Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 417 ｜ The Self & The Sexual Revolution ｜ Guest： Dr. Carl Trueman

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:00:11.160 Hope everyone is having a wonderful day.

00:00:12.940 I'm so excited for you to listen to this conversation with Dr. Carl Truman.

00:00:17.640 You might have read some of his articles before.

00:00:20.240 He recently wrote a book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, where he really

00:00:25.080 outlines the philosophical foundations for how we understand who we are in mainstream

00:00:30.840 culture today that gives us a lot of insight into, for example, transgender ideology and

00:00:38.200 this entire idea that we are our own gods, that we determine our own truth.

00:00:43.100 Really a lot of stuff that we also talk about in my book as well.

00:00:47.820 But he gives a lot of academic and intellectual and philosophical and theological context for

00:00:54.100 all of this, just a fascinating book and a fascinating person to speak to.

00:00:58.480 He's also a professor.

00:00:59.780 So I'm just so excited for you to listen to this dialogue.

00:01:02.900 Without further ado, here is Dr. Carl Truman.

00:01:09.820 Dr. Truman, thank you so much for joining me.

00:01:12.680 For those who don't know and haven't been reading your stuff like I have, can you tell

00:01:16.420 everyone who you are and what you do?

00:01:19.360 I'm a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.

00:01:24.100 And I write at First Things and Public Discourse online.

00:01:29.120 And I teach a variety of historical and humanities courses here at Grove City College.

00:01:35.160 Yes.

00:01:35.680 And you recently wrote a book published by Crossway called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,

00:01:40.760 Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.

00:01:45.340 It's a hefty book.

00:01:46.500 About 400 pages.

00:01:48.200 There's a lot that's packed in there.

00:01:50.440 You probably feel like you could have written a lot more.

00:01:52.560 Can you tell everyone why you decided to write this book with so much information and

00:01:58.920 background about the cultural changes that we're experiencing right now?

00:02:03.200 Yeah, it's a book that really arose in some ways quite by accident.

00:02:08.120 A few years ago, Rod Dreher and Justin Taylor, Justin is the editor at Crossway, approached

00:02:13.500 me and asked if I would write a book introducing the work of the sociologist Philip Reif to a wider

00:02:18.820 audience.

00:02:19.500 And as I was starting to work on that, I came to realize that a more interesting book would

00:02:23.720 be an application of Reif's ideas to contemporary society.

00:02:27.940 And this was round about the time that Obergefell v.

00:02:30.880 Hodges, the gay marriage supreme court case was being decided.

00:02:35.000 And transgenderism, trans ideology was beginning to grip the popular imagination.

00:02:39.620 So the book really arose out of a desire to try to help people understand why the dramatic

00:02:47.080 changes specifically in the areas of sexual morality and sexual identity that we're now

00:02:52.300 witnessing are taking place by looking at the long story of Western culture over the last

00:02:58.560 300 years and applying some of the insights of Philip Reif and a couple of other philosophers,

00:03:03.860 Charles Taylor and Alistair McIntyre, to our contemporary situation.

00:03:07.580 Most people feel that a lot of the changes that have happened in the sexual revolution

00:03:14.980 have just been over the past five years.

00:03:17.620 Maybe before that, we just weren't paying attention or we didn't notice.

00:03:21.340 I think even six years ago, if you would have said that by the time 2020, 2021 comes around,

00:03:29.460 we won't be able to or the government won't be able to objectively define what a woman is 1.00

00:03:34.560 or what a man is. Most of us would say, we don't see the culture going that direction at all.

00:03:39.600 You sound crazy. And yet you argue that this has been building up for a very long time,

00:03:45.240 even before the 1960s, when a lot of the sexual revolution started. 0.82

00:03:49.340 Can you talk about some of that buildup and the philosophical foundations for where we are?

00:03:55.360 Yes. I mean, you're absolutely correct that the speed of things seems to have been breathtaking

00:04:00.880 over the last few years. And I think that's part of what gives us the clue that what we're

00:04:08.100 witnessing are fast and rapid and dramatic changes, but they have to have come from somewhere.

