296 - Love Thy Body w/ Nancy Pearcey

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, helping you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. Hello. Hello. I am your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 296 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me as always, is my co host, Vic Stumbo.

How do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on it.

Oh, my Lord. Okay. There are so many. It's. Honestly, I'm sort of ashamed, tell you how many I've watched. But there are so many dad joke channels on YouTube, it's unreal. And some of them are unbelievably funny. You just get lost in the loop of their shorts.

YouTube shorts are a big thing. Yes. Yeah. And it's amazing in a culture that wants to erase or blur the lines between men and women that I'm not aware of anyone trying to say, well, these aren't really just dad jokes. These can be mom jokes too. These are a women think. Like, I don't see anybody arguing that. So it's interesting to me that again, in today's culture, it's all like, yeah, that's a dad thing. That's just. That's like, men are wired that way. So, hey, maybe there's. Maybe there's something to that.

Let's talk about that for a second, though. I'm just curious. Have you ever seen your wife, like, look around the room, say a dad joke or a joke like that and go like, you ever seen your wife do that in a social situation?

It's funny. Usually when she says something like what we would classically call a dad joke, she's usually making fun of me in some regard or right after she tells it, she'll say. She'll say, is that a dad joke? Or something along those lines. So even when she does, she's acknowledging this isn't authentic. To me, this is more of a dad joke thing, which I think is funny.

It's a thing. Okay, so tie it in. And I'm going to give a little bit of a bio of who we had on today before we get into it, but we had on Professor Nancy Pearcey on the show today. She's the author of you can now pre Order the Toxic War on How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. She's also authored a book called Love Thy Body, which is what we talk about today. She's written the Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo, Finding Truth, Total Truth. Gosh, she's. Yeah, a lot. She is a professor and a scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. Listen to this, Nick. She's been quoted in The New Yorker, Newsweek highlighted as one of the top. The five top women apologists by Christianity Today, which we. I think we. We picked up on that. She's got lots of stories. She's great. And she was hailed in the Economist as America's preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual. We had a rock star on Today. We had Nancy Pearcey on to really talk about her book and really the principle of how do we better love our body? Understanding the value that our physical body has.

Yeah. Buckle up, because Nancy's coming at you fast and furious with a lot of really good stuff.

So good.

I actually thought of that intro just because of the word unique. That was the word that came to mind as we talked, is how God made you unique. He uniquely made you in his image to be the person that you are. And that includes the body that you have. And the person and body are connected and all together. That is what makes you uniquely you. And it's powerful. And then also because it was a dad joke, it actually a double sided intro today because I do think it's interesting how many societal conventions we have that we would almost universally agree, yeah, that's a female thing, a mom thing, a woman thing. That's. And obviously there's always, you know, there's no perfect stereotype. But then in an age that's trying to erase some of those gender differences, we still see so many areas that say, no, God, God made us unique. And there are things about how God designed women and God designed men. And we see it in our bodies. And the more that we appreciate that and see it as something to be valued rather than fought against as we're. As you hear in today's interview, it gives you a deeper understanding into so many of these issues and where we've maybe gone off course, including our views that have led many of us into consuming pornography.

Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, even in line with that too, we talked a little bit about today how when you're not focusing on your body, when you're not paying attention to your emotions, that there becomes a separation where not understanding what's really going on in your body, what's going on in your soul. And that's one of the things, One of my favorite things, honestly, about our groups, our pure desire groups, is they help people integrate, that, understand where addiction comes from, understand why betrayal, trauma impacts them the way that they do. And Nick, one of the ways that we offer groups to make it more accessible for people all over the world is our online groups. Yeah.

You know, the Truth is, when we don't understand something, we tend to isolate from it, whether emotionally, mentally, relationally, and I think in our unwanted sexual behaviors or if we've been impacted by someone else's behaviors, there's maybe a lot of that story we don't understand, and so we've just maybe disconnected from it. And I think the online group process is getting together with others who are walking through a similar story of restoration, whether it's over their behaviors or because they're the spouse of someone who's been wrapped up in these behaviors. And to begin to understand at a deeper level maybe why we do what we don't want to do or why what was done to us.

And.

And as we're present with those feelings and understandings, the steps we can take towards growth, and then hopefully, if it's possible, growth as a couple out of what we're learning. But even if the relationship restoration isn't possible, understanding how to be the best version of me that God created me to. And so much of that comes as I begin to understand my story in the environment with other people. And like you said, for so many, they found that an online group is a safe, confidential place to do that, particularly if there is no church around you that has groups in person. For many people in our country and in our world, there's no other option. So that online group is a really great place to get started with someone who's led before, who pure desire has vetted and said, here's a leader we trust. We believe you'll have a good experience. And so if you've never jumped into one, today's your day.

Yeah, absolutely.

Go for it.

So for more information or to join any of the available groups that we have, you can go to PureDesire.org groups. Couple more things. Subscribe to the podcast. You can also watch this full episode up on YouTube. Also follow us on social mediauredesirepdmi. And with that, here is our interview with Professor Nancy Pearcey on her book and the work that she's done in Love Thy Body. All right, we have Professor Nancy Pearcey with us today. Thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate you being here.

Well, I appreciate you inviting me. Thank you.

Okay, so a little bit of backstory. You know, you and Nick, just off air, were talking about it that you guys have he got to hear you speak. I got introduced to you and your work through John Mark Comer and his book Love no Lies. And then you did a podcast episode, which I may have watched. I Don't know, somewhere around 10 times. I just, it was such a great episode. But then also I then read your book right after that, Love Thy Body, and we really are going to focus on that work in Love Thy Body. It was one of my favorite books that I have read and it has such a powerful message around our views on sex and sexuality and specifically to how it affects our body and the ways that really we've been taught. And maybe even some of that is caught from the church that I think is just so profound from your book. So as we jump into it, and now I'm just gonna refer to you as Nancy. So, Nancy, there may be some of our listeners who aren't familiar with the book Love Thy Body or any of your work. So can you give some background and just on you and the details of some of the work you've done?

Oh, yeah, if you don't mind, I'll tell you my conversion story. Yeah, I've, I've started using that in all of my talks these days. It seems like the older I get, the more I appreciate the fact that God got a hold of me.

Yeah.

