← Focus on the Family with Jim Daly
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- [00:06]
Nancy Pearcey
The Christian message starts with creation, that we have very high dignity and high value because we're made in God's image. And that should be our starting point, even on these sexuality issues, that God created sexuality and it's therefore good.
- [00:20]
Jim Daly
That's professor and author Nancy Pearcey, and she has insights about how devaluing our bodies is a really hidden force behind so many of the cultural issues we see today. This is FOCUS on the FAMILY with Jim Daly. And thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. And this program isn't going to be suitable for younger listeners as we discuss some pretty serious topics.
- [00:42]
John Fuller
You know, so much of our life, John, is the behaviors that we adopt are things that we typically catch as opposed to being taught, you know, caught over taught. That's what we talk about. We talk a lot about that. When it comes to parenting, you know, your kids are going to watch you more than they're going to listen to you. And it's so important for us as Christians to model the Christian faith well and also speak of it well. And today we're going to concentrate on the aspect of the body and our sexuality that we don't typically think in that context. You know, what are our children catching? What does culture catch? Look at how we are inundated with messages when it comes to our body, our sexual appetites, et cetera. And we as Christians need to be equipped to share a message of hope with a culture that is deep, desperately in need of healing and a biblical understanding of what God has created.
- [01:38]
Jim Daly
Yeah, it feels like we're just kind of floating out there in the sea, pushed along by the currents. But our guest believes that there is a solid foundation of truth as God tells us all about our bodies. And Nancy Pearcey has done research. She's, as I said, a professor and a scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. She's written a number of books, some with the late great Chuck Colson.
- [02:02]
John Fuller
The late great.
- [02:03]
Jim Daly
And the book that forms the foundation of our conversation today is Love Thy Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality. And you can learn more about Nancy and this great book. We've got the details for you in the show. Notes.
- [02:17]
John Fuller
Nancy, welcome back. It's been a number of years, but it's so good to have you back here at FOCUS ON the Family.
- [02:22]
Nancy Pearcey
Thank you. It's good to be here.
- [02:23]
John Fuller
Now you're teaching. That's extraordinary. I love that. And you're teaching at a university there, Houston Christian. So you see a lot of young people coming under your radar. Do you think things, you know we always talk about the snow was deeper. We went to school uphill both ways back when we were kids. Are you seeing a real big shift in young people today from 20, 30 years ago? What do you think? What are your observations telling you?
- [02:51]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, first of all, the pandemic made a big difference. College students are coming in with high school level skills.
- [02:59]
John Fuller
Right.
- [02:59]
Nancy Pearcey
They've definitely lost a lot during the pandemic. And we're having to reteach, you know, a lot of things that high school teachers have to teach them in terms of study skills and school skills, we're having to teach them. So that's one big thing. But the second thing is, you know, my book Love Thy Body is about the sexuality issues of abortion and homosexuality, transgenderism. And yes, every one of these students is coming in with friends and family members or maybe themselves having problems in these areas.
- [03:30]
John Fuller
Let me ask you this, just for the critic who heard John give the title, love Thy Body. What are you talking about, Nancy? You're making an out of our bodies. That's not at all what you're talking about when you say Love Thy Body. Just generically, theologically. What are you saying?
- [03:44]
Nancy Pearcey
Yeah, most people don't realize that the sexual issues that I deal with all have to do with the body. Let's start with the secular worldview. Since we just said our children need to know that, many people don't realize that the point of issue in the secular ideologies is the body. Let's take the most obvious example. It's transgenderism. Because transgender activists argue explicitly, explicitly, that your gender identity has nothing to do with your body. You know, it has nothing to do with your biological sex. The BBC did a documentary called Transgender Kids, and they said at the heart of the debate is the idea that your mind can be at war with your body at war. And BBC also did a program for teenagers, and it featured a young teenage girl who identified as non binary. And she said, it doesn't matter what meat skeleton you've been born in, it's your feelings that defined you. So the body has been demoted to a meat skeleton.
- [04:46]
John Fuller
Yeah. Which we're going to dig into that. And it's fascinating as I went through the material, read the book, and, you know, it's something again, that we don't spend a lot of time thinking about this separation of soul, spirit from the body and the way the world attacks the body. And it's fascinating. We're going to get there. But I want to first give people a taste of who you are. You were, I Think a self described hippie. And you were kind of, you know, in that cultural groove. I'm really using the terms, aren't I? And, you know. But then you had some epiphanies along the way. Just give us a quick thumbnail of who you are and your background and how you got to faith in Christ.
