Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 832 ｜ Fighting the Toxic War on Masculinity ｜ Guest： Nancy Pearcey (Part One)

00:00:00.960 Contrary to popular opinion, it's actually Christianity that upholds the dignity and

00:00:07.160 worth and the importance of the body, of the physical world, of matter.

00:00:11.660 It's the secular perspective that actually denigrates it.

00:00:15.340 And that's why we have so much confusion about the body, about identity, about sex,

00:00:21.340 about things like abortion.

00:00:23.220 And I really understood this from reading the work of Professor Nancy Piercy.

00:00:28.860 She wrote the book, Love Thy Body.

00:00:31.320 And she's also written a new book about the war on masculinity, the toxic war on masculinity.

00:00:39.320 So this is a two-part conversation.

00:00:41.120 The first part is going to be a little bit about her fascinating testimony, how she got

00:00:45.480 involved in apologetics, how she became a professor of apologetics, and how the truth about Scripture

00:00:52.480 informs what we think of the person, informs what we think of gender, informs what we think

00:00:56.860 of the body, informs what we think of sex, and also the differences between male and female.

00:01:02.460 The second part of our conversation will really get into her book, which is just absolutely

00:01:07.300 mind-blowing and fascinating.

00:01:09.560 This episode is brought to you by our friends at GoToRanchers.

00:01:12.740 Go to GoToRanchers.com.

00:01:14.260 Use code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:01:15.460 That's GoToRanchers.com.

00:01:16.580 Code Allie. 1.00

00:01:17.100 Professor Piercy, thanks so much for joining us again.

00:01:30.340 Everyone who watches and listens to Relatable knows how much I admire you and your work.

00:01:35.900 But for those who maybe are unfamiliar, tell us about who you are and what you do.

00:01:40.240 So I teach at Houston Christian University, and I teach apologetics, and I'm also a scholar

00:01:48.800 in residence.

00:01:49.540 So I get to write about issues on how do we know Christianity is true, and how do we defend

00:01:55.400 it, and how do we engage in a good way with the secular world around us.

00:02:00.680 So people often ask, well, how'd you end up there?

00:02:04.380 And the answer is that it was a big part of my own life.

00:02:07.340 I started asking questions when I was in high school.

00:02:10.320 I was raised in a Lutheran home, and I started just asking, how do we know it's true?

00:02:15.620 How do we know Christianity is true? 1.00

00:02:17.060 And I didn't get any answers.

00:02:19.420 I asked a Christian college professor, point blank, why are you a Christian? 0.55

00:02:23.240 And he said, works for me.

00:02:25.620 Wow.

00:02:26.160 Really?

00:02:26.560 That's it?

00:02:27.780 And I talked to a seminary dean.

00:02:29.820 I thought I would get something more substantial.

00:02:31.640 But all he said was, don't worry.

00:02:33.160 We all have doubts sometimes.

00:02:34.920 Wow.

00:02:35.240 So I eventually decided Christianity didn't have any answers. 0.89

00:02:39.140 And I very intentionally walked away from my Christian faith and started on a search

00:02:44.860 for truth, because I thought, whoa, if there's no God, then what answers are there?

00:02:49.200 You know, is there any purpose or meaning to life?

00:02:51.500 Is there any foundation for ethics?

00:02:53.740 Or is it just true for me, true for you?

00:02:55.520 Is there even any truth?

00:02:59.820 Because I thought, if all I have is my puny brain in the vast scope of time and space and

00:03:05.660 history, how can I be sure that I could even have access to any universal, absolute truth? 0.96

00:03:12.380 And I thought, ridiculous. 0.98

00:03:13.720 Obviously, ridiculous. 0.96

00:03:14.620 So by the time I graduated from high school, I was a complete relativist and skeptic and 0.60

00:03:21.020 even determinist, because in my science classes, I was learning that we're just complex biochemical

00:03:25.540 machines anyway.

00:03:27.300 So it was a few years later that I ended up at the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer, which

00:03:33.440 is called Labrie.

00:03:34.860 It's in Switzerland.

00:03:36.180 I had lived in Europe as a child.

00:03:38.140 And so I went back because I loved it.

00:03:40.660 And so I stumbled across the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer.

00:03:43.420 And as you know, Ali, he's best known for his apologetics.

00:03:47.100 That's what his ministry was about.

00:03:49.300 It was cultural apologetics, which meant it was a little different.

00:03:52.840 He was looking at ideas as they percolate down through the culture, through art and literature

00:03:56.880 and music and movies.

