Love Thy Body, Nancy Pearcey (Notes Compiled by Jay Wegter)

Love thy Body, Nancy Pearcey (notes compiled by Jay Wegter)

p. 11 – The Christian and the materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They both can’t be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply does not fit the real universe. This book is to show that a secular morality does not fit the real universe. (Secularism must accept dualism to evade moral truth).

p. 12 – Secular morality blows apart the connection between scientific and moral knowledge (moral truth and God’s order in the cosmos are one, seamless reality—see Psalm 19).

p. 14 – Dualism (the two-level view of the human being drives the secular ethic) has created a fractured, fragmented view of the human being, in which the body is treated as separate from the authentic self. (Sin rails against the goodness of God’s nature manifest in the moral/physical order He has created.)

Ch. 1 – I Hate Me

p. 18 – The fragmenting dualism of today is at the heart of sexual and gender anarchy as well as abortion.

p. 19 – Roe v. Wade ripped apart the union of the human of the person. To be a person is an ethical concept. To be biologically human is a scientific fact. The outworking of personhood theory is the fact/value split.

p. 20 – Personhood theory dehumanizes all of us because of its low view of the human body.

p. 21 – Naturalism rejects a teleology view of nature. By contrast, exalting God’s handiwork recognizes that each organ He created, whether fins, ears, or limbs, has a goal toward which it is directed (teleology is a divinely ordained subset of cosmology).

p. 22 – God’s fingerprints in creation bear a hallmark of design, including the human mind. This teleology includes an inanimate universe as well (note Planck’s constant, the masses of electrons and protons, scores of finely tuned parameters). We live in a teleological cosmos (Christ the Logos is the source of this order and beauty, and intent/teleology of divine design).

p. 23 – The teleology of the human body is tied to a designed, and not an arbitrary morality. In other words, it is part of our human nature to fulfill a divine design (teleology addresses the ‘goal’ or purpose of something that is designed by God). This is what it means to be fully human. Darwin’s great lie proclaimed that things appear to be designed, but that appearance is an illusion. Life for him exists as a result of purposeless material processes.

p. 24 – The theory of evolution implies that humans are disposable and that there is no intrinsic purpose built into the creation by God. Humans impose their will by means of the autonomous self – that is all that matters. (What a clue this is to today’s idolatrous autonomy, a secular ‘teleology’.)

p. 25 – If there is not intrinsic purpose, then there is no inherent dignity, only mechanism. This materialistic philosophy has shaped today’s bioethics. A fetus, though it has a full set of chromosomes and DNA, is stripped of personhood, as if that is a scientific conclusion. p. 26 – Science actually favors telos. But, personhood theory recognizes personhood only on a quantitative scale, loss of function can be regarded as loss of personhood (note why Hitler exterminated the disabled before he began killing Jews) (the massive bloodshed of the 20ᵗʰ C. bought into this utilitarian def, of human value).

p. 29 – The Bible’s morality is teleological. The more this biblical worldview is lost, the less problem people will have with same sex behavior and unions. (Note: imposing biblical morality is inseparable from biblical cosmology/teleology.)

p. 30 – The modern person asks, “Why should my moral choices be directed by my telos? Why not just by my feelings?” That sentiment is a profound disrespect for the human body. This dualism denigrates the human body and rejects the truth that a teleological worldview requires that we live by design (why is divine design consummate goodness?). Transgender people often say they are trapped in the wrong body. (Today, liberty is defined as ‘nothing outside of me defines me, including my body’—not even the ‘science’ you appeal to for an explanation of the cosmos?)

p. 31 – The materialist denies that gender identity is rooted in biology. For them, the authentic self has no connection to the body. The postmodern concept is a body without purpose or telos. In PM worldview, the meaning of our sexuality is something we impose on the body.

p. 32 – Teleological morality is the blueprint of our Creator. It creates harmony between biological identity and gender identity so that they are integrated (again, the alternative is the rend of dualism).

p. 35 – The body cannot in truth be separated off as biochemical machine. The body is intrinsic to the person (body/soul binary). In the Gnostic view, the body is total other to self. (See book of Colossians and what is going on today including intersectionality, etc.)

p. 40 – Secular culture has fallen back into dualism. This denigrates the material realm just as ancient paganism did (See Platonic and Gnostic philosophies, p. 41).

Ch. 2 – The Joy of Death (abortion)

p. 49 – If a fetus were regarded as a person, abortion would be illegal.

p. 51 – Cartesian dualism has been accepted today, this view regards science to be able to reduce everything to laws so that we are masters of nature. This dualism views an individual as a free subject connected to a deterministic machine (his body). The mind is the authentic self. (Since the forces of mindless evolution are its ‘creator’, the ‘autonomous self’ busts out of determinism by exercising sovereign personal choice, even of gender.)

p. 52 – The biological human is no longer equivalent to being a person. The body is matter only, raw material. Today’s personhood theory hides its premise for abortion.

p. 53 – If an individual scores low on a qualitative scale, he may not be a person. This is the opposite of rights bestowed by a Creator. Our founders in America viewed God-bestowed rights as self-evident truths (note my experience on secular university campuses—asking students to define a human and the source of human dignity; only utilitarian responses took place). p. 55 – The image of God is the true source of personhood and intrinsic dignity.