00:04:13.220 For them to have happened with such speed means that other changes in society have to have already

00:04:18.060 taken place and been very deep seated. And I take as my cue in the book, the statement,

00:04:25.520 I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, or I'm a man trapped in a woman's body. And I ask what has to

00:04:32.380 be true in broader society for that sentence to come to make sense? And essentially, a number of

00:04:39.600 things need to be true. One, we need to have authorised our inner feelings in a way that they carry

00:04:45.660 decisive authority for who we think we are. Two, we have to have, in a related sense,

00:04:53.120 downplayed the importance of the physical, downplayed the importance of the body for our

00:04:57.320 identity. In other words, transformed our identity into something that's really connected to our inner

00:05:03.520 desires. And thirdly, we have to have made the move that sees any attempt to curb or corral those

00:05:10.380 desires as being politically oppressive. And that's the narrative I trace. I think we find

00:05:16.600 the authorising of inner feelings taking place in the late 18th, early 19th century with Rousseau and

00:05:22.860 the Romantic movement. We find the sexualising of those desires taking place with Sigmund Freud,

00:05:30.240 beginning of the 20th century. And then by the middle of the 20th century, we find the idea that

00:05:35.640 sexual codes are politically oppressive, beginning to grip the popular political imagination. And that

00:05:43.160 all lays the foundations for what we're witnessing today, which in some sense is just the last

00:05:49.220 dominoes falling in a chain that goes back for at least 300 years, if not before.

00:05:56.120 Most people who hold the view that, for example, someone can declare themselves a woman and suddenly

00:06:00.860 be just as much of a woman as I am, would have no idea really of what you're talking about. They

00:06:06.700 might not even know what Rousseau argued for. They might not know the philosophical foundation

00:06:11.640 of their belief system, or even that they really have a belief system. They've just kind of come to

00:06:15.960 believe that, sure, this is common sense. This is tolerance. This is love. How does it affect me if my

00:06:22.160 neighbor is a biological man but wants to be a woman? What do you say to that person who is just 1.00

00:06:29.460 basically like, who cares where all of this comes from or where all of this going? It doesn't affect

00:06:35.600 me. Yeah, well, I think there are two strands of an answer to that. First of all, the origins of

00:06:42.060 these ideas are helpful in understanding what we might call the dynamics of them, the implications

00:06:47.700 of them. It's very true that the average man and woman in the street might think that the sentence,

00:06:52.740 I'm a woman trapped in a man's body makes sense, but not be able to articulate the philosophical

00:06:57.640 framework in which that takes place. But it's helpful to study the ideologues. It's helpful

00:07:03.160 to study the philosophers who make that case in order to see what the implications of it are.

00:07:08.820 As to the second, what difference does it make? There's a sense in which that has a certain

00:07:13.900 plausibility to it. I often think of that statement of Thomas Jefferson, what does it matter if my

00:07:20.500 neighbor believes in one God or 20 gods or no God? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

00:07:26.320 Well, we live in a world now where identity is very psychological. And so any attempt to deny my

00:07:37.020 own convictions about my psychological identity may not break my leg so much, but it certainly

00:07:43.700 hurts me as a person, we might say. And that's underlies some of the legislation we're now seeing

00:07:50.240 going into place in the United States. President Biden, as we're recording just a week or so after

00:07:55.100 President Biden signed a bill, an executive order on trans ideology and public schools.

