Worldview

The Crucial Worldview Issue in the Church and in Society – Part 2

Rick Plasterer on October 20, 2021

An earlier article reviewed the comments of George Barna, demographer and researcher of the American Evangelical world, and social commentator regarding the importance and decline of the Christian worldview in recent decades. Nancy Pearcey, Professor and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, and a noted social commentator, then discussed some practical implications of this decline at the Family Research Council’s PrayVoteStand Summit on October 8.

She pointed out the current intense controversy over abortion, the LGBT revolution, and sex generally proceed from a non-Christian worldview which finds no objective meaning in physical reality, and thus has a low view of the human body. In delineating the current secular view of the world which leads to a low view of the body, she hoped to give people “tools to debunk the negative stereotypes of the Christian worldview that are so common today.”

She began by discussing transgenderism. In a recent BBC documentary, she noted the human body was referred to as a “meat skeleton” which has nothing to do with one’s true identity, which is one’s self-determined “gender.” The mind, she observed, according to the BBC, can be at war with one’s body, “and in that war, it’s the mind that wins.” These contentions are the result of a postmodern worldview that began “in gender studies programs on college campuses.” It is now being taught in schools down to kindergarten. This is a “fragmented” view of the self, with one’s biological identity cut off from one’s “gender” identity, which is simply based on self-assertion. One’s “gender” can contradict one’s sex. She observed that even some secular commentators are now referring to this as “body hatred.”

Christians know, however, that the “body is the handiwork of the Creator.” We are therefore “to honor it, to respect it, and live in accord with it.” Homosexuality, although keeping self-defined gender in line with biological sex, “expresses the same postmodern worldview that devalues the body.” It still involves living life in contradiction to biological design.  She said that “this is a profoundly disrespectful view of the body … Why accept such a demeaning view of the body? … Our minds and emotions are meant to be in tune with our body.” She noted that the American Psychological Association contends that neither cultural nor genetic factors determine sexual orientation. Pearcey observed that people who have lived as homosexual or transgender individuals have moved on to opposite sex marriage and even children, not by first working through their feelings to feel differently, but by accepting the reality of sex based on biological design.

For Christians, this has been action in obedience to God. But metaphysics is quite important in one’s decision. It is far easier to accept one’s body as determinative of one’s sex if one believes that nature proceeds “from a loving creator,” than if it has no cause or purpose and continues on “by blind material causes.” This, she observed, is the way homosexuality is defended by the noted lesbian, Camille Paglia. Paglia agrees that biological sex is real, and that its purpose is the union of male and female for reproduction. But nature is not the result of a creator, Paglia believes, and nature is not our judge. We may “defy nature,” and “do with them [our bodies] as we see fit.” But this does involve life in contradiction to the evident design of human and nonhuman life. It involves living in contradiction of “every cell in your body” (all of which either have male “Y” chromosomes, or do not). In contrast, Pearcey referred to the testimony of a former lesbian, Jean Lloyd, now married with two children, who said “I wanted to honor my body by living in accord with the Creator’s design.”

The same division of meaning and physical reality affects other ethical controversies about the human person, namely, abortion and euthanasia. Contemporary science agrees that a new human individual exists from the moment of its conception, and continues to be the same living organism until its death, but the claim made against it is that it is not necessarily a person. Personhood theory then attempts to establish the point at which the new human organism becomes a person, but making this determination is finally a matter of subjective judgment, not science. “To be pro-science is to be pro-life,” she said.

Pearcey said that Christians have a duty to help people resist the intense indoctrination of public schools and the mass media, which supports gender ideology. Children who do not fit the traditional expectation of male and female personality are at special risk of falling victim to gender ideology; indeed, they are the principle source of homosexual and transgender adults, she said.      

She proposed that Christians ally with others in society who agree on at least some of the critique of gender ideology. Traditional feminists are the most striking example, since if sex is self-defined, it becomes impossible to say what a woman is, and thus impossible to accord rights and protection to women. Pearcey mentioned an alliance of feminists and social conservatives, the Hands Across the Aisle coalition, of which she is a part.

Next, Pearcey observed that although the ideology of self-determination purports to allow people to “live the way they want, when laws are changed, that affects everyone.” Not giving offense to the advocates of one claimed identity may impinge on the lives of others. Indeed, a general rule of not giving offense would tend toward a war of all against all. And so there must be “pre-political rights.”  These rights make free society possible. The state recognizes these as existing independently of the state. These, she said, “are sometimes called natural law.”