p. 56 – In our culture we have reached a point wherein utilitarian considerations and calculations allow us to consider that the unborn individual is not a person. The two-story view of humanity puts personhood in opposition to nature and the body. This fails to do justice to embodied life.

p. 57 – Fetuses are not regarded as persons. Let us not forget that Nazis killed the handicapped before they got around to killing the Jews. By imposing their dualism, they labeled certain groups ‘non-persons’ and determined whose lives were not worth living. (The dangerous path of personhood theory when in full bloom, will decide who is useful and who is not, who lives and who dies. See note in highlight p. 59)

p. 58 – Historically physicians were the first opponents of abortion. They saw that at conception the genetic die was cast for a unique individual.

p. 59 – In the fact/value divide, values have no grounding in facts. Values are merely subjective choices, not anchored in fixed moral truth. This opens the door to oppression because the state will decide ultimately what is a person and, when infanticide and euthanasia are appropriate. This is frightening, the raw power of the state will dispense life and death from its tribunals.

p. 60 – Without unalienable rights, the state has the power to dispense rights or to remove rights. This opens the door to tyranny and oppression. The secular of personhood denies that a fetus is biologically fully human.

p. 61 – The pro-life argument is actually based on science. It’s the two-story dualistic view that is based upon the non-scientific, non-empirical concept of personhood.

p. 62 – Personhood theory dismisses scientific facts. This lack of ethics is evident when we observe that an unwanted pregnancy is the same biologically as a wanted one. Thus, deciding is a matter of a woman’s autonomy – she is the boss of the fetus, and for the sake of her autonomy, she can decide if its life is worth sacrificing.

p. 63 – Secular university students are taught that the Christian perspective in the public arena violates the idea of neutrality and objectivity. But, the secular position is not neutral, it rests upon a two-level view of human nature that is crassly utilitarian in its view of the body. Put your nihilistic worldview cards on the table! The secular worldview functions as a state-sponsored religion.

p. 64 – This fragmented view of the body treats the body as extrinsic to the person. That is the opposite of a holistic view in which the body has intrinsic value and worth. (What of sexual assault, and the ‘me-too’ movement—if the body is just an extrinsic bio-robot, then why does the sexual body in these situations become so tied to the state of the woman’s mind, worth, and emotions?)

p. 65 – In the materialistic worldview there is no Creator to endow humans with rights. The materialistic worldview filters down until free societies (those with divinely endowed inalienable rights) are demoted to the status of myth. Then who will defend those rights?

p. 70 – In ancient Rome drains were clogged with dead infants, they were viewed as not fully human. Gendercide was committed especially against baby girls. Women, children, slaves, and the unfortunate were the objects of sexual violence. Christianity stood against the cruel traditions of the day. Only when Christian leaders were truly able to pass laws was there a reduction in sexual slavery.

p. 72 – The Western world is sinking back into pre-Christian, pagan morality (the rising generation has no clue what Christianity did to liberate women and enshrine the sanctity of marriage).

p. 81 – The uniqueness of Christianity’s contributions in humanitarian efforts was based upon its high view of life (Vishal, Christ’s descent in the incarnation meant humans ascent in dignity).

Ch. 3 – Dear Valued Constituent; Sex without a context

p. 84 – ‘Pre-persons’ can be killed for any reason, a disability, wrong gender, unwanted, etc.

p. 85 – Dualistic worldview is first applied to babies and then to the sick and the elderly. The Netherlands already has a mobile euthanasia service. Vans can come to your home and dispose of you after killing you. A culture of adults which kills its young will ultimately be killed by its young.

p. 86 – If you are just a body, then the sanctity of life evaporates. The human species does not qualify you as a person under personhood theory; there is an additional standard that must be met if you are to be regarded as a person.

p. 87 – Personhood theory is championed by supporters of Darwinism. The most pivotal turning point of the early history of the euthanasia movement was the coming of Darwinism to America. Darwin’s theory fed Sanger and Darrow’s bloody, dehumanizing policies of euthanasia and eugenics.

p. 89 – Committed materialists will always end up with a form of dualism. Life is reduced to organisms that seek pleasure and avoid pain (‘hippy’ Bohemian autonomy is now the view of the academy—The Devil’s Pleasure Palace—critical theory versus the cost of virtue; C. S. Lewis, Vishal on the amputation of the soul). This radical reductionism is blind to the fact that moral principles are real, transcendent, absolute—anchored in our immutable Creator, and (in His cosmological order) and in ourselves as His moral image. Moral principles are not material.

p. 93 – Social practices rest upon what the world is like, in other words, upon a worldview. When society accepts a practice, it absorbs the worldview that justifies that practice. Thus, abortion, euthanasia, and eugenics are not just a matter of private individuals making choices. These practices represent what a society believes about reality—and what it believes is in fact its world and life view. The right to murder implies a worldview about human existence which justifies murder. (This paragraph goes well with Doug Wilson’s statement that culture is upstream from politics, and religious faith is upstream from culture. . . Wilson, “Sanity as Insurrection.”)

