purposeless forces? Or are we the product, the creation of a loving God, who has created us for a good creation. If it's a good creation, then we should be accepting our creation as a good gift from God. So that's another way of helping people to change their language, to accept their body as a good gift from God. And that we are meant to live in accord with, with our bodies.

Our body has been designed by the designer for a purpose. And when we look at our bodies, we can discover what that purpose is. Now, how do I align? Not just with the language of, but with my understanding of the purpose of my body for life?

Exactly. And sometimes people will say, when people read my book, "Love Thy Body" they'll sometimes say, well, aren't you over emphasizing the body, to which I say, remember, Luther said, or at least alleged to have said that if you're fighting the battle everywhere, except where the enemy is, then you're not in the battle? Well, on these issues, where the secular world is attacking is the body. It's saying your body is not part of yourself. It has no intrinsic purpose that you obligated respect.

And here's an argument, by the way, I found surprisingly effective. I, first of all, with my secular friends, but then I started finding out it's very effective with Christians as well. And it's an argument from environmentalism. And you say, Well, you know, just what is environmentalism have to do with transgenderism? Well, in issues of the environment, now to avoid ecological disasters and pollution, and so on, what we've learned is that you have to work with the natural order, you can't work against the natural order, or you're going to create problems. Do you remember that line from Camille Paglia, where she said, you know, our bodies are products of chance, material forces, and therefore we may do with them as we see fit? Well, what we've learned is we may not do with the environment, whatever we see fit, we are constrained by the natural order that exists. We need to respect the natural order. And what Christians are saying is that when it comes to these moral issues, we are calling on people to respect the natural order of our own bodies, our own biology. And when I use the environmental example, I find even secular people say, oh, oh, that makes sense. I get it.

Because you're speaking language that they're comfortable with, respecting the environment. That's a really good, Nancy. Hey, we need to wrap up. But I want to get one more question in just because our time is so precious here, and that is that what we're talking about is so aggressive. Nancy, when I think back about just the path of the sexual revolution and how quickly it's progressed in the West. From abortion, go back to, well, birth control, abortion, divorce, and then now we've got same sex marriage. Then, as soon as that thing is won over at the Supreme Court, we've got transgenderism and now we're on to even crazier, and we're in dark and horrific frontiers. It's very fast. It's very aggressive. We've noticed this in our work around the world. In fact, we at the DNA because we work with Christians around the world, they have challenged us, a lot of this sexual revolution, transgenderism and homosexual LGBTQ training is now coming into our children's education and it's coming from your countries. It's coming from United States. Coming from the State Department's. It's coming from the United Nations. What are you doing? So I'm increasingly getting this question like, What are you doing? And I feel a sense of burden for that, like, I need to be doing more. This is now not just aggressive here in the United States. It's aggressive—it's got a missionary kind of aggressiveness all over the world.

It has a mission, vision and money behind it. Yeah, it's promotion.

And yet, when I talk to a lot of Christians, I get just very conflicted responses. You know, sometimes I talk to Christians, and they'll feel like, it's issues of culture. It's culture war, right? That's just divisive culture war stuff. Let's just love people and get them saved, right, and get them into church. Let's not deal with that. Some people say, Oh, I wish Christians wouldn't talk so much about sex, sex, sex, sex, that's all Christians want to talk about. And I was like, that's all the culture is talking about. But it was supposedly, we're the ones that have some hang up about sex. So I'm frustrated. And I just, I would love, you've already given us a lot of great advice. But how should we as committed Bible believing Christians be... What should our posture be? What should we be doing really, at this moment of crisis, because it's just such a crisis now? I mean, it's real. This isn't just out there. This is in our own families with our own children now. So yeah.

Well, you guys are ahead of the game, because you already understand the importance of worldview. And so you already know that the ultimate solution is to keep promoting a worldview message. A worldview of the body, it worldview approach to sexuality. So let me end with something more practical, because like you say, everywhere you go now, you're going into families who are dealing with this personally, so. And I do think that "Love Thy Body" helps with that, because it does.

And not just sexual issues. I have so many people who say I'm sitting down with my kids, and I'm going through your book, page by page, with my kids. Because I grew up—I have families who talk to me and say—I grew up thinking, you know, your body was not important. So I didn't teach my kids that their body was important. And not only on sexual issues, but one of my graduate students had her teenage daughter with an eating disorder that was so severe that she was hospitalized. And she said, I realized that I had always taught her that, you know, to have a negative view of the body and this world. And she was the first person to tell me, I'm sitting down with my daughter. And we are going over this page by page together, so that we are together learning to have a biblical view of the body. Because she hates her body. It's been interesting that people have taken this beyond the sexual issues. I've had people who come up to me after I speak at a conference, and they've been sexually abused and they've learned to hate their body because of that, or people who have obese and have weight problems and hate the body, or a woman who had rheumatoid arthritis. And so I was coping with it by saying I am not my body until I read your book. So I realized no, that's not the way to do it.