And so, and so I've been including it. And so I was happy when your first question was, you know, tell us about yourself. So I was raised in a Christian home, but it was a very ethnic Lutheran home, Scandinavian. If, if any of you have been raised in an ethnic home, like, you know, all Irish or Catholic or whatever, all scan, all Scandinavians are Lutheran. So there wasn't a lot of really personal conviction. And in high school I started just asking questions about how do we know this is true? That was really my only question. I was going to a secular high school, so all my books are secular, all my professors are secular. And I just started wondering, how do we know that Christianity is true? And unfortunately, none of the adults in my life could answer that question. I talked to a university professor who was a Christian and I said, why are you a Christian? He said, works for me. I said, what? That's it? And I even had a chance to talk to a seminary dean and all he said was, don't worry, we all have doubts sometimes. As if it was a psychological phase that I would just outgrow. And so eventually I decided, well, I guess Christianity just doesn't really have any answers. And I very intentionally walked away from my Christian upbringing. I felt it was. I don't know if I would have used this language as a 16 year old. I probably wouldn't have said it this way, but I felt like it was a matter of intellectual honesty. You know, if you don't have good reasons for something, you shouldn't say you believe it, whether it's Christianity or anything else. So I very unconsciously embarked on a search for truth. I literally started walking down the hallway in the public high school I attended and pulling books off the philosophy shelf because I thought, well, if I can't get any people to answer my question, maybe these. Maybe these dead guys can for sure. After all, that's their job, right? The job of philosophy is to answer questions like, what is truth and how do we know it, and what's the meaning to life? And is there a foundation for ethics or is it all just, you know, true for me. True for you. And I pretty quickly realized that if there was no God, then the answer was no, there is no meaning to life. There is no foundation for ethics. And I realized there was not even a foundation for knowing truth. Here's how I thought about it. I thought, if all I have is my puny brain, the vast scope of time and space and history, then what makes me think I could have access to some kind of objective, universal, absolute truth? Ridiculous. That's how I thought of it, obviously. Ridiculous. So within only a short time, I became very much of a more. I was a moral relativist, you know, all true for me, true for you. I was a skeptic. I was also a determinist in the sense that I. For my science classes, I picked up that were just complex biochemical machines anyway. So I was very steeped in secular worldviews. By the time I, through strange coincidences, I ended up at Labri, which is the ministry of Francis Schaeffer. I had gone. We had lived in Europe when I was a child, so I had gone back, and Labrie is in Switzerland. And that was the first time I had ever encountered Christian apologetics, You know, in other words, the first time I'd ever heard anyone say that Christianity could be supported by good reasons and arguments and evidence and logic. And I was astonished. I was just blown away. I had. I had never heard that before. In fact, I was so astonished that I left. I was afraid I might be drawn in emotionally because it was so appealing. So I left and went back to the States and started just reading books on Christian apology apologetics and sort of read my way back to God, you know, just through my own reading. Yeah, I finally became convinced. And then I went. And then I went back to Labrie because I. Well, I wasn't in a church or anything, so I was I thought, where do I find other Christians? Well, I knew some at Libri, so I, I got on the plane and went back to Switzerland. So at any rate, that's the story of why, for me, apologetics has been like the foundation of all my books. In other words, how do we talk to non Christians about. About Christian truth? And how do we prepare young people to defend their faith, to face the objections that they're going to face in our increasingly secular society? How do we equip young people? Because we're all. Especially now that Christians are increasingly in a minority, we are surrounded by secular thought and our young people are absorbing it, often without even knowing it. So we do need to teach them to put up that critical grid so they can analyze what they're seeing and hearing.

Yeah, yeah.

I really appreciate your background in apologetics and understanding why we believe what we believe. And I think that's so important that we bring that same level of understanding to our sexuality, because I think right now there's maybe nowhere that the church and people of faith have been more influenced by secular views than in our human sexuality. And so, you know, we know that in the work you've done in this book, Love Thy Body, you've done a lot of research and provided commentary on the world and culture's perspective on sex or sexuality. So if you could summarize, what would you say are some of the most damaging beliefs or perspectives that the world or culture teaches us about sex and sexuality?

Well, the reason I titled it Love Thy Body is that secular worldviews denigrate the body. It's secular view of sexuality denigrates the body, has a low view of the body's value and significance, and most people don't realize that. I've heard Christians say, well, people who think the physical world is all that exists obviously have a very high view of the material world or the physical body, but they don't. If just believing that it's all that exists doesn't mean you think it has high value, if you think the material worlds is a product of blind material forces with no intrinsic purpose, then you do not think that it has high value or dignity. Like I said as a teenager, I had already concluded that we're just complex biochemical machines with not even the ability to make real choices. So what I tried to show in Lovely Body is that secular views of sexuality all are premised on a low view of the body. And we could jump in where it's most obvious, which is transgenderism. Even secular people are beginning to see that There's a problem with this, the biology denial of. Of transgenderism, because it basically says your. Your biological sex, your body, has nothing to do with your gender identity.

Right.

There's a BPC BBC documentary on the subject which says at the heart of the debate is the idea that you. That your mind can be at war with your body. At war with your body. And of course, in that war, it's the mind that wins. Or there was another BBC video for young people. It featured a young girl who identified as non binary saying, it doesn't matter what meat skeleton you've been born in, it's what you fee, it's what you feel that counts.

Yeah.

So the body has been reduced to a meat skeleton. And then, of course, on the academic level, there's a. I always read what the academics say because, you know, that filters down.

Yeah.

And I think this was the first book written defending transgenderism by a pristine university professor. And she said, what the physical body tells us is nothing. It has no meaning at all. So that is the core of what's being taught to young people today, that your body has no meaning. It gives you no clues to your identity. It conveys no moral message. It has no meaning at all. No wonder kids are being depressed. If you're told that your body has no meaning, that's a big part of who you are.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember, too, when I read through the book, that was such an itch. And even in that interview with John Mark Comer, listening to you talk about how a lot of Christians. And I know this was my experience that, like you're taught, spirit good, body bad. And even when it comes to applying to our sex, our sexuality, which we're born with literally, you know, woven together in our mother's womb, we are given a gender, we are given sexuality. It's something we're born with. But I remember there's this. I remember my own experience that there's this kind of dirtiness to it because of that perspective of spirit good, body bad. And that was such a paradigm shift for me in reading the book and listening to you on other podcasts as well, is just this idea that. No, no, no, it's the other way around. That the sexual ethic in the world has a lot more to do with a low view of the body. And as Christians, we should have a high view of our body. What we do matters, and it has some eternal implications as well as to how we do that. And so that was just such a shift for me. That made so much sense. It was when you said it was like, oh, okay, yep, okay, that makes sense. Like, I had not thought of it that way before. And I think that's one of the things I hope most that people get out of this, is that the things that we do with our body do matter. And that, you know, if God didn't want us to have bodies and it not to be a part of who we are made in his image, he wouldn't have created us with bodies.

Exactly. Yeah. I'm glad you remembered that one phrase. That was from one of my students who said, growing up in the church, I was always taught spirit good, body bad. And when I use that in my lectures in Christian circles, I always get a lot of people nodding their heads like, yep, yeah, I sort of grew up with that as well. Yeah. And I. The problem, of course, is that Christians have absorbed that idea fairly early on, but they absorbed it from the Greek culture. The early church was born into an ancient Greco Roman culture that denigrated the body. You know, many of the isms in the first century had a low view of the body, whether it was Gnosticism. A lot of Christians know about Gnosticism because many of the New Testament books are written against it. But there was also Neoplatonism, there was also Manichaeism. Remember Augustine was a Maniche. At any rate, all of these isms that were around in the first century, and even Eastern thought, Hindu pantheism too, they all treat the material world as a realm of death, decay and destruction. And so matter is bad, matter is evil. And in Gnosticism, in fact, it teaches that there's several levels of deity, and it was a low level deity. It was actually an evil God who created this world because, you know, a good God wouldn't get his hands dirty mucking about with matter.

Right.

