This book engages our culture on some of today’s most prominent issues. I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and we’re talking today to well-known author Nancy Pearcey about her latest book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. You might have seen her recent article published on Fox News website where she addresses some of these same issues. (If not, we’ll provide the link for you here on this interview page of our site.)
Nancy, welcome – great to have you with us again.
Pearcey:
Thank you; it’s good to be here.
Zaspel:
First, maybe you could just explain both your title and your subtitle: Love Thy Body: Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality? What’s the connection? And what is the contribution you hope to make with this book?
Pearcey:
Well, certainly issues of life – and by that I mean things like abortion and euthanasia and sexuality, like homosexuality and transgenderism – these are the issues that have become THE watershed moral issues of our age. Every day we have headlines chronicling the advance of a secular, moral revolution in these areas. And not only that, but a secular orthodoxy is being posed through virtually all the major social institutions, academia and media, public schools, Hollywood, the law and so on. The reason my book is called Love Thy Body is because I show that there is a secular worldview that underlies all of these issues and it’s a worldview that actually has a negative view of the body. It has a low view of biological identity as humans and as male and female. So, in many ways, I am helping people get below the surface, get below the headlines and understand the secular revolution that’s underneath it and propose a Christian alternative.
Zaspel:
Your book says we need to get beyond negative responses—it’s wrong, it’s a sin, don’t do it—and offer a positive message. What is the positive message?
Pearcey:
You almost have to take an example to show what the negative view is so that you can highlight with the Christian view is. Let’s start with abortion, for example. Abortion really lowers the value of all human life, because bioethicists defend abortion by admitting that the fetus is biologically human. Ordinary people may sometimes have questions, but professional bioethicists know. The data is just too strong from genetics and DNA that the fetus is human from conception, but they say it’s not a person, yet. And as long as it’s just human, it can be killed for any reason or no reason. It can be used for research, tinkered with genetically, harvested for organs, and then disposed of with the other medical waste. So, what’s the implication? The implication is just being biologically human no longer guarantees human rights – even the most fundamental right, which is not to be killed. This is a drastic devaluation of human life. So when the Christian comes in and says, “No, no, we want to argue against abortion,” it’s not because we’re being negative, it’s not just because we’re saying, “you’re wrong, don’t do it, it’s a sin, thou shalt not.” Though those are true, we would have a lot more effect if we come in and say we have a higher view of life. What we’re trying to get across is a much more humane, much more affirming, much more loving view of the dignity and value and significance of human life. So that would be an example where if we understand the secular view, what it is really doing is denigrating human life and destroying the basis of human rights. And we’re the ones, as Christians, who are arguing for a high view of human life and human rights.
Zaspel:
You argue that transgender and homosexual activities, though championed today, are actually personally denigrating. How so?
Pearcey:
Let’s take homosexuality first, because most people don’t see it there. And yet, think of it this way – no one really denies that, at the level of biology, physiology, anatomy, males and females are counterparts to one another. That’s how the human sexual and reproductive system is designed. So, when you embrace a same-sex identity, implicitly you are contradicting that design. You are saying, “Why should the structure of my body inform my identity? Why should my identity as male or female, biologically, have any say in my moral choices?” So, this is a profoundly disrespectful view of the body. And the implication is what counts is not what whether I am biologically male or female, but solely my mind, my feelings, my desires. As a result, it creates an inner conflict, an inner fragmentation, between your biological identity and your psychological identity. Those who defend a biblical view of sexuality are not just relying on a few scattered Bible verses. What they’re saying is there’s a worldview in which the structure of the universe, including my body, is a part of a loving Creator and reflects his purposes. And so, when we live in line with his purposes, we are also experiencing an inner unity, that we’re seeing a harmony, a confluence, a coherence, a congruence between my biological identity and my psychological identity. So it’s very healing. It’s integrating of human personality. So, again, that’s a positive argument instead of just a negative one.
Zaspel:
So, to accept a creator’s design is more personally fulfilling.
Pearcey:
It’s more personally fulfilling. And really that’s the underlying worldview – where did the universe come from? What is our view of nature? Is nature just a matter of blind material forces? Is it a cosmic accident with no higher purpose or meaning? In that case, the human body is reduced to a collection of atoms and cells and tissues, no different, really, from any other chance configuration of matter. And so, what’s the implication? The implication is our bodies convey no moral message, they give no clue to our identity, they have no inherent purpose that we are obligated to respect. In fact, there’s a well-known, outspoken feminist and lesbian named Camille Paglia, and here’s how she defends her homosexuality. She says, “Nature made us male and female. Okay, I agree with that. I realize you can’t argue with nature. Nature created us as a sexually reproducing species. But, why not defy nature? Why not defy nature’s tyranny?” And here’s the money quote, she says, “Fate, not God, has given us this flesh. We have absolute claim to our bodies and may do with them as we see fit.”