00:08:03.640 And at that point, we begin to see, well, this identity stuff, it's one thing for my neighbor to

00:08:08.640 identify. He's a man, but he identifies as a woman. But that's going to have implications for

00:08:14.000 bathroom policies for my kids. It's going to have implications for women's sports. It's going to 1.00

00:08:19.320 have implications for employment legislation. I might find myself being fined for using the wrong

00:08:25.560 pronouns at some point. So it's interesting that in theory, yes, it shouldn't make any difference,

00:08:30.740 but in practice, it's becoming rather intrusive. And it's being pressed on us now in quite an aggressive

00:08:36.700 way, which I think makes it very useful to understand the dynamics, the deeper philosophical dynamics of

00:08:43.560 what is going on here. Which is interesting, because a lot of the people that advocate, for example,

00:08:49.360 for an executive order like Biden signed that says, for example, I saw the ACLU, they tweeted just

00:08:56.020 a few days ago that, you know, in all caps, fact number one, trans girls are girls, and they have no 1.00

00:09:02.660 advantage over biological girls when it comes to sports. None of these things were actually factual.

00:09:08.160 They were their opinions about this. And yet, these kinds of opinions are being stated as fact,

00:09:14.040 and then they are informing policy, which affects our real lives. And people that are in the ACLU and

00:09:20.660 advocates of executive orders and policies like this, they make a big stink about something like

00:09:26.740 the separation of church and state, or what they perceive to be the separation of church and state.

00:09:31.760 They certainly don't believe that I, as a conservative Christian,

00:09:34.240 should allow my worldview to influence what I think about policies, or if I were a lawmaker,

00:09:40.120 to influence the kind of policies that I propose. And yet, it seems like they have a belief system

00:09:45.720 that is very akin to a kind of religion that they are allowing to drive all of their policy positions

00:09:52.140 and policy proposals. Is that intentional? Is that in, did they not realize the duplicity in that?

00:10:00.980 Or is it, you know, like I said, I guess, is it purposeful?

00:10:07.740 Well, as to the ACLU, I am the faculty sponsor for the women's rugby team at Grove City College.

00:10:15.120 Any member of the ACLU is welcome to come down to one of our training sessions anytime. And we will

00:10:21.360 easily demonstrate to that person that there is a tremendous difference between biological males and

00:10:27.340 biological females on the rugby field, such that it would be insane to allow a team of men identifying 1.00

00:10:34.920 as women play against a team of women identifying as men. It would be carnage on the field. 0.99

00:10:43.000 Secondly, as to whether they genuinely believe this or not, well, you know, the history of human

00:10:48.140 society indicates that just because an idea is self-evident nonsense doesn't stop a lot of people

00:10:54.760 believing in forming public policies and building civilizations upon it, unfortunately. Whether

00:11:00.760 these people are cynical liars or whether they are so captivated and mesmerized by modern expressive

00:11:11.660 individualist ideology, I don't know. Maybe it's a mix of the two. But certainly this is complete 0.88

00:11:18.840 arid nonsense. And it's kind of ironic when you hear people talking about, you know, the Democrats

00:11:24.960 are going to govern with science. One of the first things the Democrat administration has done is

00:11:31.300 sign into law trans ideology, which is very much counter science, I would suggest. So, you know, 0.98

00:11:40.580 it's, yeah, it is a mess. It's built, I think, upon capitulation to lobby groups. It's not built on a

00:11:49.220 recognition of reality at this point. You know, this whole thing, I would say this part of the sexual

00:11:55.080 revolution, this latter part of the sexual revolution, in addition to a lot of postmodern nonsense, like

00:12:00.800 all kinds of critical theory, including critical race theory, has really made strange bedfellows

00:12:05.880 between, for example, Christians and atheists who both see the logic of maybe transgender ideology

00:12:13.360 or radical feminists and a conservative traditional, you know, Christian woman like me who both say, 0.87

00:12:19.260 hey, the eraser of women probably isn't going to be a good thing. And yet these people, a lot of people

00:12:27.020 who identify as atheists, we still disagree on the fundamentals of what the self is and how the

00:12:35.840 self is defined. You talk about this in your book, how the romantic philosophers were some of the

00:12:41.100 first people to try to assert that the self can be defined outside of theistic origins or a theistic

00:12:47.220 understanding. To me, even though I find myself in common cause with a lot of atheists and agnostics

00:12:54.580 today, politically and ideologically in some ways, this confusion really starts from that kind of

00:13:02.580 atheistic worldview that says that we are all self-defining, basically kind of replacing the

00:13:09.420 God of Scripture with the God of Self. Would you agree with that?