So the only Christian church stood against this, first of all. Well, first of all, creation obviously was not a low level God. It was the highest God, the supreme God, who was a good God, and therefore this universe is good.

Yeah.

But the, the biggest scandal of the time was the incarnation, the idea that that same supreme deity had entered into the material world and taken on a physical body. So the incarnation was the ultimate affirmation of the dignity of the human body. And when Jesus was executed on a Roman cross, he did escape the physical world. Agnosticism, manicure, all those isms said, since this world is evil, the goal of salvation is to escape it. Well, in one sense, we could say Jesus did escape it when he was executed. But then what did he do then?

Yeah, he came back.

He came back in a physical body, right?

Yeah.

And what was interesting is even people at the time. I was going to say secular, but they weren't secular. They were pagan. The pagan people at the time basically said, why would anyone want to come back to the realm of the body? They did not regard this as spiritual progress. As Paul puts it, the idea of a physical resurrection is utter foolishness to the Greeks. And then at the end of time, I just had this discussion in one of my classrooms. You know, my students were saying, I've always thought the goal of the Christian life was eventually to get to heaven.

Right.

The sermons are constantly saying, you know, aren't we thankful that we're saved so we can go to heaven when we die? And they. All my. My students were telling me, I always had the notion that, you know, the goal was to be an immaterial spirit, you know, floating around in heaven. And it was reading your book that helped me to realize, no, actually, don't. We affirm the new. The ultimate goal is the new heavens and the new earth, and we will be on that new earth in resurrected bodies. All the way back to the Apostles Creed, the church has affirmed the resurrection of the body. So this is what we need to help Christians. It's our own heritage. We need to sort of recover what the early church preached when they faced a culture that also denigrated the material world.

So you talked about the example of transgenderism kind of being the ultimate example of that low view of the body for the purpose of what we do and our listeners. Could you take that same line of reasoning? How does a low view of the body perpetuate maybe a culture of pornography, of hookup sex? Like, what does the low view of the body translate into when we're talking about those topics, like pornography?

Yeah. Well, there was a researcher named Donna Freitas who interviewed hundreds of college students, and it was really interesting. Her conclusion was, the current sexual climate separates personal physical intimacy from personal intimacy, you know, physical intimacy from intimacy, you know, on the personal level.

Right.

And, you know, she was not a Christian. It was interesting that she recognized that the hookup culture itself implies that sex can be purely physical without any hint.

Yeah, right.

Without any hint of love or commitment. Right. And I quote several college students in my book, like Alicia, who said, hookups are very scripted. You learn to turn off everything except your body. You make yourself emotionally invulnerable.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a great way of saying, you know, my emotions are here. My body's over here. That I can separate the two. Or Rolling Stone magazine quoted a young student named Naomi, and she said, the mistake people make is they think that there are two separate elements in a relationship, the physical sexual element and the emotional element. And they pretend that there are clean lines between them. That's her exact words. I thought, well, she's practically describing that division between body and person. And. Oh, yeah, and then there was a. Another Rolling Stone article that interviewed a drummer in Austin, Texas. And he said. He said hookups are. Hookups are existentially meaningless. That's how he put it. Existentially meaningless. It's just a piece of body touching another piece of body.

Yeah.

No wonder hookup culture is leaving behind a trail of wounded people. People are trying to live out an ethic that does not match who they are. That tears them apart, that tears the body from the person and says, you can live this way. And of course, you mentioned porn. Well, pornography is the ultimate, right? Because there you have. You have nothing to. You're not interested in all in that person as a person. You're interested in them only as a body.

Yeah.

So there's an interesting book called. It's by a woman who was Finnish. I mean, from Finland.

Yeah.

She might still be writing.

We don't know. It's good.

She's from Finland. And the book was titled Being and Being There, which in Finnish sounded better. But she studied. She studied prostitutes because she was looking into the question of decriminalization. So she actually interviewed the pro, these prostitutes, and every one of them told her, the only way I can put up with this is to totally separate my body from who I am as a person. I was astonished. I wish I'd read the. I read the book after I wrote Love Thy Body. So I don't have that example in there. But she found exactly what I talked about in my book that prostitutes said over and over again, I. I wall off my mind, I wall off my emotions, and I interact solely as a body. And that's the only way I can put up with. With this job, this line of work.

Yeah. And it's. I mean, because we're kind of even getting into the next question quite a bit there. But just the idea of. It's like you're not integrated as a human being. You're disintegrating the way that God has made you to have your emotions in your body, to have your spirit and your body interplay at all times. And I feel like that's something that. I mean, you Know you talked about already, like why depression is as high of an issue, I think, as it is now, because people are not able to resolve the tension that they're creating by this low view of their body. That if that. Cause one of the questions we get a lot is, well, what I do with my body, why does it matter? It's not hurting anybody if I'm looking at pornography or if I'm sleeping around. I'm not married. I don't have kids. Why is that such a big issue?

My body, my business.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that is extremely damaging. And that really is. I mean, is there anything else that you would add to that, with that perspective, if a student were to come to you and say that what. What sort of damages does that do to that, like, to that student, to their body? What would you say to them in that situation?

Let me start by responding to the depression. There was a philosophy professor who said the highest. The highest number of medications. The largest number of medications given out at universities today are birth control pills and antidepressants.

Yeah.

She said. And that's not a coincidence.

No. Right.

And there was also a woman who wrote a book. She was a UCLA psychiatrist. And she said the schools, universities are so concerned about being politically correct that they would not allow her as a psychiatrist to counsel young people that sleeping around might not be the best thing for their mental health. She was not permitted. In fact, she finally quit. By the way, she wrote her first book anonymously. She was afraid of losing her job if she said publicly, you know, my kids, my kids, my students. I call my students kids.

Yeah, it's totally fine. Go ahead. Yeah, no worries here.

She said, my students are coming in depressed. She mentioned she gave an example of a girl who'd lost her virginity to a boy who turned around and dropped her. And the students said, why doesn't the university teach us about the connection between the hookup culture and mental health? Why aren't they teaching us how to create real relationships? Her point was, we do not thrive on casual, meaningless relationships. You know, this does. This is. It's harmful to our mental health. Her name is, by the way, the psychiatrist is Miriam Grossman. You may have seen some of her works now, now that she's no longer writing anonymously right now, she. And I think with that background, she's. She may be Jewish, but anyway, she also wrote how the. On the inter. Just from a purely scientific level, the interplay between our bodies and our personhood was. Was really brought to the fore by the discovery of the bonding hormones, the attachment hormones. You know, that sexual activity releases oxytocin, especially in women, but also in men, and then vasopressin in men. And both of them are considered attachment hormones in the sense that they create a sense of bonding and trust and connection. So Miriam Grossman, the UCLA psychiatrist, said one of my favorite quotes. She said, you might say we were designed to bond. Yeah, I love that. Yes, we were designed to bond. And therefore, or even I like to find quotes in surprising places. Even Glamour, Glamour magazine. I read an article on the hookup culture and the author was saying, you know, because of these hormones, these attachment hormones, you may be trying to have a no strings attached relationship.

Right.