p. 98 – Choice is the key element in modern liberalism; choice magically makes everything morally acceptable. (Note the new tolerance and the demand for an arbitrary morality.) One may choose the gender of a baby or abort it because of unwanted traits. A bio-engineered society will not lead to utopia but to coercive dystopia. The elite will justify the enslavement, exploitation, and genocide of groups they regard as inferior. (There is not a thing in choice that can account for human worth, dignity, and value, states Mohler.) p. 99 – In literature, we are seeing, and have seen a host of dystopian novels. It’s interesting that oppressive regimes get a foothold when supposed good ideas are hardened into law. In addition, these dystopian nightmares begin when man’s power over nature and fellow human species is reduced to a mere biological concept (dehumanizing precedes holocausts). (See book, Darwin’s deadly Legacy.)

p. 100 – Darwin lost the concept of a human species; in fact he denies that separate species exist. For, in an effort to undergird his theory, he regarded a crisp taxonomy of distinct kinds and species unattainable. For, in Darwin’s mind, every living thing is part of a smooth continuum without systematic gaps (he believed this regardless of the fact that no gradualism exists now among living species, or in the fossil record).

p. 101 – Nature has order because it is created by the rational mind of God. Even atheists acknowledge that historically it was Christianity that introduced the concept of equal rights.

p. 104 – In ancient Rome, the exposure of infants, the mistreatment of children, the abuse of slaves, and sexual slavery, and all manner of debauchery only saw reduction when Christianity first taught the value of children (see passages in the Gospels of Jesus speaking of children).

p. 106 – In the ancient world, the value of life totally depended upon social status. Jesus disrupted that underlying notion (see James 2:1-9; 5:1-6). (Note why only the gospel can bring about liberty and not Marxist ideas.) (See book Foundations of Christian Scholarship on why one cannot marshal an argument for individual freedom without the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.)

p. 108 – Weakness in Christianity today sees our faith only as spiritual experience, not as a totalizing worldview proclaiming total truth for all of life: for the human person, history, nature, and society. This paragraph is a good explanation of what happens when cosmology is not taught.

Ch. 4 – Schizoid Sex

p. 121 – Peter Singer of Princeton says that sex is amoral, raising no moral issues at all. By contrast, the Bible says our bodies have immense moral significance and behavioral consequences. God’s positive plan for marriage and family is grounded in a complementarity between male and female as a beautiful covenantal design and context of self-giving. (Note: Romans one, Ephesians four as to why ‘Gentile cosmology’ results in Gentile immorality—soul bondage and corruption—reaping from the flesh destruction—the Bible is utterly clear on the consequences of illicit sex.)

p. 122 – If the human body is a machine, then there is nothing within dualism that would keep the sexual body from being objectified (because the materialistic worldview is false, notice how it tears itself apart when it pursues internal consistency). There were two major expressions of Gnosticism in the ancient world: stoic (ascetic extreme treatment of the body), and licentious (sexual indulgence).

p. 123 – See on this page a UCLA student counselor is not permitted to counsel students in terms of morality and right and wrong. She is not even allowed to discourage students from harmful behavior – she is bound by a strict code of political correctness. This doctrinaire approach shows that universities demand conformity to the secular/pagan worldview. (The ‘autonomous self’ who is self-authenticating is the orthodoxy of today’s Gentile cosmology.) p. 128 – Porn creates chemical, well-traveled, brain highways which make it so addictive.

p. 130 – Sanger of Planned Parenthood viewed sex as salvation, that which freed self from the constraints of morality. Sanger used religious liberation language when speaking of sex.

p. 135 – Sexual libertinism has become the new sexual orthodoxy. This is even seen in children’s sexed. books which push this narrative. Our culture is creating idols at break neck speed (Rom. 1:23), and is teaching our children to revere these idols.

p. 136 – Unbridled individual expression through sexual instinct is being promoted as a path to salvation and sexual liberation and ultimately to a sexual utopia (keep in mind that every society that has worshipped sex became cruel—a culture of death, before it imploded). By contrast, the biblical or teleological worldview declares that all of creation exists to glorify God. (Why has the loss of the sanctity of sex historically always resulted in the loss of the sanctity of life in any given? Why don’t believing young people have a clue how to answer this? No theology of the spirituality of sexual intimacy—no cosmology and no teleology.)

p. 137 – Biblical morality asks us to be consistent with our bodies and embodied being.

p. 139 – Critical to biblical world view is that God’s image means we reflect His image in our personhood. We give ourselves to God and others in love. This holistic view means that you can’t fully understand sex as biology when God also deems it communion of persons (Tim LaHaye got is right when he defined sex as ‘the act of marriage’).

p. 140 – Because westerners think that the significance of any sex act is all in our minds, it is very difficult today to convince them that any form of sexual behavior is wrong (i.e. the misuse of the sexual body being equivalent to sexual immorality).

p. 143 – Today’s liberals would never dream that Christianity was the beginning and source of consensual sexual relations (prior to Christianity in the West, class, status, ‘caste’ etc. determined who could use whom sexually).

p. 144 – Like Peter Jones’ statement, ‘your sexuality declares your spirituality’.

p. 154 – Our body points us to being in a monogamous relationship (note that a child shares in chromosomal traits of each parent). Today the sexual moral revolution tears apart the body from the person. The separation of the body from an internal sense of gender identity and sexual desire is the two-story dualism that is wrecking our society.