00:13:13.180 Yes. I mean, I would want to preface that by saying I'm very grateful for some of the very courageous

00:13:17.560 feminists who've taken pretty firm stands on this. 1.00

00:13:21.220 Definitely.

00:13:21.820 J.K. Rowling, bless her.

00:13:24.180 Yes.

00:13:24.640 And it's great that somebody like her who has the public persona and the money to be able to hold

00:13:31.920 the line on this. I'm very grateful for J.K. Rowling. Never thought I'd say I'm very grateful for

00:13:36.900 Jermaine Greer. I'm a big fan of Jermaine Greer these days on this issue. Very, very grateful for

00:13:41.980 Jermaine Greer. But I think you're correct that as a Christian, I'd want to say the bottom line is

00:13:48.020 to properly assert the distinction of male and female, to properly assert the moral structure

00:13:55.140 of humanity and of reality. One really needs some kind of theistic framework. Nietzsche really calls

00:14:02.260 the bluff in the 19th century on the Enlightenment and says, you know, if you get rid of God, you get

00:14:06.140 rid of metaphysics, everything's up for grabs. There are no facts, only interpretations. It becomes

00:14:11.960 then a matter of you making your truth that works for you. And I do think that though we stand

00:14:18.000 shoulder to shoulder with radical feminists on this issue, there are some deep philosophical 1.00

00:14:23.460 differences. I don't think that should stop us from standing shoulder to shoulder with them.

00:14:28.380 There is a common good here that we share and desire to see maintained. We want to see

00:14:33.500 young girls, women protected from this kind of nonsense. So it's important, I think, that we find

00:14:40.840 common cause of them. But it shouldn't blind us to the fact that at root, there are serious

00:14:46.380 philosophical differences between us. It's almost the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if you like,

00:14:51.380 at this point.

00:14:51.900 Oh, yes. Definitely. I couldn't agree more. I'm just wondering if you can kind of explain a little

00:14:56.740 bit more why that theistic framework for the understanding of the self is so important to

00:15:03.060 being able to analyze from a Christian perspective everything that's going on that just seems

00:15:09.280 haphazard. What you argue is that it actually comes from a philosophical place. It actually comes

00:15:14.160 from a consistent, logical place if you understand its origins. Tell us how it competes against what

00:15:24.020 we as Christians understand about the self, where we come from, why we're here, and whose authority

00:15:30.780 we're under.

00:15:32.160 That's a very good question. And this is to set it in somewhat simple oppositional terms. But I think the

00:15:39.400 big difference, the dividing line down through humanities, if you like, those of us who think

00:15:43.760 that we are merely the material we're made of, and those of us who think that we have some larger

00:15:49.640 purpose beyond the material that we are made of. And Christianity is very much in that latter camp. 0.87

00:15:55.900 And if you were to ask me, well, what is a human being? I would default straight away to saying human

00:16:00.400 being is made in the image of God. That means we reflect the image of God. We reflect the being of God in

00:16:06.320 in key ways. We're intentional beings. We have a moral structure. There is a morality to the world

00:16:13.500 and to ourselves to which we are accountable. We have to use our bodies in certain ways if we are

00:16:18.580 to flourish. I think if you reject that position, if you want to be a secular feminist, let's say, 0.96

00:16:25.300 but then you find yourself in the position of saying, well, really, we ultimately are no more than what

00:16:30.600 we're made of. And yes, our bodies may appear, for example, to point in certain directions and to

00:16:36.580 require us to behave in certain ways to flourish. But hey, somebody is going to come along and say,

00:16:41.700 well, science can help us get around that with its drugs, with its surgery, et cetera, et cetera.