00:03:58.660 And that's how I ended up becoming a Christian again.

00:04:01.960 And that's why I write on apologetics myself.

00:04:05.100 Today, all of my books have something to do with how do we engage with the surrounding

00:04:10.200 secular culture, because I want to answer the questions that young people have that I

00:04:15.340 used to have when I was their age.

00:04:17.260 And so that kind of gives a big picture of why I do what I do.

00:04:20.920 Yeah.

00:04:21.300 Tell us a little bit about that kind of turning point, though.

00:04:25.240 You said that you stumbled upon Francis Schaeffer's ministry.

00:04:28.360 Do you remember any one moment or any one question or any one thing that was said that kind of

00:04:34.380 made something click for you that you said, huh, OK, I guess I've been wrong or maybe there's

00:04:42.080 something more or was it just kind of the slow drip of truth that eventually changed your

00:04:48.860 mind?

00:04:50.240 Well, I have to tell you, I was at Labrie twice because the first time I left, I was there

00:04:56.560 only a month and I was so impressed.

00:04:59.580 I had never met any Christians who could engage with the secular worldviews that I had absorbed 0.77

00:05:06.380 by that time.

00:05:07.760 And I had never met Christians who could show that Christianity made sense, that it was logical 0.99

00:05:13.080 and reasonable and you could make good arguments for it.

00:05:16.540 And so I was so impressed, in fact, that that's why I left.

00:05:21.060 I was afraid I might be drawn in emotionally.

00:05:22.980 And Christianity had already let me down once. 0.96

00:05:27.460 So I was not going to do this unless I was absolutely intellectually convinced it was true.

00:05:33.960 And so to get away from Labrie, I left, went back home, back to the States.

00:05:39.920 But through Labrie, I discovered that there was such a thing as apologetics.

00:05:43.820 I discovered C.S.

00:05:44.820 Lewis.

00:05:45.460 I'd never heard about him before.

00:05:46.800 I discovered G.K. Chesterton and Oz Guinness was writing his first books way back then.

00:05:53.120 And of course, I read Schaeffer until I practically memorized him.

00:05:56.580 And so it was several months later, maybe about a year later, I finally became a Christian.

00:06:02.040 And then I went back to Labrie.

00:06:03.600 After becoming a Christian, I thought, well, where do I find other Christians?

00:06:06.680 Because I wasn't connected to a church or anything.

00:06:09.280 I had no Christian friends.

00:06:10.920 I had no church.

00:06:12.080 So I said, well, where do I find other Christians? 0.93

00:06:14.460 I knew some back in Switzerland.

00:06:17.220 So that's how I ended up going back to Labrie and staying for four months, where I really

00:06:23.780 got grounded in Christianity as a worldview.

00:06:28.280 You ask if there's a particular moment.

00:06:30.480 Actually not, because it was an accumulation of dealing with, well, the first question was

00:06:40.160 relativism.

00:06:40.740 Like I said, I arrived at Labrie, a complete moral relativist.

00:06:45.540 Back in my high school, I was the one in my friend group arguing that there's no such

00:06:50.280 thing as right or wrong.

00:06:51.800 You know, my friend one day, I remember this, a friend one day was talking about a mutual

00:06:55.840 friend.

00:06:56.300 It's like, oh, she's so wrong.

00:06:57.520 And I jump in there and say, you can't say it.

00:06:59.380 It was right or wrong.

00:07:00.700 So that's the kind of person I was.

00:07:02.160 I was very, very adamant that there was no truth.

00:07:06.000 There is no right or wrong.

00:07:06.880 And so, yeah, I had to really work through issues like relativism and so on when I got

00:07:13.740 there.

00:07:14.220 And again, no Christians had ever been able to talk to me about that before.

00:07:18.200 So it was working through those isms.

00:07:22.200 Yes.

00:07:22.720 I love that story.

00:07:24.280 And I love how God does this so often with his plans of redemption for people, how he didn't

00:07:29.300 just make you a Christian. 0.89

00:07:31.060 He also made you an apologist and then he made you an a teacher, a teacher of apologetics.

00:07:37.100 The person who in high school was arguing that, well, there's just my truth and there

00:07:42.040 is your truth.

00:07:42.980 You wrote a book called Total Truth that combats those lies, which I mean, God uses what Satan

00:07:49.040 means for evil, for good.

00:07:50.420 But he also uses parts of our past and then redeems them and uses them in ways to then advance

00:07:58.280 his kingdom.

00:07:58.840 And so you have taken what was kind of a disdain for truth.