Ch. 5 – The Body Impolitic

p. 156 – The fact that the image of God is physically embodied as male and female is a sovereign act and declaration of God—described in Genesis 1-2.

p. 157 – Students are taught that Christianity is made up of bigots. In our conversations with them, here is the challenge: how are we to express the reality of a biblical morality which communicates a higher view of creation and the body than secular morality does? The Christian view of our humanness presents an intrinsic dignity, worth, and design that is ultimately more fulfilling. (Note why biblical morality is essential to true community.)

p. 159 – Same-sex eroticism is a behavioral choice, it is not genetic.

p. 160 – What is called queer theory today has the goal of breaking the link between gender, biology, and desire. No one really denies that on the level of biology, physiology, anatomy and bio-chemistry males and females correspond to one another. That’s the way the human sexual system is designed. Non-heterosexual identity does cause an inner disruption; it contradicts one’s biological design. The message of materialistic dualism is that the body should not interfere with my choices.

p. 162 – The premise of the moral revolution is that one must assume that the body does not give the reference points for gender identity and moral choices. Sadly, this view revives the ancient Gnostic disdain for the body. Christianity honors the body as male and female. Biblical morality affirms the high value of creation. Its teleological view exhibits a plan and design and order and purpose that is a rational ground for moral decisions.

p. 163 – The view of the moral revolution sees morality as merely a social construct. Postmodern gender theory grounds gender not in your body, but in your mind. Two-level dualism has trained us to sever the natural order from the moral order. But, here is the materialist dilemma: if actions are only determined by the laws of nature, freedom is impossible, and there are no free agents making moral decisions (just biological ‘robots’ determined by nature). (Note the radical inconsistencies.)

p. 164 – Kant suggested that the mind projects reality.

P. 165 – In the postmodern view, same-sex practice is an expression of the concept that our identity is defined by feelings and desires, therefore one may use the body in a way that contradicts our biological structure. (Always include the conscience in these conversations; first principles are instinctively evident. Why is there tension there in my inner being—it takes habit and pressure to

suppress and to sear the conscience. EX. Cal Arts experience on law interview.) STOP

p. 166 – By contrast, teleological worldview affirms sexuality as part of our deep design – it speaks of God and the beauty of His character. Secular culture presents a ‘gay script’ that many find compelling. But, is same-sex the discovery of the authentic self? How could this be? When anyone might perform a same-sex act, it certainly cannot be a condition essential to identity.

p. 169 – Is same-sex acting being authentic, or is it filtering one’s feelings (selecting some) and jettisoning other feelings?

p. 171 – Telos heterosexual monogamous sex is part of God’s larger plan to create and secure loving families – that is an acknowledgement of the created order. We are to love people by supporting telos, for it is God’s good and genuinely excellent design for human flourishing.

p. 176 – Teleological structure is a fact of creation and therefore non-negotiable.

p. 180 – When a person goes from hetero’ to homo’, he is applauded for living his authentic self. But, in the other direction, when a homo’ moves to hetero’, he’s accused of cowardice, false consciousness, self-loathing, and being guided by moral ideals and not sexual desires. Why the double standard? Answer: the reigning narrative today regards choice to be higher moral ground than transcendent moral truth. How did we reach the place culturally in which homo’ desires are the real you?

p. 182 – We ought to welcome the goodness of creation, the meaningfulness of male and female. This assertion certainly is the very opposite of oppression. It is the reflection of history’s great story line.

p. 184 – In Romans 1:26-27, certain behaviors are described as ‘against nature’ (see NT Greek), ‘contrary to nature’ which in both Hellenistic and Greco-Roman culture was a standard way of referring to homosexuality. Greco-Roman culture never legalized homosexual marriage, it was obvious to them that to do so would mean the breakdown of society (militating against the nuclear family as the stable unit of society). (Any culture which promulgates the idea that it is ‘noble’ to go against nature is doomed apart from repentance.)

p. 185 – At that time (in Paul’s day), ‘nature’ meant behavior that is normative for human nature (‘against nature is behavior contrary to being fully human by design). (See also unethical/immoral behaviors listed in Romans 1:29-31 which are also contrary to our design.)

p. 186 – Societies have recognized that they need to give support and protection to the one relationship capable of making children. Critics today say that the church must change its morality because it is on the wrong side of history. But, history proves the exact opposite—the church’s sexual morality protects women and children.

p. 189 – The pre-Christian status of women and children was deplorable. Christianity represented a cultural revolution restraining and channeling male Eros toward love and marriage. For, prior to the Christian cultural revolution, Greco-Roman hedonism made women and children sex objects. Male and female had no moral significance.

p. 190 – Christian worldview is inaccurately cast today in a reductionist manner as ‘offended by what it regards as sexual perversion’. But, Christian worldview is both compassionate and life-affirming. (See p. 191, the gospel community welcomes the broken, the outcast, the sin-broken—those recognizing that they need the Savior.)

p. 191 – The beauty of the Christian moral vision needs to be communicated. It gets below the surface and reaches issues such as love, dignity, permanence, conscience, belonging, etc.