00:16:46.100 So I think when you're dealing with a radical atheist feminist who agrees with us on the trans 0.94

00:16:51.640 question, there's still at root a big difference, that they are ultimately committed to what we might

00:16:56.800 call an imminent view of humanity. Humanity is simply what it's made of. And that really tilts

00:17:03.880 towards us being able to determine our own purpose in a way that a Christian operates within a transcendent

00:17:11.900 view of humanity. We are who we are precisely because we stand against the background of a sacred

00:17:17.700 order established by God and reflecting God's own character. So yes, there's a big difference at that point.

00:17:26.800 Can you talk about what Christians, what can we do in the midst of all of this craziness? A lot of 1.00

00:17:41.640 people are worried about their kids, the kind of ideologies with which they're being indoctrinated,

00:17:48.400 either at school or just among their friends or on social media. It almost feels like we're

00:17:54.280 Winston in 1984 having to daily convince ourselves, okay, two plus two does actually equal four. A man

00:18:01.680 really is a man. A woman really is a woman. No, Christianity isn't a domestic terrorist threat.

00:18:07.380 No, I'm not racist just because, you know, I don't believe in all of the ideology of Iber Max

00:18:14.000 Kindy or whatever it is. We're constantly having to convince ourselves of that, which we knew

00:18:18.180 was common sense. It seems like just a few years ago. And there's a lot of people who are just

00:18:22.940 discouraged. They're worn down by the bullying. They're worn down by what seems like constant

00:18:27.900 propaganda. What can Christians do to arm themselves against this kind of delusional 1.00

00:18:33.700 view of the self? And how can we have some optimism in the midst of what seems like just

00:18:41.220 a train that's going a thousand miles an hour and doesn't care who it takes out on the way?

00:18:46.320 Yeah. Well, first, I agree with my friend Rod Dreher that optimism isn't the way to look at it. I think

00:18:53.460 hope is the way to look at it. Optimism always has that feeling, that Pollyanna-ish, well, it's all

00:18:58.420 going to turn out okay. I think hope is what Christians are in the business of. So the first 1.00

00:19:04.200 thing I would say that all Christians need to do at this particular moment in time is remember the

00:19:07.380 promises that the gates of hell will not prevail. The Lord is very, very clear that the church is going

00:19:13.280 to win. The historical process is going to be won by the church. That doesn't mean your denomination

00:19:18.920 necessarily or my denomination or my congregation, but it does mean the church as a whole is going to

00:19:24.060 win. So the first thing is there's no place in the Christian life for despair. Chaste and hope, yes, 1.00

00:19:30.880 but there's no place for despair. Secondly, I think there's no place for passivity. We are charged with

00:19:37.300 certain tasks as Christians, and I think probably the most critical one facing us at the moment is

00:19:42.760 thinking about how to train the next generation, how to teach the next generation. One of the things

00:19:49.900 I have the privilege of at Grove is I teach classes full of young people, many of whom are Christians,

00:19:54.880 and many of whom take the Bible very, very seriously. But I've noticed that sometimes they

00:19:59.500 wonder why the Bible says some things it does. Yeah, the Bible opposes homosexuality, but is that just 0.92

00:20:06.620 because God doesn't want people to be happy. And there I think there's a place for teaching young

00:20:13.060 people—I refer to it as natural law in the book, but I'm using the term very broadly there—teaching

00:20:18.540 young people that actually God's rules make a kind of sense given the structure of our bodies,

00:20:25.040 given the structure of the created world in which we find ourselves. So teaching our young people to

00:20:30.400 think and to understand the coherence and the sensible nature of the Christian faith and of

00:20:37.000 Christian ethics is important. I think also we need to remember that our identities are often

00:20:42.720 community-formed. We all belong to various communities. We have a workplace, we have family,

00:20:48.120 we have friends, we have church. Our strongest identities are always going to be formed by the

00:20:54.360 strongest community to which we belong. And therefore, I think the church needs to work

00:20:59.100 very hard at being a strong and tight-knit community. Why has the LGBTQ plus movement been 1.00

00:21:04.840 so successful? Well, humanly speaking, a lot of its success comes down to it was a tight-knit community.