There’s the worldview behind things like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism – why should I pay attention to my body? As you see, it’s a very negative view of the body. It’s a very low view. This explains why the Christian ethic always takes into account the facts of biology. Whether we are addressing abortion, so we’re looking at the scientific facts about when life began, or when we’re talking about sexuality, the facts about sexual differentiation and reproduction, the Christian ethic is always paying attention to science and facts and biology. Which, again, is contrary to the stereotype. We’re the ones, today, who are standing up for facts and biology and science.
Zaspel:
That’s right. Absolutely.
The hookup culture is often criticized for putting too much value on the sheer physical dimension of sex. But you say it puts too little value on sex. Please explain.
Pearcey:
Right. Again, it actually rests on a low view of the body. The hookup culture is very scripted. The rules of the game, as young people know all too well, are: no love, no relationship, no commitment. But what are they really saying, then? They’re saying that I can have physical connection with somebody without having connection on any of the higher levels – emotional, personal, spiritual connection. What does that mean? It means that sex can be purely physical without any higher meaning. I have a quote in my book, Love Thy Body, from Rolling Stone magazine where a young man was interviewed. He said, “Sex is just a piece of body touching another piece of body. It is existentially meaningless.” This is not a high view of the body. This is a low view of the body. The hookup culture rests on a material view of the human being as a physical organism driven by sheer physical drives with no higher purpose. And young people are not happy with this. In Love Thy Body, I quote a researcher who interviewed hundreds of college students and wrote a book and found that privately they will admit that they are very disappointed in their meaningless sexual encounters. They feel hurt and lonely. They wish they knew how to create a genuine relationship in which they are known and loved. It’s leaving a trail of wounded people because they are trying to live out a worldview that does not fit who they really are.
Zaspel:
What is the Christian view of the body?
Pearcey:
What’s fascinating is that the Christian church has faced this issue before. The early church grew up in an environment that was dominated by philosophies that also had a low view of the material world. Philosophies like Gnosticism and Platonism, that treated the world as a place of death, decay, and destruction. And, in fact, they even called the body a prison. They used the phrase, the prison house of the body. Gnosticism taught that there were several layers of deity, several levels, and the material world was created by a low-level deity, in fact, an evil deity because the eternal world was thought to be evil, and no self-respecting god would get his hands dirty mucking about with matter. So, in this historical context, Christianity was revolutionary. It taught that it was the highest God, the supreme deity who created the material world and he pronounced it very good. An even greater scandal was the incarnation, the idea that God himself entered the material world and took on a human body. The incarnation is the ultimate affirmation of the dignity of the body. And finally, at the end of time, God is not going to scrap the material world as if he made a mistake the first time, he is going to renew it and restore it. He’s going to create a new heavens and a new earth. The Apostles Creed affirms the resurrection of the body. This is an astonishingly high view of the physical world. There is nothing like it in any other philosophy or religion. And that’s why my book, Love Thy Body, gives people the tools to go beyond a negative message and to deploy positive arguments showing that a biblical ethic is more appealing, more attractive, more compelling than the secular ethic.
Zaspel:
Before we sign off, maybe you can give us a brief overview of your book so our listeners can know what to expect. And maybe you could mention some of the other issues that you address in the book, as well.
Pearcey:
It covers all the major issues. The ones we didn’t talk about today were things like euthanasia; we didn’t cover transgenderism; it talks about animal rights; it talks about stem cell research. It shows how all of these issues ultimately rest on a low view of the body. What listeners might want to know, though, is that it’s not just a lot arguments and polemics, it’s lots of stories, too. I have interviewed a lot of people for the book. For example, one of my favorite ones is the one that starts the chapter on homosexuality. There was a young man named Sean Dougherty who was exclusively attracted to other men. When he became a Christian, he thought his only option was to be celibate, but today, he’s married and has three kids. So, you say, “What changed?” And he says, “You know, I began to think I needed to love my body.” Now, he didn’t use quite that phrase, but he says, “I began to think that my identity should come from my body, and I was created male. And so, from the time of Genesis, God had created males to interact sexually with a female. And that was more basic to my identity than my feelings, because obviously, our feelings can change, and they often do.” And he said, “When I began to reframe my identity in terms of my biological sex, my feelings started to change. I didn’t try to change them, directly, but my feelings started to change, and I began to recognize that my body is a good gift from God.” The basic worldview question is this: do we accept our bodies as good gifts from God or do we reject it? Do we accept that created reality expresses God’s purposes and that we have an obligation to respect those purposes? Or do we treat the world as though it were a product of blind chance and there is no purpose for us to respect? These are the underlying worldview questions. And I show lots of examples like Sean’s story, where it really has an impact on real people as they struggle with these worldview questions.
Zaspel:
Excellent!
We’re talking to Nancy Pearcey about her latest book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. It’s a very helpful guide to help you think through some of today’s most prominent cultural issues. We encourage you to pick up a copy and enjoy.
Nancy, thanks so much for talking to us again today.
Pearcey:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