Ch. 6 – Transgender, Trans-reality

p. 194 – The new SOGI laws (sexual orientation and gender identity). These laws treat sexual attraction and gender identity as a protected category, like race and religion. These laws assume the same two-story divided world view we diagnosed in earlier chapters. These laws assume a person can be born in the wrong body, thus they set up an opposition between the body and an inner sense of being male or female (between physiological facts and subjective feelings). Christians must respond by offering a positive biblical worldview that affirms the value of the body and the unity of the human being. (Only gender and race are innate and immutable, and therefore are deserving of sacred recognition, Jeffery Ventrella, lawyer for Alliance Defense Fund).

p. 195 – SOGI laws treat the facts of physiology, anatomy, chromosomes, DNA as less real and less knowable than subjective feelings about gender.

p. 196 – In the dualism view the authentic self is the autonomous choosing self. But, biology tells us every cell in our body has a sex.

p. 197 – Our young people are being taught that what defines you is not tied to biology, but strictly one’s inner feelings.

p. 200 – There is a proper kind of self-love that comes from accepting God’s love. Why won’t we encourage people to love the body that they are in?

p. 201 – The New York City rights commission has 31 terms of gender expression. Exorbitant fines are levied upon employers that violate SOGI laws. And this is what trans’ activists hope for – they are challenging the very existence of the binary categories of male and female. (see binary and biblical cosmology.)

p. 202 – Postmodernism would have us believe that gender is a free-flowing artifice. In postmodernism, nothing is natural. Sexuality is a social construction and gender is fluid – that perspective teaches that it is liberating to take control of one’s identity (i.e. in other words, your true authentic self has nothing to do with your biology).

p. 204 – It’s interesting that scientists don’t know how asexual reproduction evolved into sexual reproduction – (though they assert it) they cannot find any empirical data for its origin (p. 205, we know from God’s infallible Word that sexual reproduction is a product of divine intelligent design. God’s design of social beings is made to fit in relationships of mutual interdependence).

p. 206 – In the dualistic world view, self is fluid, no morality is natural, all morality is a social construct. Postmodern theorists denaturalize gender (p. 207 if sexual morality is merely a social construct, then we are free to deconstruct it, for there are no heterosexual norms). (Again, biblical cosmology is reality.)

p. 208 – Children are exposed to a gender unicorn cartoon to teach them that the human being is composed of disparate bits and pieces. In other words, biological sex is a relatively minor factor in the flux. Children are being taught that other factors feed into our psycho-sexual identity. Kids are being taught that gender is free-flowing artifice and that it is deeply alienated from nature, therefore we may disavow our biology.

p. 209 – Hagel’s pantheism paved the way for Marx’s materialism.

p. 210 – Human autonomy is reaching remarkably idolatrous levels. The ‘sovereign self’ has complete freedom to declare whether one chooses to be a man or a woman or both or neither. The sovereign self does not tolerate having its options limited by anything it did not choose, not even its own biology. (Judgment Day will be shocking as it crushes every illusory, rebellious worldview.) p. 211 – By contrast, imbodied existence is a good gift of God. But, postmodern gender theory undercuts women’s rights. It makes sex a social construct including the body. Therefore, one can’t argue for rights on the sheer fact of being female. Of course, erroneous world views cannot explain human existence, thus we should not be surprised that the ‘L’ of LGBT is at war with the ‘T’.

p. 212 – SOGI laws will be even more destructive on women legally (what defines a woman legally), but also on the legal definition of son or daughter, mother father, husband or wife without permission from the State. This destructive crisis of the gender identity movement redefines humanity as sexless and ends up dehumanizing society. The State, by being in control by definitions, has taken control of our rights. By allowing the State to define these core relationships in gender-neutral terms, the natural family is under frontal attack. The more of these decisions that are made by the State, the closer we are moving toward regime politics.

p. 214 – SOGI laws have shifted fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human, the shift is from the body to the mind, from biological sex to gender, and as the State imposes its will, it will impose its belief system upon us. This state ideology can be called the prevailing ‘civil religion’, since it is defended and enforced by our civic leaders.

p. 215 – America accepts abortion, euthanasia, gender-free marriage, transgender policies, and as a result, it is involved in the process which will absorb the worldview that justifies these practices. That worldview extolls a two-story, fragmented view of human beings which denigrates the body and biology and the bonds that are natural such as the family. (See Doug Wilson on what is upstream from politics and law.)

p. 216 – The Bible speaks of people who are morally and spiritually lost without Christ. The darkness describing the natural man means that a lost person is also metaphysically lost without biblical worldview. In 2 Cor 10:3-5, and in Col 2:8, non-biblical world views are described as strongholds and prisons which have trapped people in destructive dehumanizing worldviews and ideas.

p. 225 – The cruelty of personhood theory linked with social pressure to transition (if one has gender dysphoria) has led many young people to feel incredible pressure to transition or ‘die’.