- [05:31]
Nancy Pearcey
Yeah, I love telling my conversion story. It's like the older I get, the more thankful I am that God got hold of me.
- [05:38]
John Fuller
Yeah.
- [05:39]
Nancy Pearcey
But I was raised in a Lutheran home. It was Scandinavian Lutheran. And I don't know if you know, but it was a state church there, so all Scandinavians are Lutheran.
- [05:49]
John Fuller
Okay.
- [05:50]
Nancy Pearcey
It's an ethnic thing. Like all Irish are Catholic. And so there wasn't a lot of personal conviction. And when I was in high school, I started asking questions. I'm in public high school. All my textbooks are secular, all my teachers are secular. And I just started asking, how do we know Christianity is true? And I didn't get any answers. I asked a Christian college professor, actually, I'm going to tell you, it's my dad. I don't always say this, but it was my father. He was a university professor. And so I asked him point blank, why are you Christian? He said, works for me.
- [06:24]
John Fuller
Okay.
- [06:25]
Nancy Pearcey
I said, really? That's it? And I had a chance to talk to a seminary dean who was my uncle. And all he said was, don't worry, we all have doubts sometimes. As if it was a psychological phase and you would outgrow it. And so when I didn't get any answers, I finally decided about halfway through high school. I said, well, if you don't have good reasons for something, you shouldn't say. You believe it, you know, whether it's Christianity or anything else. And I certainly am not getting any good reasons. And so I very consciously walked away from my Christian upbringing and decided it was up to me to find truth.
- [06:59]
John Fuller
Let me ask you for those listening that may not know the Lord, they don't have a relationship with Christ, but they're tipping in. They're listening to Focus. We do survey work. We know you're there, and that's great. We want you there on YouTube or listening through a broadcast, et cetera, podcast, speak to what was inside of you. What was the appetite? I mean, I recognize it because I had a very similar journey. But why were you seeking truth? Why was it important to you? Why weren't you? Your father works for me. What was different?
- [07:32]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, I wanted to be honest. If there was no God, then I wanted to live in line with that in other words, if there was no God, it struck me pretty quickly that then there's no meaning or purpose to life. Life is just a cosmic accident on a rock flying through empty space.
- [07:50]
John Fuller
That's very logical.
- [07:51]
Nancy Pearcey
And if there's no God, there's no foundation for ethics. You know, there's just true for me, true for you. And if there's no God, I even realized there's no foundation for truth. Like if all I have is my puny brain and the vast scope of time and space, what makes me think I could have some sort of universal transcendent truth? Ridiculous. That's how I thought of it as a 16 year old. Ridiculous. So I was very quickly, you know, relativist, skeptic, and even a determinist, because in my science classes I was taught we're just complex biochemical machines anyway, with no free will. So I had absorbed all of these secular isms by the time I graduated from high school. And I had no interest in going back to Christianity. But I went to Europe. We had lived in Europe when I was a child. And so I saved my money all through high school because I wanted to go back. And that's how I ended up stumbling across Labri, which is in Switzerland. And Labri is the ministry of Francis Schaeffer. Labrie is French for the shelter. Schaeffer was known for his apologetics ministry. And that's the first time I ever heard any Christian apologetics. Apologetics just means arguments for the existence of God. I had never heard anyone make a case that there were good reasons and evidence and arguments and logic to support Christianity and that it could hold its own against the secularisms that I had absorbed by that time. So I was blown away. I was shocked.
- [09:20]
John Fuller
So that gave you the appetite. I mean, obviously that's when you dug in and said, okay, is God real? I mean, that kind of is the core question.
- [09:28]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, actually, at first I left.
- [09:31]
John Fuller
Oh, irritated.
- [09:33]
Nancy Pearcey
I stayed a month. No, it was the opposite. It was so appealing. I had never met intellectually engaged Christians. I never met Christians who could talk to me on my level because I was so involved. I did not start studying philosophy as an academic interest. I started studying it because I thought, well, isn't that their job? The philosopher's job is to ask questions like what is truth and how do we know it? And is there a foundation for ethics? In the public high school I attended, I literally started walking down the hallway to the library and pulling books off the philosophy shelf, right? Since I couldn't get any adult in my life to talk to me about this. I thought, well, maybe these dead white guys can help me out. And so that's why I started studying philosophy.