But your biology may trump your intentions. You may not be able to get out of it scot free the way you think you are going to be able to. Even secular people are starting to say on a sheer biological level it doesn't work. And if you, if you want more than biology. Actually, I pulled out a couple of, I pull out a couple of Bible verses because I love the way especially the Old Testament talks about the interconnection of the body and the person through the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. So these are all from the Psalms. Our soul has sunk down in the dust, our body cleaves to the earth. So you know what, in one verse it talks about your soul and then how it's expressed physically. Keep my words in the midst of your heart for their life to those who find them and health to all their body. So what your soul feels is expressed in your body. What? When I kept silent about my sin, that is refuse to repent. My body wasted away through my groaning all day long. My soul, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you. So this wonderful verses in the Old Testament that talk about the integration of the, the soul and the body, that one, one theologian put it this way, even if you think the spirit is more important, how do we know another person's spirit through their body?

Right? Yeah.

How do we know the inner life of another person through what they say and what they do. Our body is the only way we have access to the other person's spirit. So you can't divide them. You can't. We're a psychophysical unity according to the Bible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've talked about it on this podcast in other places that when Jesus, you know, quoting the Old Testament, said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength, he wasn't Talking about like four different parts of us that could somehow be separated out. But he really was intending to say this is to love him with all that you have, that, yes, there are different aspects to your being, but it's a united whole, that together you're going to love the Lord your God with everything that is in you. And we've talked to one of our good friends, Rodney Wright will say it's really a mistake to ask, well, how are you doing in your physical health, your relational health and your spiritual health? As if spiritual is somehow separate because it's all spiritual. Our physical health, our relational health, our emotional health, all in a sense is under that umbrella of spiritually. How are we relating to God in this world? And so I think the more we can reconnect in a world that does try to disconnect body and soul, the more we reconnect, we are really walking in a consistent way of what faith in the Bible teaches us.

Yeah, and let's, let's apply to homosexuality as well. I started with transgenderism because it's a little easier for people to see, but I think homosexuality is the other cutting edge issue. And even there, well, even my homosexual friends will agree with me that on the level of biology, anatomy, physiology, chromosomes, males and females are counterparts to one another. That's how the human sexual and reproductive system is designed. To embrace a same sex identity then is to contradict that design. It's to say, why should my body inform my identity? Why should my biological sex as male or female have any say in my moral choices? So again, we have to help people to realize this is a profoundly disrespectful view of the body. It essentially says the body has no intrinsic purpose and therefore there's nothing, no purpose for me to respect. And again, we're getting that partly from the secular world. There's a fairly well known public intellectual named Camille Paglia, who's a lesbian. You guys know her. Some Christians read her stuff because she's a bit of an iconoclastic feminist. She does not believe that sex is just a social construction. She says, no, no, no. Nature made us male and female. In fact, she has a weird quote where she says, we were designed, designed for sexual reproduction. A strange word for an atheist. But then you say, well, then how does she defend being lesbian? And she puts it this way. She said, well, nature made us male and female, but why not defy nature? 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 you see the logic. She's essentially saying if God didn't create us, if we're products of blind, material, purposeless forces, then the body has no intrinsic purpose that we're morally obligated to respect. They give us no moral message, and. And we can do with them as we see fit. So I thought that quote captures so well the secular, the secular view. And of course, what, how do you counter that? You don't counter it, I would say just by quoting the Bible. The science is on our side here. We've got lots of resources for defending it. If the idea is a body has no intrinsic purpose, it's coming from a secular, materialist view of nature because our bodies are part of nature. So every ethic ends up being derived from a view of nature. So the secular ethic is derived from a form of materialism, naturalism, the idea that nature itself is a product of mindless material forces. But it's very evident to observation that living things are structured for a purpose on a very fundamental level. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing, wings are for flying, fins are for swimming. And in fact, the development of the entire organism is driven by an inbuilt plan or blueprint, which is DNA. So science really is on our side when we say, look, your body has a plan, a purpose, a design and order. And what Christians are saying is that we will be happier and healthier when we live in accord with that design.

Yeah, yeah.

When there's a unity of body and spirit. So, you know, a lot of our listeners, Nancy, are from Christian background, attend church and they're probably hearing what you're saying and agreeing with a lot of it, saying, yeah, I don't have a low view of the body in our church. We have a high view of the body. But what are ways that in this sex saturated culture, some of those cultural viewpoints might have seeped their way into the church and into faith? Even if we think we have a high view of the body, where we may be listening to some of the cultural norms more than we realize in.

The church, well, most churches still have a sacred secular split. In other words, at least, you know, when I quiz my audiences, you know, when I'm out doing public speaking at Christian schools and seminaries and conferences, I often talk about the sacred secular split. And everyone says, yep, that's pretty much what our church teaches. In other words, it is true that Christians still have kind of a sense of spiritual world is good. And that's where we have church and worship and Bible study. And that's good, and that's spiritual. And then we have the secular realm where we're not always really quite sure how to bring our Christian perspective to bear on questions of sexuality, but also work and politics, economics, education, the whole quote unquote, secular realm. So I think that, I mean, I teach at a Christian school, right? And we're very aware of the fact that it's very difficult to have a Christian perspective on all the subject areas because Christians have lived with the sacred secular split for so long. But to be more practical, listen to our language. Let me give you some examples from homosexuality just, just because that's such a current issue. In my book I have in Lovely Body, I have lots of anecdotes, personal anecdotes, and one of them was a young woman who lived as a lesbian for many years and then today is married. Married to a man, you have to say that. And has two children. And here's how she put it. She wrote an article about her about it. And she said, so it's a direct quote. I came to trust that God had made me feel female for a reason. And I wanted to honor my body by living in accord with the Creator's design. So do you notice that very positive language, Honor my body, live in accord with the Creator's design. And the other example is a young man who was exclusively attracted to other men. By the way, the reason he stresses that is because when people change, activists will say, well, you never really were exclusive, you know, you're probably bi all along. So he's very clear, no, I was exclusively attracted to other men. Today he's married and has three kids. And he put it this way. Oh, his story is unique because he grew up in a, in a liberal church, so it was a gay affirming church. And, and his family was also very gay affirming. So he didn't think there was anything wrong with homosexuality. So why did he change? And he said, I came to. I came to realize that God made me as a male. And as a male, he had designed me to interact with a female. I mean, just biologically, it was clear that I was made to interact with a female. And he said, I decided to take my identity not by my feelings, but from my body. I decided to accept my body as a good gift from God is how he put it. And eventually my feelings started to follow suit. So I love these examples because in both cases they're illustrating that what really changed them was not shame and guilt and self loathing. Again, that's what Activists say, right, you're only motivated by shame, guilt and self loathing. No, they were motivated by I want to honor my body. Yeah, I want to accept my body as a good gift from God. And when I speak publicly, you asked, how do we, how do we know if we've been in absorbed secular views? I find that the hardest thing for most people is just that first step, which is changing your language. Changing your language from, it's wrong, it's a sin, don't do it, and there's something wrong with you. Right. That's the message we're known for. Instead, the message is, honor your body. Live in accord with the Creator's design, live in tune with your body, accept your body as a good gift from God. You almost have to train yourself in how to use that kind of language.