Many natural rights “are rooted in biology.” Thus, a free society cannot set aside the right of an unborn child to life, or regard distinguishing between the sexes as unjustly discriminatory. To do otherwise enormously increases the power of the state, to say who is and is not a person (it need not be only the unborn who are denied personhood) in the first instance, and to redefine the meaning of marriage as a mere emotional commitment between any two persons in the second. Redefining marriage in this way also necessitated redefining parenthood to fit the Supreme Court’s non-biological definition of marriage. The court now recognizes as a parent any person designated as a parent in any state constructed marriage. And finally, in the Bostock decision in 2020, the Supreme Court recognized only gender, not sex, in federal employment law. Because so many natural rights are rooted in biology, if the state no longer recognizes biology, “the sexual revolution is dramatically increasing the power of the state.” 

Finally, Pearcey said that Christians must accent the positive in the conflict with the sexual revolution and gender ideology. They must appeal to the obvious “created order that is declaring the glory of God. This is an astonishingly high view of the physical world.” She quoted a transgender convert to Christianity who found God saying to her, “you cannot claim to love me and yet reject my creation.” Pearcey concluded that “the Christian worldview is pro-science, pro-reality, and pro-truth.”

Pearcey is undoubtedly right that highlighting the beauty of God’s design for humanity will put sexual morality in a different light. We can also highlight the destructive effects of gender ideology (inability to say what a woman is, for instance, and the negative effects on the protection, and even physical safety of women and girls). But to those for whom sexual gratification is the supreme value, and to that large part of the American public now convinced that mere self-assertion establishes rights, these arguments will not matter, as Carl Trueman has so well explained. Perhaps we would do well to remember that other evils, such as American slavery or communism in Eastern Europe, although seemingly invincible in their day, were eventually overcome. But an important part of that overcoming was active and perennial resistance by abolitionists and the Western allies. Similarly, the Biblical worldview will be crucial to restoring common sense to life in the Western world. But whether there is such a restoration or not, Christians have a duty to declare the whole counsel of God, which summarized is the Biblical worldview, both in the church and to the world.

  1. Comment by David on October 20, 2021 at 7:15 pm

    I find it amusing that slavery is brought up. It was the rejection of the Biblical worldview that led to the end of slavery. There are no abolitionists in the Bible and both Old and New Testaments condone the practice.

  2. Comment by Rick Plasterer on October 21, 2021 at 9:04 pm

    David,

    You offer a knee-jerk response. I noted in an article reviewing a book defending marriage last April that American slavery reasonably failed Biblical standards in depending on slave capture (forbidden in I. Tem. 1:9-10), and the return the return of fugitive slaves (forbidden in Deut. 23:15-16). Lev. 25:44-46, since it speaks of acquiring permanent slaves from pagan nations, and not ruling severely over Hebrew slaves, could be taken to mean pagan slaves could be severely treated. But treating believing slaves, and maybe all slaves, severely was forbidden by Paul in Eph. 6:9, after exhorting slaves to be obedient (Eph. 6:5-8). So if one is within a Biblical worldview, slavery can be argued both ways. But given that American slaves were Christians, many for several generations, and harsh treatment was not uncommon, and given the general Biblical concern and warnings against oppression, I think it can be said that American slavery was unbiblical.

    In the real historical event, American slavery was ended by war, not secularization.

    Rick

  3. Comment by David on October 22, 2021 at 10:39 am

    Presuming we live under the New Covenant, we are still subject to Ephesians 6:5.

    “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

    Here a slave’s master is elevated to the status of Jesus. This clearly shows the morality of the Bible is unacceptable to ethical persons of the present age.

  4. Comment by Rick Plasterer on October 22, 2021 at 8:53 pm

    David,

    Jesus said he is lord and master. It’s not a concept of Jesus favored by the social gospel or liberation theology.

    Rick

  5. Comment by Kristen on October 24, 2021 at 9:17 am

    It amazes me how folks apply current culture to antiquity. It is so obvious that those who react negatively to this article have not studied the Bible. There is more slavery today than ever existed 2000 years ago with far more vicious owners. Take pornography or addiction or even culture for that matter. People who compromise their spirits aka souls for whatever trend is currently obsessing the public like LGBT issues today. All the self help books are wonderful for the fire pit. If you truly want help and guidance, study the Bible. Don’t just extrapolate quotes, out of context, without comprehending the full meaning of what is being written, to whom and the culture in which it was written.

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