Ch. 7 – The Goddess of Choice is Dead

p. 229 – As a spokesman for the dualism of today, Ted Peters states that the foundation of the family must shift from biology to contract (note what that shift will mean in terms of the state being in charge of endowing and defining rights).

p. 230 – The elevation of choice over biology has become a cultural given in regard to life, gender, and sexuality. (The cosmology of erotic ‘rights’ has a destination of carnage and dystopia.)

p. 231 – Is it logical to believe that parents will be more committed if they thought that they had no natural obligation to their children? History is a blunt and unapologetic teacher, but its lessons are easily forgotten: the totalitarian regimes of the 20ᵗʰ Century—erected by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao—all sought state control of education, down to the earliest years, to inculcate unquestioning acceptance of the regime’s ideology. p. 233 – See these pages for the history of social contract theory.

p. 234 – The ‘universal acid’ (philosophically) of social contract theory promised liberty because under its canopy, there would be no obligation but what is consented (p. 235, We the people would create our own idea of marriage and family). The promise was liberty from oppression and convention so as to produce the ‘unencumbered self’ (see p. 235, Rousseau and his vision of the noble savage—the original autonomy enjoyed in the hypothetical state of nature.)

p. 236 – To be self-determined is the ideal of the unencumbered self—an individual connected to others only by choice. Gnostic devaluation of the body has reemerged. Liberalism has followed that path of devaluing natural communities in favor of those created by an act of the will. (p. 237, our experience of familial love is meant to school us in the sacrificial love that binds us together in the family of God. The bonds of biology train us to extend love beyond biology. By contrast, the acids of autonomy are dissolving biologically based bonds. We are losing our school of love—the biological family. Abortion is a prime example of that loss).

p. 238 – Even abortion has become a social contract. The fetus is regarded as an imposition, a parasite, a threat to choice. Under the body/person dualism, all duties arise from acts of consent. (Pro-life is regarded as patriarchy attempting to control a woman’s body.)

p. 240 – The prevailing view of an atomistic, contractual view of society (and not a covenantal view of marriage) is turning each person into an independent transacting party seeking his or her enlightened interest—akin to the autonomous individual in a state of nature.

pp. 242-243 – These pages: the serious consequences to a family of an absent father.

p. 245 – Supreme Court justice Kennedy dismissed biology and declared the purpose of legal marriage is to protect the ‘personhood’ of same-sex couples—'it is disparaging to deny them marriage’ (Justice Kennedy). (Here is the Supreme Court making dualism into law.)

p. 246 – This insipid definition of marriage by the Supreme Court undermines marriage for everyone. It erased fidelity, exclusivity, and permanence (p. 247, the new definition of marriage could evolve into a group of friends, or parties of people who have no sexual marital bonds).

p. 248 – The redefinition of marriage means a loss of freedom, relinquishing it to the state. Now, there is very little holding back the state from enforcing its ideology as a civic religion. The isolated individual is easy to manipulate and control (see p. 249 for sweeping worldview behind the social contract view of marriage in contrast to the biblical definition of marriage—in which there are publicly recognized norms and obligations.)

p. 250 – The state threatens potential deprivation of children from biological parents. (p. 251, For, the definition of a parent has been de-naturalized. The contractual view of marriage is now accompanied by a contractual view—‘new vision’—for family formation and parenthood.)

p. 252 – As social contract theory spreads as the reigning ideology, parenthood will be treated as something created by the state, since the state defines it and controls it. The statist control of marriage and family is on the horizon. p. 253 – Edmund Burke stated that families are little platoons that stand between the individual and an overweening state. Brave new world is here, a proud ‘parent’ held up a sign recently above his baby, “No sex was used to produce this child.”

p. 254 – Every forward movement of the secular moral revolution is hailed as an advance of freedom from the oppressive rules of the past. But every step empowers the state. Only in the past did law recognize personhood as a pre-existing reality—it followed (naturally) metaphysically on being biologically human. But now, gender is a state of mind, and how you feel toward your child is a state of mind (keep it or abort it). The state can legislate late-term abortion and in so doing, deny biology and declare some biological humans not persons.

p. 256 – In biblical worldview we have intrinsic value, purpose, telos—we live in a cosmos centered in love. By contrast, the secular worldview sets forth the idea that nature has no moral meaning, and that we have no intrinsic value—thus, we are the ones who assign value to anything. The present moral revolution is built upon this worldview conviction that nature has no moral meaning.

p. 257 – The biblical worldview sees marriage and family as a kind of creational ‘furniture’ that forms a social pattern that is original and inherent in human nature made in the image of God. The Genesis account is the historical narrative of the foundational relationship ordained by God.

p. 258 – In biblical worldview, marriage does not exist for itself alone (not an end in itself), but exists for the glory of God and the common good of the community (note Vishal on monogamous heterosexual marital fidelity as a source of culture-making).

pp. 259-260 – The Holy Trinity and social relations (see Wegter essay on this subject).

p. 261 – The constant drumbeat narrative that the Bible is hateful, harmful, narrow, and negative is a message driven into our young people. But the biblical worldview has a very high view of the body, and a life-affirming message and vision of life.

p. 263 – The gospel comes with the ‘house key’ of hospitality. God uses hospitality to form life-giving relationships. People are starving for healthy relationships. If they don’t have them, they will enter unhealthy ones (like a starving person eating what is unhealthful). (See alarming essay on Rosaria Butterfield’s view of hospitality.)

p. 264 – The new polarization in the full-blown culture war/moral revolution can actually be a source of opportunities for Christian communities to become safe havens where people witness the beauty of relationships reflecting God’s own commitment and faithfulness. As in David Wells’ study for those hurt by the false promises of our culture—the secular moral revolution is wrecking lives by its false promises of freedom and autonomy (see symptoms of sin—see page on consequences of false promises). If you reject living by the design ordained by the Creator, may the Lord show you that only through Christ can you be restored to your created purpose.