00:21:11.660 People genuinely cared for each other, looked after each other. If you read the testimony of Rosaria

00:21:16.540 Butterfield, former lesbian professor now married to a Reformed Presbyterian pastor, she talks about the

00:21:22.120 power of the community when she was part of the LGBTQ plus movement. I think the church really

00:21:28.780 needs to start thinking about what does it mean to be a loving community, not just people who gather

00:21:34.600 together for an hour on Sunday to read the Bible, sing hymns, and hear somebody deliver a homily or

00:21:39.320 sermon. What does it mean to be a community that really cares for each other? And when we think about

00:21:46.180 that and we start doing that, I would say the church becomes not so much an institution that's at war with

00:21:52.380 the wider culture. It becomes an institution that is protesting the wider culture, a culture that is

00:21:59.460 falling apart at the moment. And I think if the church can be a powerful community and a powerful

00:22:04.460 culture, that gives us some grounds for practical hope in the future.

00:22:09.760 And not just protesting against the wider culture, which I absolutely agree with, but a refuge from

00:22:15.400 the wider culture. I think something that's not advertised very often is just the chaos and

00:22:20.160 confusion and unrest and dissatisfaction that a lot of people are finding both in themselves and

00:22:26.720 in the world. That this illusory pursuit of self-defined happiness is actually very exhausting.

00:22:36.160 This constant pursuit of self-empowerment and self-fulfillment and self-actualization

00:22:44.380 is actually very burdensome. As liberating as it sounds, as freeing as it sounds, it's actually

00:22:50.480 very exhausting. You're on this hamster wheel of being told simultaneously that the self is the problem

00:22:56.760 and the solution. And so you're trying and failing to find the answers to your self-made problems inside

00:23:04.880 of yourself. And we just end up being more disappointed and more deflated than we were

00:23:11.480 before. The church can and should offer something different. That the answers to the problems that

00:23:18.480 you're facing or the insecurity that you feel, the inadequacies that you feel, the confusion that you

00:23:23.860 feel or that you're finding in the culture, the answers to those things aren't going to be found

00:23:28.120 inside yourself, but they can be found in someone else. And for Christianity and for the church to be a

00:23:33.800 refuge, from that exhausting and burdensome elevation of the self, I think, is where we can thrive.

00:23:42.400 I remember hearing a pastor a few years ago say that the church actually thrives on the margins.

00:23:47.300 It doesn't die on the margins. And I think that is also a reason for our hope, not just in the

00:23:54.080 ultimate coming of Jesus Christ, of course, but also in the here and the now. Even as the church and

00:24:00.340 Christianity may be pushed out of mainstream culture, there's a very significant place for 1.00

00:24:05.600 us on the margins of society. Would you agree?

00:24:08.880 Absolutely. And in the book, towards the end, I say, you know, if we're looking for an analogy

00:24:12.640 of the present with the past, then perhaps the second century. Now, there are some differences.

00:24:17.800 The second century was a world that had never been Christian. It was a pagan world by genealogy. 0.98

00:24:23.760 Our world is a world that is de-Christianizing at a rapid pace. But the church was on the margins, 0.94

00:24:30.560 and marginal communities tend to be strong communities and tend to punch well above their 0.99

00:24:36.620 weight. You see this with the Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages, right down to the 20th century. 1.00

00:24:41.840 And I think there's no reason not to believe that when the church has pushed the margins,

00:24:46.300 this might not be an opportunity. At the moment, we're transfixed by the rapidity of what's

00:24:54.600 happening. And people are despairing over being shunted to the margins. I think we need to see this

00:25:00.620 not as so much as an unconditional, unqualified setback, but also to see it as a tremendous

00:25:06.940 opportunity to regroup, to rethink, and become that powerful community that you mentioned.