And that's something that we press really deeply in our work, is that understanding that woundedness and trauma plays out today in our behaviors. And if there is that spiritual and that sacred and secular split, and we don't view the body as something that is important or integral to being a follower of Jesus, then we're disregarding really where the. And this is what we talk about, is that it's not a sexual issue. Like, it's not that I have a sexual issue. It's that that is the form of medication I'm using for the pain and wounds that I have. And so if we're not even acknowledging the body and the way that it stores trauma and the way that our brains work and hold onto that stuff, then we're missing. It's funny, we're just looking at the symptoms and not looking at what actually is the problem and being able to address it. And I think that's one of the biggest ways, and we talk about that often on our podcast. That's one of the biggest reasons why people in the church say so, stuck in this specific struggle of sexual brokenness or unwanted sexual behavior, is because they're not looking to where the actual source of the problem is, which can be stored in your brain, in your body, and you can see things happening to that person's body that really create the problem in the first place.

Yes, I agree with you. Often there's trauma in the background, but as a step in encountering that background, realizing that when you use your body to self medicate, you're using your body totally. In other words, you're not recognizing its true purpose, that God, you know, you're not respecting it for the purpose that God created it. And so even when it's trauma driven, I think, recovering a high view of the body. I'll give you another story. So I tell the story of Rebecca, not her real name, who went off to college. Back then, kids weren't learning it by the age 10. I mean, transgenderism and homosexuality are reaching down to kindergarteners today. Yeah, in. In Rebecca's case, she didn't really encounter until she went to college and she met. She met a woman who was. Who was lesbian, and she got totally drawn in. At any rate, she continued to struggle with it even after she got married. I mean, these things don't always go away immediately. And her husband finally put it this way. She talked to her husband. He said, look, because God made you a woman, you can be confident that no matter what your feelings are right now, you will ultimately be more fulfilled with a man. And of course, it goes both ways. He said, because I'm a man, no matter what my feelings might be, I can be confident that I will be more fulfilled with a woman. And that was the turning point. It took about four more years, but that was the turning point. Because that made sense, right? That made. It was logical. It made sense that, yes, if God created me this way, I will ultimately be more fulfilled by living in accord with the way God made me. So I think that even if there was trauma behind that, which there was without going into more detail, there was trauma behind it, but it was still a view of the body that was a turning point in her freedom from lesbian attractions.

Yeah, I love that so much because I think it does fly in the face of what our culture says, that there's this idea that if I'm going to live my best life, if I'm going to be my most fulfilled person, I need to just follow these desires. I just need to run after these feelings, throw off traditional conventions or things that might hold me back, and just go live that good life. When the truth is, if it's in defiance of your body and how you were designed and the goodness of God in creating you, it's actually not your best hope for a good life. It's not your greatest possible place of fulfillment and joy and purpose and hope. And I think if we can reframe it, just like you were saying earlier, away from you're bad, don't do this, it's wrong. Shame on you. To more. Hey, there's an opportunity here for even greater good in your life. Greater purpose, greater joy in working with alignment with how God made you. That's a message I think people need to hear. Because it's so different than what the world is trying to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I want to stress again that what we're up against is the culture that's going all the way down to kindergarten. The Washington Post recently ran an article on transgender teaching in the classroom. They quoted a first grade curriculum where kids were being taught, you may be a girl even if you have what some people might call boy parts. And you may be a boy even if you have what some people might call girl parts. In other words, this is part of the curriculum for first graders. Or if you saw. By the way, did you. Did you see Blue's Clues during Pride Month?

No.

Blue's Clues had an animal. They had it. Do you know. You know, Blue Clues. Okay. Talking.

A couple of dads here.

Yeah, that's right. Very aware.

They had an animated gay pride parade led by a drag queen, of course. So the message essentially was, your body gives no clues.

Yeah.

To your identity. That all that counts is your feelings. And so I think you're right. The part of our message has to be our feelings change, Our feelings can change, and often do. I think I'm reading a lot now about the detransitioners. I love reading their stories because they kind of tell you, how did I get caught up in the transgender ideology, and how did I free myself from it? The growing numbers of detransitioners are very good. A good resource for us in finding out. I'll tell you one. In fact, this was Laura Perry. Her name is Laura Perry. And she. She transitioned to identifying as male, and she passed as male for 10 years, and then she became a Christian. And it was interesting because, you know, sanctification isn't always overnight. So she thought she could. She thought she could continue living as a man. And she said, I aspired to be a real man of God. And then one day 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 knew what that meant. She meant, you know, rejecting her body, her physical body. She's written a book now, but I love that way of putting it. Once again, it's so positive. You know, if you love God, you love his creation, including your body. You love it as God's handiwork. You love your body as part of loving God.

Yeah, that's good.

That's really beautiful.

Okay, Nancy. And this is. I think this is one of the things. And honestly, after reading your book and learning about this, we've been talking in and around this thing the whole time in the book Love Thy Body, you talk about something called personhood theory and how it really is the crux or the centerpiece for a lot of the topics we've already talked about today. Euthanasia is another one. Abortion, you talk about, you know, how this personhood theory is something that informs all of these different perspectives. So can you just describe for our listeners maybe, who've never heard of. I know for me, when I read your book, it was the first time I had heard about it. What is personhood theory and how does it apply to the world's approach when it comes to sex and sexuality?

Well, I'll start with the latter part because. Because that ties in what with what we've been talking about. I started out giving you a quote from Donna Freitas, who was. Who did. Wrote a book where she interviewed hundreds of college students. And she. It's so. It was so interesting because she said the hookup culture. People get caught up in the hookup culture when they don't want to reckon with the other person's personhood. She used that word?

Yeah.

The hookup culture is when you don't want to have to be bothered with somebody else's personhood. You want. You just want your personal pleasure. You know, you're using the other person for pleasure and you don't care about their personhood. So. So that's where it ties into sexuality, but it's it to explain where it ties into things like abortion. One of the things that's most interesting about Love Thy Body is I do show that there's a common underlying worldview, that the secular worldview connects all of these different issues from abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, transgenderism, and so on. Most people, as Christians, we try to come up with a good answer to each one of these. We kind of treat them each separately. But there is a common underlying worldview. And if you master that, first of all, it becomes a lot easier. You don't have to memorize individual arguments for each one. I had a student once who was trying to. He was debating with people online and he'd have his little book handy and Handy Answers to Pro life Issues. He'd sit there with his book. Yeah, but. But anyway, the core of the abortion argument, if you read the secular bioethicist, right? I mean, that's who we're trying to answer is, you know what? How is the secular world arguing on these issues today? The secular world basically says, yes, life begins at conception. There's no secular bioethicist who denies that life begins at conception. The evidence from science, from genetics and DNA is just strong to deny it. So how do they get around that and support abortion? What they say is, yes, the fetus is human, but it's not a person until sometime later when it develops a certain level of cognitive functioning, a certain level of self awareness and so on. And of course, where it falls apart is, well, how do you decide what, where do you draw that line? What level of cognitive awareness do you need? What level of mental functioning do you need? And it turns out that every bioethicist has a different answer to that. Some of them say, well, yeah, it's before birth. Others say, no, after birth. The discoverers of the DNA double helix structure, Crick and Watson, the kind of a household name. Crick and Watson both suggested that we give newborn three days of genetic testing after its birth, and only if it passes those tests do we call it a person. The idea being that some birth defects don't show up until after birth. And then Peter Singer, who is a bioethicist at Princeton University, has, has said, well, well, even three years of age is a gray area.