- [10:16]
John Fuller
Well, I just. I appreciate that appetite and that hunger. And I think that is a true pathway. I mean, I think the Lord puts that hunger in all of us that are really seeking truth. And that to me, is the differentiator between a blind, spiritually blind person and they can be in the church versus somebody who really wants to know. Let's go back to my comment about the caught and taught how sexuality, in addition to all the kind of the virtues and the values, especially in a Christian family, what we're trying to do to demonstrate the faith to our kids, etcetera, speak to that idea that on the sexual side, these things are also caught more than taught. You know, most of us, at least when I went through high school, I think I was a freshman, you had to take a human sexuality class. It was very anatomical. It was very, you know, biological in function. We didn't talk about the spirit, the soul, or anything like that. It's just a function of reproduction. And they think that's enough. And then of course, mom and dad are supposed to have that talk with you, and I didn't get that either. But speak to the caught versus taught how the culture is telling us what sexuality is all about.
- [11:31]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, yeah, let me say that, you know, when you talk about schools teaching just the biological side, now they don't. Now schools are teaching transgenderism and homosexuality.
- [11:41]
John Fuller
Well, teaching the affirming.
- [11:44]
Nancy Pearcey
It's in the classroom.
- [11:45]
John Fuller
Yeah, I mean, they're affirming it.
- [11:47]
Nancy Pearcey
There was a news story not long ago of a first grader who came home and said, mommy, my teacher says, just because you have boy parts doesn't mean you have boy. Just because you have girl parts doesn't mean you're a girl. So she said to her mom, what am I? Please take me to a doctor so we can find out what I am. And the reason I know about it is because it was the news, because the parents were taking the school to court and suing them for emotional distress. But that's what's happening in the schools now. Don't think of it as just, oh, they're actually teaching reproduction. The vast majority of it now is gender identity and sexual orientation.
- [12:20]
John Fuller
In that context, in the book, you made a statement about spirit good, body bad. We need to unpack that to better understand the war against the body because of the fruit that delivers to the secularists. So this dividing of the body Being bad and the person being good.
- [12:40]
Nancy Pearcey
Yeah, you know, C.S. lewis had a great answer to that. He said, there's no use being more spiritual than God. God invented matter. He likes it. And so the whole. That kind of encapsulates my book, that as Christians, we should have a high view of the body because it's a handiwork of God. And we are known, let's face it, we're known for having a negative approach. Don't do it. It's a sin, it's against the Bible, and there's something wrong with you. And so my whole book is about how we can train ourselves to use more positive language, starting with creation. You know, that God created the body, God created sexuality, and it is therefore intrinsically good. Genesis says over and over again, and God saw that it was good. And after the creation of man and woman, it says very good. And so I train people to use the language of honoring my body. The reason this Christian sex ethic honors the body, it shows us how to live in harmony with our body. It shows us how to live in tune with who God created us to be. And I have found that this is the most difficult thing for Christians to get their mind around. It's just start with positive language, in other words, starting with the language of creation. You might put it this way. Most of our messages start with a fall. You're a sinner, you need to get saved. You know, the sort of classic revivalist message. And that's true. But if that's our main focus, especially young people, they come to me in my classrooms and say that in the churches they were taught they were worthless, that they were nothing, that they were corrupt, you know, that they're naturally evil.
- [14:16]
John Fuller
And.
- [14:17]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, that's starting with the fall. The Christian message starts with creation. That we have very high dignity and high value because we're made in God's image. And that should be our starting point. Even on these sexuality issues, that God created sexuality, and it's therefore good.
- [14:32]
John Fuller
Nancy, this concept of devaluing the body, I think this is so important. So we're, you know, this is what we're talking about today from your book, Love Thy Body. Being a professor of college students, a good description or illustration of this, I think I didn't experience this as a teenager myself or a 20 something, but this idea of the hookup culture where they're actually devaluing the body as a mechanism and having to protect their emotional side just to do a sexual act, very biological in its nature, pleasurable. But how do you See, the hookup culture, even as a professor at a university, I'm sure it's happening.
- [15:16]
Nancy Pearcey
Yes, even the hookup culture represents the split between the body and the person. Young people know the script, even if they don't like it much. I quote in my book a college student named Alicia who said, hookups are very scripted. You learn to turn everything off except your body, and you make yourself emotionally invulnerable. There's another college student, I quote, named Naomi, who said, the mistake people make is they assume that there's two very distinct elements in a relationship, one emotional and one sexual. And they pretend like there are clean lines between them. And so young people understand that the hookup culture is asking them to engage purely physically. You know, cut off from the whole person, cut off from any hint of love or commitment. You're supposed to be able to walk away from it as if it hadn't happened. So that's the worldview at the heart of the hookup culture. We think of it usually as, you know, let's have some rules that we give young people. Now, they need to realize it's driven by a worldview that says your body is meaningless and that sex itself is a meaningless act. No wonder it's creating a trail of wounded people because they're trying to live out a secular ethic that does not fit who they really are.