00:25:13.660 People want to belong. And the world as it is at the moment offers very few strong communities to

00:25:19.540 belong to. The church could step into that vacuum.

00:25:23.680 Yep, absolutely. And we don't have time to get into all of this, but I also think about how socials—you

00:25:31.560 talk about Karl Marx in this book and how he is one of the philosophers that kind of contributes to

00:25:35.820 this atheistic view of the self, how we're just kind of formed by class economics, power, and all of

00:25:42.700 that. I think about how socialism seems to thrive and seems to grow right alongside godlessness,

00:25:52.360 and how it offers that sense of community, that sense of belonging at first. I mean, it advertises

00:26:00.020 itself that way, that it offers a sense of you will be taken care of, you will be a part of

00:26:05.620 something. There is someone who is going to make sure that you are cared for. Of course,

00:26:10.480 we can look throughout history, especially in the past 100 years, and see that that's not actually

00:26:14.620 the case. But I would say that that's the political side of this as well, in addition to the cultural

00:26:20.820 side, that when people are looking for a place to belong, someone to take care of them, they won't

00:26:26.900 just look to themselves, but they may also look to the state. Do you think that's true?

00:26:31.520 Yes. And I think one of the things that that model sort of gets wrong, of course, is that the true

00:26:38.640 community can't be declared from the top. I think Edmund Burke is correct, that communities rise from

00:26:46.220 the bottom up. Communities start at the local level. And again, I think that's where the church can

00:26:51.140 really, could really step in at this point. There's no, we, you can't instruct people to be a community.

00:26:57.640 It doesn't, communities don't work like that. Communities develop from the ground up. And I

00:27:03.320 think, again, yes, that's where the church can step in at this point.

00:27:07.500 Right. And in order to be that refuge, in order to be that place that people run to,

00:27:12.640 from confusion into clarity and to Christ, the church has to look very different from the rest

00:27:18.400 of the world. And compromise certainly isn't going to make us that refuge for people who are lost and

00:27:24.220 looking for, looking for answers that they've tried and failed to find inside themselves.

00:27:29.620 Thank you so much for writing your book, for taking the time to talk to me in between teaching

00:27:33.800 your classes. Can you tell people where they can find your book, how they can support you and continue

00:27:38.500 to read your articles?

00:27:40.900 Well, the book can be bought from Amazon or from crossway.org. That's the publisher.

00:27:46.580 And there are other publishing outlets out there, I'm sure, that set up at Amazon and crossway would be

00:27:51.040 two big ones. Most of my writing goes up at FirstThings, FirstThings.com. But I also do

00:27:57.340 some work at Public Discourse, which is the online daily e-bulletin of the Witherspoon Institute in

00:28:05.700 Princeton.

00:28:06.700 Awesome. And can they follow, do you have social media? Can they follow you on social media or

00:28:11.900 anything like that?

00:28:13.400 I'm afraid not. I regard social media as the antichrist.

00:28:16.880 Oh, I don't blame you. I do not blame you at all. That is a wonderful way to be. Well,

00:28:22.260 thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. I know people

00:28:25.840 are going to gain a lot of insight, not just from this conversation, but from your book and the rest

00:28:30.940 of your writings as well. I highly encourage everyone to go out and buy it. Go to crossway.org,

00:28:36.340 you said, and that's where they'll be able to search and find your book. Thank you so much,

00:28:41.380 Dr. Truman.

00:28:42.780 Thanks for having me on.