Gosh.

In other words, how much cognitive functioning does a toddler have?

Right?

And it was Peter Singer who wrote the most. He wrote a book called Practical Ethics, which is taught in, really, I think, in every university across the nation. And he was the first person to make that person human versus person. The fetus is human, but it's not a person. He made that distinction and made that pretty much the central argument that secular people use. And so you see that, that divide between being a person and being a human. The upshot is if as long as the fetus is considered merely human in quotes, merely human, right. It can be killed for any reason or for no reason. It can be tinkered with genetically, it can be subject to experimentation, it can be picked through for sellable body parts as Planned Parenthood does, and then tossed out with other medical waste. And that's exactly how medical journals refer to the fetus, as medical waste. So the upshot is that being human is no longer enough for human rights. Once you make that division, then being human is not enough for human rights. And of course you mentioned euthanasia. Euthanasia is the same reasoning, just in reverse.

Totally.

If you lose a certain level of cognitive functioning, then you are no longer a person. You are only a body. As one bioethicist I quoted put it, you are only a body. And at that point you can be unplugged, your treatment can Be withheld. Your food and water can be withheld.

Yeah.

Your organs can be harvested. So once again, nobody denies that the. That person is still a hu. A human.

Right.

Right. They haven't become an alien species. They're still genetically physiologically human.

Yeah.

But at that point, they have no human rights. So that's the impact of the division between being human, the body from the person is that we are losing our human rights because being human is no longer enough to justify human rights for the secular thinker.

Yeah. It makes me think. You know, Nick, you and I were a part of a video study, and we. Dr. John Faubert. Is that right? How you say his last name. You were having a conversation with him and that he talked about that pornography, like, dehumanizes or devalues the individual that's on the screen. And it's much easier to be violent towards someone who holds no value. And so, you know, talking about the tie between pornography and sex trafficking. But I can just see how that seeps in, especially for a lot of our listeners are men and women who are in recovery from sexual addiction, pornography addiction, affairs, and then also their spouses who are going through their own healing from betrayal. And I'm just thinking about that, too, how that can seep into how we view other people. And. Yeah, and it's just so interesting. Cause that is fed from a very early age. I mean, right now, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, we have to be careful. I have to be sitting next to my kids when we're on the Disney app on our tv. Like, I can't just assume that they have their best interest at heart. And that's not to say I don't want my kids to be educated on what's going on in the world and to understand that even though these people make different decisions than we do, that they still have value. But it is something that, from an early age, I think that this personhood theory comes up and is taught, and I know for my kids, is being shoved down their throats, even in ways I don't even know about at this point. Which is terrifying.

Yeah. It made me think about how much, for us in recovery is trying to teach people and help them learn to be present, essentially to stay present in their body, with their mind, as one person, and not using things like pornography to escape pain or escape discomfort. Things in life they don't want to deal with. It's occurring to me today how much of that is kind of a disconnect of body and soul. That I'm not able to really stay present in my situation. And so in disconnecting from it, I go and do things with my body that actually violate my soul, violate my conscience, violate my spirit. But I'm able to do it because I'm escaping, I'm leaving that reality. And so it just underscores for me how important it is that we practice being people who are present, who are physically and in our personhood, in our soul, present in the moment, and that whatever happens, we're not going to resort to this disconnect because of the unhealth it can lead to, whether we consider ourselves a person of faith or not.

That's good. And let me respond to the comment about pornography. So the Washington Post had an article and the headline was, pornography has become a public health issue. And of course, it was from a secular perspective. So they said, is it immoral? I don't care. That's not what we're even going to address.

Right.

It's a public health issue, they said, because 88% of pornography is violent. Yeah, this was a couple years ago. I bet it's higher now. But anyway, 88% was violent. And of course, the victim was usually a woman. And then they said, studies have found, therefore, that people who watch violent pornography were more likely to say that they would commit rape or sexual assault if they thought they wouldn't be caught.

Yeah.

So, yes, violent pornography not only denigrates the person on the screen and teaches you to depersonalize and objectify the person on the screen, but it's even more than objectification. It's also, you know, the violence that is so common now in most pornography.

Yeah.

So, Nancy, let's talk constructively. Let's talk about growth here. That if someone in listening realizes that maybe they really have a secular spiritual divide going on in some of their thinking, or that they've maybe grown up with a fairly low view of the body, a low view of their own body. What does it look like, in your opinion, for someone to grow towards a high view of the body, a reuniting of the secular and the spiritual in their life? What kind of steps could they take, or what advice would you give that person?

I think a good way to go at it is creation, fall, redemption. Have you ever heard that Christian worldviews kind of consist of three parts? Creation, fall, redemption. I think that people who have our low view of the body are often not really taking creation into account. If you kind of think of the body and sex as kind of dirty or corrupt, you're not starting with creation, because creation says your body and sexuality was created by God, and God himself says it was very good in Genesis. And we do have a tendency in evangelical circles to start with the Fall. In other words, our messages often start with. Well, the classic revivalist message is, you're a sinner, you need to get saved. And that's true.

Yeah.

But what it communicates is that your central identity is at your center. You know, that you're fallen, that you're corrupt, that there's a. I have had students come to me saying, you know, in my church, I grew up and, you know, I was taught we were worthless, we were nothing. And they. They find it so empowering to start to say, no, that's not what the Bible actually says. You have to start with creation. Creation says everything God created was good. And the Fall is real. But the Fall. Here's how I put it. The Fall looks like a beautiful masterpiece that a child comes along and scribbles on. Yes, it's marred, it's defaced, but the original beauty still shines through. And that's what we need to teach people, is that the original beauty of God's creation still comes through. And, of course, redemption. Creation, fall, redemption. And redemption means that even in this life, we can experience genuine healing. Francis Schaeffer, since I mentioned him earlier, he used the term substantial healing. And I like that because he said, if you're looking for perfection, you won't get it right. If you're looking for all or nothing, you'll probably end up with nothing. And so he would say, in this life, we can, however, expect substantial healing so that we can expect God to change our lives, you know, to. To heal those wounds, to heal the trauma and not be concerned if it's not perfect in this life. But expect. Expect reality nonetheless. So I have found. Here's. Here's another way I sometimes put. Creation, Fall, redemption. There's two ways. There's. There's two versions of the gospel, the Genesis 1 version and the Genesis 3 version. The Genesis 3 version is where you start with the Fall, right, because Genesis 3 is about the Fall.

All of sin. Sin, sin, sin.

Yeah, that's right.

Humanity's falling to sin. And if you start with that, you often. You do end up with a sacred secular split because you end up with the idea that this world is essentially fallen and there's nothing really of value. There's nothing that we can really redeem out of this world. It's kind of an ark mentality that this World is going to. Is going through. Just heading to destruction. And our job is to get as many people into the ark as possible.

Yeah.