Nancy Pearcey’s Book Summary in a Lecture at The Heritage Foundation, February, 2018:

The watershed moral issues today are 1) human life, and 2) sexuality. Rather than addressing these issues individually, we note that secular liberalism shares the same core convictions on every politically correct cause that they champion (note the dualism inherent in secular cosmology).

Christians are told that their morals are demeaning to LGBTQ individuals, but central to this issue is the role and sanctity of the human body. Are we as Christians denying civil rights to certain groups? Supreme court justice Kennedy thought so when he approved gay marriage, saying, that those who oppose gay marriage are seeking to disparage them, to be mean spirited, and to demean gays. Our Christian response is anchored in the biblical worldview of theism. By contrast, it is today’s moral revolution that has a low view of the body; it is a view that is demeaning. That view involves the concept of a human life that is split: ‘a biological creature but, not a person’. This constitutes a radical dichotomy in which the individual is biologically human but has no special dignity; he is only a biological machine. Being biologically human is not enough for them. A individual may be thrown away as medical waste if mental capacity and function are lacking.

This mind-body dualism is present in modern personhood theory, and is the argument behind abortion on demand. That theory sees no value in our body, all moral worth is only in our mind. Bioethicists can’t agree when an individual is a person. In their view, non-persons have no right to life, but the ‘cut-off points’ as to when someone is not a person is totally arbitrary. In his book, The Pre-persons by Philip Dick, the author says the fetus is not a person, the newborn is not a person, the cut-off for becoming a person is 12 years old. (The Pre-persons is a novel, like a modern day version of, Brave New World).

As biblical theists we argue that only if we start with biology do we have a universal starting point of personhood that is detectible by science. Thus, to be prolife is to be pro-science. By contrast, in personhood theory, if one loses cognitive function, that individual is no longer a person, they may be starved to death and their organs harvested (Terri Schiavo). One is not included as a person if one does not measure up. Personhood theory denies the value of just being human.

Personhood theory rests upon a cosmology of mechanistic, blind, random, determinism. This was Darwin’s idea to replace a teleological worldview with chance. He wanted to get rid of purpose and design in nature. He asserted that nature is without conscious design, without telos. By contrast, our Creator has given ample evidence that every organ is designed for a purpose, a goal, a telos. Our genetic code is the blueprint of our telos. Respect for the body is inseparable for respect for the person. This is rejected by political liberalism in which the secular ethic states that the body has no meaning. The cultural promotion of this view is leaving a trail of broken, hurt, and wounded people.

Why should one’s gender identity and sexual orientation be determined by their chromosomes (or biological body)? No one really denies that male and female correspond to one another by design. For, that is how the world became populated! But in today’s moral revolution, the cry at the heart of the revolt is, “Why should my biology be my identity or have any say in my sexuality?” In reality, biology does not provide a basis for the sexualized ethic, such as homosexuality and sexual orientation. Did God make some people gay? If so, that is a cruel joke to have the exact wrong physiology. So, how do those who are politically liberal justify the concept that the mind has all the say, and the biology of the body does not? Answer, if the body is a product of purposeless forces, then why not defy nature (Camille Paglia)? If our bodies are the product of undirected physical forces, then they have no moral significance.

One former homosexual started regarding his sexuality by his body, seeing it as a good gift of God. He noted that his feelings changed as a result. He is now married with children. In biblical theism, nature has divine order and purpose. When we honor that, there is greater human flourishing. The body is a ‘road map’ to fulfill our creational calling (heterosexual monogamous marriage and family).

What is the transgender narrative doing to America’s children? The transgender narrative has suddenly exploded on the public scene. At the heart of the debate is the assertion that your mind can be at war with your body. It is shocking that laws are being made that enshrine this falsehood. Judges are regarding biological sex/gender with suspicion. Children are being told that their bodies tell them nothing about themselves. This transgender narrative is being taught to elementary age school children. Sadly, young children are being taught there is no unified self, just a fragmented patchwork of emotions, ideas, and body parts. A cartoon diagram called the Gender Unicorn, is being used to deconstruct gender. This is both tragic and drastic to teach kids that they are alienated from nature and biology.

Young gay kids are being pressured into being transgender, as if this the only way to be faithful to their true identity. Some university campuses are offering to pay for college students to have a full gender transition through surgery and hormones. This is heart-rending. Tragic accounts of re-transitions are being systematically hidden from the press. A trans’ male who wishes to go back to being a woman will have some irreversible physical consequences (double mastectomy, afternoon shadow, etc.).

A transgender person, who transitioned back to being a female, summed up the contradiction in this way, “It is not conversion therapy to learn to love your body.” As believers, we not only have a message that God’s institution of marriage brings glory to God and harmony to society, we also teach that the teleological ethic offers the ethic of integration of body and soul. In theism, freedom is found in divine design, in political liberalism freedom is found in the denial of divine design. It is inescapable that biologically, there are only two gametes: a sperm and an egg. But, in the sexual revolution, the push is for sexual fluidity, people want to be free to change their minds, and so there is a concerted effort to deconstruct male-female binary. In the postmodern view, you may choose your gender or change your gender.