00:28:46.880 Thanks so much for listening to that conversation. Really fascinating. Like I said, he was doing the

00:28:59.440 interview right between classes. So this is a little bit shorter of an episode than we typically

00:29:04.380 have, but hopefully you feel like we packed a lot in. And of course, like you said, if you're

00:29:08.180 interested in hearing more of what he has to say, you can go to firstthings.com and you can

00:29:13.140 read his consistent articles. He also talks about critical race theory. He talks a lot about

00:29:16.860 Marxism. He talks a lot about the things that we talk about on this podcast. And I wish that we

00:29:22.700 could have gotten into more of it, especially how all of this, how postmodernism and the craziness

00:29:29.200 and the disconnect that we are all feeling right now, we're all seeing right now between reality and

00:29:39.280 what people think and the worldviews that they hold have so much to do with godlessness that

00:29:44.080 once you reject the idea of a moral lawgiver, once you reject Genesis 1-1, that in the beginning,

00:29:49.920 God created the heavens and the earth, anything is up for grabs. Once you no longer have a transcendent

00:29:55.780 authority who says what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad, facts themselves,

00:30:00.340 science itself becomes completely arbitrary. If we all are our own gods, then we then determine our

00:30:06.740 own truth. And we can fit facts. We can fit numbers. We can fit the idea of justice. We can

00:30:12.580 fit biology. We can fit statistics. We can fit absolutely anything that we want into our perspective

00:30:21.160 if that's what makes us feel good. If our entire purpose here on earth is just to feel good and to

00:30:27.220 do what we want to do, then who cares what the rules are? But God calls us to something bigger than that,

00:30:33.600 more substantial than that, more grounded than that. And I think a lot of people don't realize

00:30:39.940 that, say, for example, they've got a traditional worldview. They do believe in a right and a wrong.

00:30:45.580 They do believe in maybe traditional marriage, traditional family, being a responsible person,

00:30:50.200 a hard worker. They believe that the state is not where we go to receive our solace and to receive

00:30:56.160 our caretaking and to receive our morality. And yet they don't realize that that worldview is

00:31:03.420 actually based in something bigger than them. There are plenty of people who do not believe

00:31:08.880 in God and yet hold a lot of similar views as I do. The only—I mean, one of the big differences,

00:31:16.080 of course, between the Christian and a person who may hold similar political and cultural views is that

00:31:22.420 we believe that it comes somewhere. We believe that there's a reason for it, that we're not just

00:31:26.640 material objects floating about who get to determine what our purpose and what our destiny is,

00:31:31.560 that God has already determined that. And our goal is to submit to His authority in every area of our

00:31:39.160 lives. Don't let anyone bully you out of that. When the church just starts to look like the world,

00:31:44.820 when we adopt the world's language on things like justice, on things like race, when we adopt the world's

00:31:50.220 language when it comes to gender, when it comes to sexuality, when we borrow the world's definitions of

00:31:55.280 love and hate. When we start to redefine sin according to what culture says it is and redefine righteousness

00:32:01.600 according to what culture says it is, we no longer exist as that refuge on the margins where people

00:32:07.340 can go for clarity in the midst of confusion. This all reminds me as well of Love Thy Body by Nancy

00:32:13.860 Piercy. She did a really good job of explaining the philosophies and the mentality behind the sexual 1.00

00:32:21.120 revolution. And our ideas of the body, this dualistic idea that the physical, our physical body is

00:32:29.040 actually in submission to what we feel, that our true identity is actually what we declare and what

00:32:34.160 we feel in biology. And our bodies are just arbitrary. She debunks that very well theologically

00:32:39.600 in her book, Love Thy Body. So I also encourage you to get that as well. So much here, so much to talk

00:32:46.460 about, get Carl's book, sorry, Dr. Truman's book, Get Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. And if I can plug

00:32:54.460 as well, a much more compact, and I would say probably a little bit simpler way to understand

00:33:02.940 kind of this false idea of the self is something that I write about in my book as well. You're not

00:33:07.420 enough and that's okay, escaping the toxic culture of self-love. We go through five cultural myths that

00:33:12.600 center on this misunderstanding that the world has of the self and unfortunately how a lot of

00:33:17.520 Christians have borrowed that misunderstanding of the self and it has disastrous consequences. 0.99

00:33:22.460 So that's all we've got for today. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back here soon.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 10, 2021

Ep 417 ｜ The Self & The Sexual Revolution ｜ Guest： Dr. Carl Trueman

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