- [16:28]
John Fuller
Wow. I mean, that's a powerful statement. But let me continue with this. You had in the book a counselor, I think, at ucla, who was barred from telling her students about the dangers of casual sex. Think of that. That, you know, they holler into the academic review panel and say, you can't talk to students about the dangers of unprotected sex. What are you doing? That sounds ridiculous.
- [16:52]
Nancy Pearcey
You realize she wrote this book anonymously because she was afraid she would lose.
- [16:56]
John Fuller
Her job, because that was the theme.
- [16:59]
Nancy Pearcey
The theme of her book was we are teaching young people. We were encouraging young people to engage in the hookup culture. You know, on our college campuses, we have these sex weeks where they bring in Planned Parenthood, they bring in sex toys, they bring in prostitutes. They teach the message that anything goes and there's no consequences. And she said, I have students coming into my office all the time who are devastated by the hookup culture. And she gave one example, a girl who'd had her first sexual encounter with a boy who promptly dropped her afterwards. And she was devastated. She said, why is it that the schools don't teach us that casual sexual encounters are not healthy and that they're emotionally destructive. So she wrote a whole book on it, on how she was not allowed to even tell her students that the hookup culture could be emotionally destructive. And she wrote it anonymously. Now she's come out, by the way. She's come out. Now it's Miriam Grossman. She's written a book on transgenderism now. So she's using her name, but she had to leave UCLA to go public.
- [18:06]
John Fuller
With her name because she's raising concerns about all of this. That's fair. Let's cover that abortion side of this. This devaluing of the human body in abortion as within hookup culture. It's kind of a similar theme. Right. And this is where we as Christians need to connect the dots here and how this deconstruction of Loving Thy Body, the title of your book, how they can take advantage of that division. So how does it fit with a woman's ability to rationalize the killing of her preborn baby?
- [18:43]
Nancy Pearcey
Yes, today it is being applied to the woman. In other words, the relationship between mother and child is not treated as some natural, organic, intrinsic relationship. It's treated as. There are actually ethicists, bioethicists, who treat the fetus as like an intruder on the woman's property, a disease. A disease, a parasite, something that needs medical attention, or the most recent is property rights. A woman has property rights to her body and the fetus is an intruder trespassing on her property, and therefore she has the right to kill it. But actually it first became the body. Person dualism was first applied to the fetus. Actually, people like Peter Singer at Princeton were some of the early people writing on this. And they said professional bioethicists agree that life begins at conception. Maybe ordinary people don't realize that yet, but professional bioethicists know that the science is just too strong to deny it. The evidence from DNA and genetics, Right.
- [19:42]
John Fuller
It all starts within moments.
- [19:43]
Nancy Pearcey
The fetus is obviously human from fertilization, from conception. And they will say that now openly. So how do they get around that? If they want to support abortion, they'll say, well, the fetus is human biologically, genetically, physiologically, but it's not a person until sometime later. Personhood is actually called personhood theory. And that means that you're not a person until you have developed certain mental abilities, cognitive functioning, self determination, autonomy, whatever. And so if you can be a human but not a person until sometime later, then clearly these are two different things. So personhood theory was actually first applied to abortion. And the idea being that if you're Merely human in quotes. Merely human. You have no human rights. The fetus is human, but it can be killed for any reason or no reason. It can be tinkered with genetically. It can be used for research and experiments. It can be picked through for body parts to sell like Planned Parenthood does and then thrown out with the other medical waste. And that's the language used in medical journals. The fetus is medical waste. And so what it means is being human is no longer enough for human rights. And so this has dramatic consequences all across the board. And of course, what's the main problem with that theory? Well, if you separate personhood from being biologically human, then what you base it on.
- [21:13]
Jim Daly
Yeah, what are the standards?
- [21:14]
John Fuller
Exactly.
- [21:15]
Nancy Pearcey
It becomes arbitrary, subjective. Every bioethicist draws the line at a different place. You don't find any of them agreeing because it is subjective.
- [21:23]
John Fuller
It's right. You have viability, you have birth. You have even some that are saying that a child could be terminated if the mother doesn't want to keep that child. I mean, that sounds absurd, infanticide, but they are talking about it now.
- [21:38]
Nancy Pearcey
Exactly. I think most ordinary people would say sometime before birthday. But yes, you have people now saying after birth. Crick and Watson, who are kind of household names because they discovered DNA. Both of them have publicly said that we should give the newborn three days of genetic testing and only if it passes the test does it qualify for the right to life.