And Genesis 1 starts with, obviously, creation. So it starts with the cultural mandate. Are you familiar with the term, the cultural mandate?

Yeah. Yep.

Good, good. Yeah. I always. I find I have to ask that because, you know, sure, not all my students have heard these things before, but the cultural mandate is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue the earth. And so the original job description for the human race was to make babies. But not just make babies, but also all of the other social. Social institutions grow historically out of the family. You know, the family explains, expands into the. The clan and the tribe or the village, and finally the nation, the empire.

Yeah.

And social institutions also are formed for certain functions, like the village needs a school, the village needs a government, and it needs a marketplace where we can sell our goods. So all of the social institutions are actually included in the very streamlined language of Genesis 1 and that fill the earth, and then the second one have dominion. It means harness the natural resources. So it means not. People think, oh, yeah, Adam and Eve were farmers. But it goes. It's all of the natural resources. So it's mining, it's creating things. It's building houses and building bridges and building computers and making music. My students. I had a student once who said, come on, making music. How is that in Genesis, having dominion over the earth? Well, I play the violin. So I said, what's the violin made out of? Wood? What's the bow made out of? Horse hair. So all the transcendent beauty we associate with music starts with harnessing the forces of nature. So I think that. And I. And when I get. When I give this in my talks, I say, okay, what does your church. What does your church teach? The Genesis 1 version or the Genesis 3 version? And invariably they say, it's the Genesis 3 version.

Yeah.

So that's where Christians need to change our understanding of scripture and creation. Fall, redemption. We need to start with creation. Schaefer used to argue this way, that, you know, if you don't start with creation, you don't start with human dignity. You know, we need to be able to show that Christianity has a higher view of human dignity, the value and significance of human life, than any secular worldview does. And we only have that if we start with Genesis. Genesis one, totally.

Yeah. So good. It's funny, I've been thinking about this quote. It just keeps going through my head as we're talking. I read it In John Ortberg's book, Eternity is now in Session, he says that the point of salvation is not just to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you. The idea that what we do on Earth does have significance and does have value, and God does want us to, even today, exercise that cultural mandate and to continue out. You know, and I think some. I've heard some people say that that was the first covenant, the Adamic covenant was. Here's what I want you to do. I've created you. Now go do this thing. So. All right, let's land the plane. Okay. We've had a. This has been an amazing time, and I just want you to know I'm nerding out. I loved your book. I've loved reading your stuff. So this is such a cool thing. And you. At one point in the episode, you told me that you agreed with me, and I'm gonna take that to my grave. I'm so excited.

I can see that showing up on Trevor's bio one time. Professor Nancy Pearcey.

That's right. Okay. So basically, and I'm thinking more of, you know, thinking through maybe some of the listeners that we have, maybe a lot of the listeners trying to think, how do we fight back against these. These perspectives in the world? How do we work toward God's standard for sexuality? I don't know, like, what would be the anthem that you'd want people, you know, to, like, march forward to, like, what. What encouragement do you have for people as they're dealing with this low view of their own body and really looking for sexual health? How do you, like, just what final encouragements, basically, would you have for our listeners?

Yeah, let me answer that with a. An example. So I spoke at the MDN Medical and Dental Christian Medical and Dental Association. So, of course, there were all these doctors and. And afterwards, they would come up and ask me questions. And one of them was a psychiatrist, and she said, okay, I have a client who's a. She's a woman who claims she's a male. What do I say to her? And so I simply unpacked my book again, which was, you know, love your body. Live in harmony with your body. Your body is a good gift from God. She said, yeah, but what do I tell her? Oh, well, so I unpacked it again.

Yeah, right.

Really? She asked me about four times before she finally went like this. Oh, love your body. You know, it was so contrary to her way of thinking that I literally had to unpack it with slightly different words each time before it came through to her that, oh, yes, I actually can tell her that. I can tell her to respect her body, to live in harmony with who God made her. As Christians, we respect our biological sex. I have occasionally had some people say, well, aren't you overemphasizing the body? Well, no, as Luther said, you have to oppose the secular worldview at the point where it's attacking. You know, if you're attacking all across the wall, but you're not attacking the point where the enemy is, then you're not doing your job. And the place where the secular world is attacking right now is the body. You know, as, you know, if, as you saw from transgenderism, sexuality, abortion, it's all the body. And it's a little bit hard for Christians to get their mind around because they're used to thinking, wait, it's Christians who are otherworldly and don't care about the body?

Yeah.

And it's secular people who are materialist and naturalists and think this world is all that is. And so it's hard for them to say, you know what? It's actually the reverse. Right. Right now, it is actually Christians who have a higher view of the body than the secular world. I'll give you one sort of funny story on this. I had one reviewer of my book who was a Christian philosopher and who shall go unnamed. You probably know him, and at one point he said, you know, Nancy's wrong. It's not the sec. The secular world does not have a lower view of the body. I mean, they have, if anything, a too high view, an exalted view of the body. And I had to come back and say, no, just because you think the world, the physical world, is all that exists does not mean you think it has high value. If you think it's a product of mindless material forces, you know, randomly appeared out of nowhere, has no hot, has no particular dignity. No, you do not have a high view of the body. And this. This is what Christians need to absorb. We have a message that the secular world desperately needs. The high view of the body is something that the secular world is now. It's new, it's different. And of course, even some secular people realize that if you read secular websites, you'll start to see people saying transgenderism represents body hatred. Body hatred or biology denial, that's another one you see these days. And which is interesting, because a lot of. A lot of evolutionary biologists are now in some ways taking the lead in opposing the transgender movement, which is kind of interesting all of a sudden. Christians are on the same side as these evolutionary biologists, looking at each other like, what?

We agree.

But I'll. And I'll give you one more story. So this was a website I found as a blog by a young woman who had transitioned at age 14. She had transitioned to male at 14 and detransitioned at age 19. And here's what she said. When I transitioned, all my friends applauded me. You know, all my friends were like, oh, you. You're wonderful. You're authentic. We're so happy for you. She said. In fact, here's how she put it. The boy me got a lot more affirmation than the girl me ever had. But then, of course, it all reversed. When she detransitioned, it was the opposite. They insulted her, they attacked her, they kicked her out of their friend groups. And so she was asked, well, what advice do you have then for a young woman who's, you know, being drawn into the trance movement? And here's what she said. If I can convince just one girl to love her body, then all the abuse I've experienced will be worth it. And she was, again, a very secular person, not at all Christian, but she put her finger on it. It's loving your body for someone who'd been there and back. She says the. The key is loving your body.