So I guess it turns out that it does affect a lot of other issues as well. But here's what I'd like to say. I think it might be good to end on a personal note of how we deal with people in our own families. And... two things.

One is transgenderism is now primarily an issue of young girls, teenage girls, which it wasn't always. Classic gender dysphoria usually starts at a very young age. So this is very different, it's a new kind of gender dysphoria that seems to have a lot to do with cultural contagion. Social contagion is the term people use. Like when there's copycat suicides, for example. There's a lot of social contagion going on. So in one of my talks, where I have I showed graphs, I showed graphs of the number of young girls coming out as transgender and the graph is fairly horizontal and then suddenly goes up like a sharp cliff. It's been a dramatic increase. And the thing that I want to leave with you though, is that these are very, very fragile kids. The first study ever done of—it's called rapid onset gender dysphoria. They needed to come up with a new name for it because it was not the traditional gender dysphoria that starts when kids are young.

But the first study done by Brown University, Lisa Littman, is the researcher of rapid onset gender dysphoria found that like about 63% of these girls had already been diagnosed with a psychological issue before they came out with gender dysphoria. I emphasize diagnosed, in other words, most teenagers have some anxiety and depression anyway. But these were young girls who had it was severe enough that they'd already been taken to a counselor and had a diagnosis. And so they had diagnosis, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm, like cutting... What else... Oh, autism. Autism was most common. And nobody knows quite why. But autism has been reliably associated, even when it used to be called transsexualism. So for quite a while. At any rate, the point is that these are very fragile kids, and they need a lot of love.

And so the starting point with these young people is not to get into an argument about why they're wrong. The starting point has to be love. They're very fragile. And in my book, "Love Thy Body," I also tell the story of a young boy who did have gender dysphoria from a very young age, you know, he was one of the classic case. And before he was even walking, his babysitter was telling his mom, he's too good to be a boy. By which she meant he was quiet, gentle, compliant, and the things we stereotypically associated with girls. In preschool, when his mom picked him up, he was always playing with the little girls, not the little boys. By elementary school, he was coming to his parents weeping and saying, you know, I don't fit in anywhere. His exact words were I think the way girls do. I'm interested in the things girls are. God should have made me a girl. Already in elementary school, of course by early teens, he was looking on the internet for sex reassignment surgery.

So what did his parents do? First of all, they made sure he knew they loved him just the way he was. I do know of people with trans kids or gay kids who tried to change their kid. I had a friend in seminary—when I was in seminary, I had a friend who was a former homosexual, who said when I was young, I liked music and art. And my dad was baffled and tried to toughen me up by pushing me into more masculine activities like sports. Well, in my book, I call this little boy Brandon. Brandon's parents did not do that. They said it's perfectly okay to be a gentle, sensitive, relational boy. It does not mean you're really a girl. It may be that God is preparing you for one of the caring professions like counseling, psychology, health care worker. And even took him through things like the Myers Briggs Personality Test showing that you can be at both extremes. And you know, boy can be at the gentle, sensitive extreme, and a girl can be at the take charge rational sort of extreme. And that's okay.

And it wasn't until in his early 20s, that he finally truly reconciled himself to, I'm a boy. True gender dysphoria is very intractable. It is very difficult. And he's 26 now. He finally said to me, here's how he put it. He finally said to me, he was about 21, I think. He said, I realized surgery would not give me what I wanted, it would not make me a girl.

There's a very well known TED Talk by a cardiologist. It's called his/her health care. And the most famous line from this TED talk is every cell has a sex. Every cell has XX, XY chromosome in it, and you cannot change every cell in your body. So clearly, surgery does not make you the opposite sex. So I give his story because if he—Well, he's 26 now—when he was young, transgenderism wasn't a big deal, the word was around. But if he'd been born even a little later, or if he had not been homeschooled by Christian parents, Yeah, he would have been gone. He would absolutely would have identified as trans. So his parents, they homeschooled him, and they kept reaffirming that—you know what they said to him? This was a favorite line. "It's not you that's wrong. It's the stereotypes that are wrong." It's okay for you to be contrary to John Wayne. Yeah, John Wayne masculinity stereotypes. And it was hard though, because you know, most of his friends are still girls. He still doesn't fit the male stereotypes. And it's not an easy thing. But the constant love and support of his parents is what made the difference.