- [22:00]
John Fuller
You know, Nancy, it takes my breath away because you think about these are the smart people in the culture, these are the professors, these are the intelligentsia, the academics. How are they so blinded spiritually to not see what this plainly is, which is the taking of innocent human life?
- [22:20]
Nancy Pearcey
Well, let me quote you Peter Singer at Princeton, he says right on his page, his website, he says even three years of age is a gray area.
- [22:30]
John Fuller
A gray area.
- [22:31]
Nancy Pearcey
A gray area. In other words, how much cognitive functioning does a toddler have? So that's what we're up against today, is that personhood is so subjective that maybe even three year olds are not persons.
- [22:43]
John Fuller
You know, Nancy, let's end today. And again, we'll come back next time. But let's end today on that description that you gave at the very beginning about the gospel, the creation message. Why the fact that we're created in his image, male and female, is so critical to the holistic aspect of the Christian faith and what we believe God intended for us.
- [23:05]
Nancy Pearcey
Yeah. You know, sometimes people talk about the Christian worldview is like a drama in three acts. Creation, fall, redemption, and you Want to have all three acts there. Creation means everything was created good. You know, God is a good God, and therefore what he creates is good. And our concepts of human dignity rest on the creation. That's why, you know, as opposed to the secular world, why we uphold a high view of human dignity. The Fall is real. So Christians are very realistic about sin and evil. We're not Pollyanna Ish. We're very realistic about that. And redemption means there's hope, not only that there will be a final redemption, but that God is working today redemptively in our lives, that we can see real healing. Francis Schaeffer, since we quoted him, used to say, as Christians, we should expect substantial healing, not full healing this side of heaven, but we should expect substantial healing. And so what happens is Christians start in the middle of the story. We start with the fall, right? We start with, I just got a call from a youth pastor who said, I didn't know how to do anything except say these things are bad. Sexuality, the hookup culture, homosexuality, transgenderism, all these things. I didn't know how to say anything except don't do it. It's bad. It's against the Bible. He said, you born gave me the language to say God created the body. It's good. And to start, we have to start our message with creation. It's not just that the Christian worldview has these three acts, but we need to start our message with creation. And then we communicate to people the high view of the human person that is scriptural.
- [24:48]
John Fuller
Well, this is so good, Nancy. And what a place to stop. And we'll pick it up again next time, continue our discussion to give people more empowerment when it comes to God's plan for their lives. You know, there's a reason it's body, soul and spirit, right? That's how God created us. Not just one of the three or two of the three. It's three of the three. And he has a prescription for us to live by that brings us shalom, his peace. And I'm so grateful to you for the hard work, the hard thought process of putting love thy body together. I mean, you are a deep thinker and I so appreciate the journey that you described that God brought you on.
- [25:30]
Nancy Pearcey
Thank you.
- [25:31]
John Fuller
To bring you to this point and all your great work over the years. Thank you for being with us. And man, I'm telling you, I'm going to be sharing this with my 220 something sons to read through together and really provide them the tools necessary to understand the battle, the spiritual battle that we are all under when it comes to the attack on the body, the attack on women. And we as the Christian community need to identify it and live to empower men and women, boys and girls to live up to their created expectation. And I would love to get this into your hands. If you can send us a gift of any amount, monthly is great. It helps us be part of the ministry over the long run or a one time gift. We'll send you Nancy's book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Yeah.
- [26:19]
Jim Daly
Donate today and get a copy of this book, Love Thy Body. When you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459 or you can donate and get the book. We've got the link in the show notes. And for our radio listeners, let me encourage you to stop by our website or get the app or watch on YouTube for additional content that we just couldn't include in today's show. And by the way, if you're in California Springs this summer, come visit us at our welcome Center. It is a terrific family friendly space where you can grab a bite to eat, relax, let the kids blow off a little bit of steam and shop in our great bookstore. We'd love to see you there. And we've got details online. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today. For FOCUS on the Family with Jim Daly, I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
- [27:20]
John Fuller
Your marriage can be redeemed even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't.
- [27:26]
Nancy Pearcey
Felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are.
- [27:30]
John Fuller
You can take a step toward healing them with a Hope Restored Marriage Intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problem and face challenges together.
- [27:40]
Jim Daly
We'll talk with you, pray with you.
- [27:42]
Nancy Pearcey
And help you find out which program will work best.
- [27:45]
John Fuller
Call us at 1-866-875-2915.