Yeah. I love how this message honors what God has done. It's deeply biblical. It goes all the way back to creation. But it occurs to me that even a good meal delivered in the wrong way can leave someone with a bad taste in their mouth. That I might know, I've got the most delicious food in the world, but if I am literally trying to shove it down your mouth, you're going to reject it. And I think sometimes in our circles, in churches and as we interact with the world, that maybe thinks very differently. That message of love thy body, we can't shove it at people. There is a need to wait for someone to be hungry, just like we've talked about with recovery. Like, if we care about someone else who's struggling in addiction or with pornography, and we're trying to force them to change because we know it would be better for them. Even if we're right, even if we have truth on our side, if we're forcing it on them, it's going to be rejected and pushed away. And so I think it's looking for opportunities where, in a kind, loving, inviting way, we can remind people of the goodness of their body, the goodness of creation. Whether that's over issues of pornography like we've talked about, or transgenderism or all these issues that are out there, because if we were seen as a more inviting crowd, a more. Because I think that's maybe one of the biggest argument points that the transgender crowd has is, well, we're the inviting, accepting group. Like, we just love everybody just the way they are. And in a sense, there's some truth to that, because churches and Christians are often seen as the very judgmental kind. And I think on the flip side, if we could come across with this ethic of man, we love you. We love your body. We love how God made you, and we're after your very best life, the best for you, I think there'd be more listening ears to the message we have.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. If I may, I'll give one more example, one more anecdote. A couple weeks ago, I published an article in the Federalist about a young boy who had severe gender dysphoria. And I wanted to have something that was a little more practical, like, you know, what do parents do if they're actually faced with this? And so this boy. This boy had gender dysphoria from a. I call him Brandon, not his real name. Brandon had gender dysphoria from a very young age, which is actually the more typical. Back when it was called transsexualism, it was usually boys, and it was usually a very young. And so he was classic, a classic case. Before he was even walking, his babysitter said to his mom, he's too good to be a boy. By which she meant, he was quiet and gentle and compliant and the things that we associate with girls. In preschool, when his mother picked him up, he was invariably playing with the little girls, not the little boys. And already in elementary school, he was coming to his parents weeping repeatedly and.

Saying.

I'm trying to remember his exact words, saying, I'm interested in the things girls are. I feel like a girl. God should have made me a girl. So you can imagine how this made his parents feel. This is very difficult. He was in a lot of pain, and by his early teens, he was scouring the Internet for information on 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. They did not try to change him. When I was in seminary, I had a fellow student who was a former homosexual. And he said, when I was growing up, I loved music and poetry. And my father was baffled and kept trying to toughen me up by pushing me into more traditionally masculine Things like sports. Well, Brandon's parents did not do that. They told him it is perfectly acceptable to be a gentle, sensitive, relational boy. It does not mean you're really a girl. Yeah, it may mean that God has created you. He's equipped you for one of the caring professions like counselor, psychologist, healthcare worker. Of course, it's also equally okay for a girl to be gender non conforming, to be more take charge, assertive, athletic. Some of the things we associate with tomboys. Maybe. Yeah, they, they, they even took him. They even took his parents, even took him through the things like the Myers Briggs Personality Test. Look, the whole spectrum is available. Spectrum of personalities is available to both men and women. They took him through the gifts of the spirit because the gift of the spirit are not separated by sex. You know, teaching and prophecy are not male masculine as we might expect. And mercy and service are not feminine as we might expect. The text says that this. The Holy Spirit distributes them individually as he wills. So eventually, by the way, you know, the good news is a lot of kids outgrow it in puberty, right?

80.

Some. 80 to 90% of kids outgrow it with that rush of hormones at puberty. But Brandon did not. He was a pretty severe case. He didn't outgrow it until his early 20s. I still remember when I thought. I thought he was overcoming it one day he seemed to have. He seemed to have accepted, reconciled himself to his natal sex. And then, and then he said, but I'm still a girl on the inside. No, it was his mid-20s. He finally said, okay. Okay. Surgery would not give me what I want. It would not make me a girl. He put it this way. A person is not a computer disc that you can erase and start over.

Yeah, that's good.

And there's a very popular TED talk by a cardiologist and the fame. The most famous line from the talk is, every cell has the sex. Every cell is either masculine or feminine. And you obviously cannot change every cell in your body. So. And that's what we have to help people. Again, come back to the science, right? You cannot really transition to an opposite to the opposite sex in terms of biology. But how I wrote the. If you look it up in the Federalist, it was in January. It was more of a practical story of how can you help your child if your child is having questions about their gender identity and having distress. Is experiencing distress over their gender.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think clearly from our conversation, one of the easiest ways to just start understanding this is to buy love Thy body. Buy Nancy's book. It's excellent. It is a great read. And you know what's so cool, too. And it's cool to know that you're the same in an interview that you are in the book where there's tons of stories and there's tons of anecdotes and it's just fun to hear. It's not just like what you know, it's conversations you've had and experiences you've been, you know, part of with other people. And so we would suggest. And we'll put it in the show notes, but suggest you buy the book. Absolutely. Nancy, I know for both of us this has been a joy to have you with us and to just share your wisdom and knowledge. And the stories have been so great. So thank you for the work that you do and for spending time with us today. Really appreciate it.

I'm very glad to be here because I really appreciate the work you guys are doing as well. I mean, I know that you're dealing with an awful lot of trauma. And you know what? I will actually put in a plug for my next book.

Yeah, do it.

I have a book on masculinity coming out. You can pre order it now on Amazon. It's called the Toxic War on Masculinity. But I do have two chapters on domestic violence and. Which you guys might especially like.

Yep.

In a nutshell, I do. I deal with the sociological data on Christian men. Because when you talk about toxic masculinity, who does the secular world hold up as exhibit A? Christian men. Right. Because conservative, theologically conservative Christian men, because they believe in, in headship in the home. And so sociologists said, well, the trouble with that charge is that there's no sociological data backing it up. So they went out and did the research over the past few decades. It's fairly recent, but the last, I think Starting in about 1980s, 1990s, sociologists began doing research on evangelical couples. And what they found is evangelical men are more loving with their wives, more engaged with their kids, have lower, lower levels of divorce, and the real surprise is the lowest level of domestic violence of any group in America. So the sociological data is. That's why I decided to write the book. I said, hey, even Christians don't do. They don't know this. Christians aren't reading sociological literature. You know, this is really encouraging. But we've all heard, of course, that Christians divorce at the same rate as the secular world. Right. So what's up with that? So the researchers went back to the data and what they did is they separated out committed, churchgoing evangelical men from nominal evangelical men, which there are a lot of in America, you know, because it has, you know, because it has been sort of the, the cultural norm. And what they found about nominal man is really striking. Nominal men, their wives are, do not feel loved. They have. They have worse relationships with their wives. They are more disengaged from their children. They have the highest level of divorce, higher than secular couples, and they have the highest level of domestic violence, higher than secular men. So of course I had to have a couple chapters on them.

Totally.

Yeah. So, absolutely, I wanted to give the good news.

Yeah.

About Christian men, but I couldn't, I couldn't ignore that there's also bad news about nominal Christian men. So of course, I do have two chapters on.

Yeah.

Domestic violence. So it's, it's that, that's a new book. It's called. The title is the Toxic War on Masculinity. I wanted to get Toxic in Masculinity.

Yeah. We'll make sure to put the link for. To pre order in the show notes.

Oh, yeah. Nice.

And again, Nancy, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you and keep up your excellent work.

Thank you. And wherever you're at on your journey, pure desire is here to help you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. If you or someone you know needs recovery and healing, go to PureDesire.org and begin the journey today. If you like this episode or are a fan of the podcast, please share it with others. And make sure to check out this full episode up on YouTube as well. And lastly, never stop being healthy.

Sam.