So love is so important. Before we jump into apologetics and start having discussions at an academic or a head level, I hear you Nancy, I think that's so true. And I guess I would also say this is important for Christians to speak up and to be engaged on, you know, we have something as you said earlier, very precious with this biblical understanding of reality, including physical reality, including the body, and there's no other worldview that has that. And if we're not out there in the public championing that, it's not going to be there. And that's not going to go well, I just think this is what it means to be discipling nations is to be, not to be cowed. It's hard right now, though, because there's so much social pressure. This is pride month, right? I mean, if you're not flying the rainbow flag, and this and that, it's not very tolerant right now for people that don't kind of uphold this new sexual ethic.

Although, the good thing is that there's starting to be some pushback, there was a study done recently that consumers are getting tired of it. It's the market is that oppressive, pressuring it. And there was a recent study saying consumers are tired of being bashed over the head with woke ideology when they're just trying to buy something. Maybe people are getting a little tired of it.

I think that's the story of Disney here recently, isn't it? I mean, that's kind of what we learned with the Disney episode here. Yeah.

And when you know, when Governor DeSantis in Florida says, let's lay off at least K through three, right, you know, kindergarten. So many people didn't realize how aggressively the woke ideology, the gender ideology has been pressed, even on kids K through three. Yes, people didn't know until that became an issue. Let me leave you with one more possible misunderstanding Christians sometimes have. I actually had one, only one, one review that misunderstood my book, "Love Thy Body." And ironically, it was by a Christian philosopher, which will go unnamed, because you will know him. But he said, Oh, no, Nancy is wrong when she says that secular people have a low view of the body and a Christian to have a higher view. He said, Oh, no, she's wrong. Because, you know, the materialist has an exhaustive view of the body, a too exalted view of the material realm. To which I say, just because—no no, of the materialist think matter is all that exists, that does not mean they have a high view of it. They still think is a product of mindless chance forces with no higher meaning, purpose or dignity. That's not a high view of the material world.

No, you know, and it's to me, behind all of that is this rebellious heart, and you got out it with the Camille Paglia quote: I can do whatever I want to, I am the authority. I am on the throne. I will make of this world including my own body what I will and I will not bow to a God who created it. To me, it's just such a clear rebellion. That's the spiritual warfare kind of satanic aspect of all of this, you know. So I agree with you. Yeah, this is not a high view of it. This is a rebellion against it, in so many ways,

And that becomes part of your apologetic, is look, the secular view has a very low view of the body. And the secular view is what denigrates the body. The secondary view is what's dehumanizing. You know, if we can kind of turn the tables, people who think Christianity has a low view of the physical world, actually, no, we should be turning the tables and showing that the secular view that has a low view of the body, and that it's Christianity that gives value and dignity to the body. That's an incredibly powerful apologetic.

I agree with you. Well, Nancy, you been so generous with your time and I just want to thank you. I want to thank you so much for your voice on this issue, especially right now, and just the courage that you have in speaking out with such clarity. And not just speaking against what we're getting from the culture. But speaking, you know, in fact, one of the things I love to quote, I quote you on this all the time, you know, it's not enough to criticize a bad worldview, we have to offer a better one, right. And I just think that's such, that's become a life message for me, you know, we've got to be offering the better one, the one that's true and beautiful, and that is attractive to people. Because it's true. So thank you for that. Thank you for all that you've done. For the church, for the DNA and just so many others beyond, we're just super grateful.

I want to encourage our listeners to get a copy of "Love Thy Body." And any of Nancy's books, go back and look through all of the books that she's written. But this one because it deals with the sexual revolution and just such pertinent issues that we're dealing with in culture right now. And I can't wait to see your new book, Nancy, on masculinity. Wow, I just, it's created such a crisis for our young men. All of this confusion, and well, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say about that when that book comes out to so. Anyways, thank you. Thanks for the time, Nancy, and God bless you and just keep up the great work. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's so good to talk with like minded people who understand the importance of worldview.

Yeah, well, thanks. Thanks to you, we understand it a lot better. Okay. God bless you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Ideas Have Consequences. For more information on Nancy Pelosi. Be sure to take a moment to read her bio, which I've included in this episode's description below. Ideas Have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. For more information about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Or you can check out our website which is disciplenations.org. There you will find free online training courses, books, blogs, and hopefully everything else you need to continue to think biblically about everything.