How can feminists truly be defenders of women’s rights if the definition of a woman is completely fluid? Of late, friction has arisen between women’s rights and transgenderism. For, if we are not able to say what a woman is, then how can we defend the rights of a woman? Erroneous worldviews are hopelessly fragmented. Thus we would expect radical inconsistency between the L and the T of LGBT. And, if the material meaning of male and female is erased from law, then feminists have a legitimate quarrel—how shall women’s rights be promoted? As the concept of the body undergoes further deconstruction, the moral revolution is going to send an earthquake through civilization that shifts entire ‘tectonic plates’ of what it means to be human.

As Christians, one of the objections we hear is, “Why not let LGBT people live in their own way?” Shouldn’t believers remain mute on these issues? The answer is that the laws that are being made affect everyone. History is a blunt and unapologetic teacher, for history reminds us that many pre-political rights are based on biology, especially the rights of the unborn. But, now the state has decided who has the most legal right to live. In addition, marriage is a pre-political right, but the state has redefined marriage as merely an emotional commitment, unrelated to biology (Obergefell v. Hodges). The transgender narrative dismissed biology as irrelevant.

There is a current agenda to rid partners of the use of male and female pronouns, and mother and father titles as parents. This massive program of redefinition has serious legal ramifications. A legal parent will only be legal by permission of the state. This entire narrative is sold to the public as the power of choice, but it gives more power to the state.

As a consequence of its pagan worldview, the Greco-Roman world devalued the physical world and the physical body. The platonic dualism central to Gnosticism, suggested that an evil god created this world, this denigrated the body, describing it as the ‘soul’s prison house’ (as if man’s problem were metaphysical and not moral/ethical). But, in biblical theism, the body is intrinsically good because it is created by the Supreme Deity.

The incarnation of Christ is the ultimate affirmation of the human body. In Christ’s bodily resurrection, His spirit comes back to a physical body, but that is utter foolishness to Greeks. Pagan worldview is being revived today, it is returning in today’s dualism of the secular left. There is nothing like the Christian view, with its high view of the body in any other religion in the world. Only the Christian worldview with its high view of the total person as the image of God has the foundation for human rights that are inalienable. Even secular philosophers, historians, scientists, and atheists understand that all theories of equal rights are traceable to Christianity. Universal rights cannot be defended on secular grounds; they are borrowed from Christian worldview. One atheist put it this way, “We have to freeload from Christianity to have equal rights and human rights” (Christopher Hitchens) (see Nietzsche’s view source of rights).

A culture’s reigning narrative (sexual orientation and gender identity) will eventually manifest itself in its politics and its laws. Civilization follows the consequences of its worldview. The cultural assumptions of what it means to be human will eventually show up in government policies and laws. This is why politics is downstream from culture-making. Transgenderism is focusing on identity. Choice is the key element in modern liberalism; choice magically makes everything morally acceptable. This is why erotic ‘rights’ are eclipsing religious rights.

In today’s world, how can Christians be faithful to Scripture, and get a hearing in so doing? Won’t our message of ‘thou shalt not’ turn people away before we get to the gospel? As believers, one of the best ways to win people over, is to explain the high regard biblical theism has for each individual as a whole person. We want you to have a positive view of the body. We can talk speak with unbelievers through this lens of a higher view of their identity. This approach can help protect us from the broad brush attack of being accused of discrimination. We can introduce points of conversation such as, “What is your view of nature?” “May I show you the implications of your worldview?”

The faithful believer who shares his faith, will have to learn to put up with rants. These outbursts normally have nothing in them of substance to which we may respond. We can show patience, and wait for something substantive to be shared. By virtue of our Created design, we naturally aspire to an inner wholeness and integration, an inner unity between body and self. We are created to have a natural unity between biology and gender. But people are being told that they are but a patchwork of bits and pieces.

Christian worldview, by contrast, states that we are healthier and happier when there is a unity or coherence between our gender and sexual desire. But, the political left is constantly signaling the narrative that in the interest of identity and choice, you have an absolute right over your body, and thus have the right to defy nature, (i.e. no one’s body should inform their core identity). Christian worldview is the polar opposite. I let my body have a voice; I embrace it as fundamentally good; I view nature to be fundamentally good; I accept my body as good. God created male and female in a way that lets us celebrate our created gender.

The philosophy of modernism stressed personal autonomy (Cartesian dualism). In that concept, the mind determines what is real – ‘I think therefore I am’ (Descartes) –the mind or soul is but a ‘ghost’ in the machine (the body). The "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism. But, postmodernism comes out of Hegelianism which teaches a collectivist value system. In that view, one’s identity is part of a group; this becomes a stronger source of identity than being an autonomous individual. Postmodernism focuses on group identity (identity politics). Everyone is assigned to a group in multi-culturalism (the oppressed and the oppressors, the victims and their victimizers). Out of this comes the ethic that you can only speak to your own group (your race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation). Welcome to the mandatory badges pinned on us by the rise of Neo-Marxism.

Why is it hard to get pastors to read books like Pearcey’s book, Love thy Body? The answer is they tend to relegate this subject to ‘scholarly apologetics’, which is regarded as far above the heads of church members. But, we can promote the book by telling pastors that the subject of this book is all about the incredible pressure our kids are facing. In our public schools, kids are constantly asking each other, “Are you gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans? Identity politics have taken our youth by storm. The soul-body dichotomy has become our nation’s civil religion. But, fragmented worldviews produce fragmented people. They produce spiritual carnage, and as history has shown, ultimately they produce physical carnage. The gospel alone has the power to make us whole.