00:08:03.160 God has given you a love for truth.

00:08:04.680 And you've tried to teach other people to love truth, too.

00:08:07.900 And I'll just like for me, that has really impacted me.

00:08:11.300 I think a lot of times Christians, we just devalue apologetics and the answer to the question 0.95

00:08:20.160 why when it comes to changing the hearts and the minds of people, because my story is

00:08:26.320 very similar to yours in high school, I started reading C.S. Lewis, I had been raised a Christian

00:08:30.400 and I didn't realize this huge intellectual side of Christianity that actually answered

00:08:35.860 the questions that I had that, you know, I thought as a teenager were so original and

00:08:40.540 so edgy.

00:08:41.160 I realized that there had been people answering those very tough questions actually for thousands

00:08:45.940 of years.

00:08:46.560 But, you know, in particular, C.S. Lewis and others like him, even Tim Keller, Reason for

00:08:52.080 God had a big impact on me.

00:08:54.920 And so, yeah, I think Christians, we forget about that, that these questions need answers 0.52

00:08:59.220 and it's important that we engage in them.

00:09:01.120 Yeah, and if anything, I was discouraged by Christians. 0.98

00:09:05.540 I was treated as a, what's wrong with you?

00:09:08.120 You know, why don't you have faith?

00:09:10.000 And that's why I say the first time I ever found Christians who would engage on these 1.00

00:09:14.380 issues was at LaBrie.

00:09:16.040 Francis Schaeffer was known for a phrase that he often used, we need to offer honest answers

00:09:21.900 to honest questions.

00:09:23.360 And that's what he did.

00:09:24.980 So you're right.

00:09:26.220 It's not just that Christians are not entuned into the question of truth, but I was actively

00:09:32.660 discouraged from searching truth, searching for truth.

00:09:36.340 But I would say, Allie, what really kept driving me was the search for truth.

00:09:40.660 You know, I wasn't happy with just relativism and skepticism.

00:09:45.320 I realized that you can't live on that basis.

00:09:47.800 So I kept searching for truth.

00:09:50.060 And that's what really drove me eventually to discovering that Christianity is truth and

00:09:54.920 that it does stand up.

00:09:56.220 Like you say, to the questions and objections that people have.

00:09:59.560 Yes.

00:10:00.000 And one of the ways that you did that, so you wrote total truth, which is really about a

00:10:04.000 lot of that, but you also wrote love thy body dealing with not just the gender issue,

00:10:08.440 but also just sexual immorality, promiscuity.

00:10:11.840 And then there's gender confusion and then abortion, all these issues that have to do with

00:10:17.220 the body.

00:10:18.100 And I listened to this on the audio book, which I don't typically do.

00:10:21.440 But as someone who already agreed with your conclusions about all of these things, someone

00:10:27.600 who's pro-life, who understands the biology of the gender binary, understanding the philosophical

00:10:34.020 history and legacy of these ideas that we have now and the postmodern conclusions of these

00:10:40.600 things.

00:10:40.780 I mean, it really, really helped me understand where these ideas are coming from, how we can

00:10:48.520 confront them, and then why the Bible offers a better alternative to the very vapid and 0.71

00:10:57.380 hollow philosophies that have given us things like gender identity and abortion on demand and

00:11:03.520 things like that.

00:11:04.240 So again, you answer the questions of why, which is so incredibly powerful, even for people

00:11:11.080 who already believe those things in bolstering our beliefs.

00:11:15.640 Yes.

00:11:16.220 I mean, we're made in God's image.

00:11:18.080 And so we want reasons, you know, we have to love God, not only with a heart and soul and

00:11:23.440 strength, but our minds.

00:11:25.240 And that means we have to understand why Christianity is true. 0.98

00:11:29.420 Not just that is true, but why it's true.

00:11:31.540 And you're right, that was my goal in my book, Love Thy Body, was to help Christians understand

00:11:36.560 and make the case for why the Christian ethic is true.

00:11:41.760 How do you talk to your secular neighbors?

00:11:43.640 You know, how do you talk to people who don't agree with you?

00:11:45.660 But of course, also, how do you become stronger in understanding for yourself why the Christian

00:11:50.580 view is true?

00:11:52.220 And, Ali, what I found is that many people still have a difficult time with the main theme

00:11:58.960 of Love Thy Body is, I show that if you read the secular sources, that's my job.

00:12:05.040 I go out and read the secular sources so that I can interpret them for Christians.

00:12:08.720 Here's what they're really saying, and here's how you have to respond to them.

00:12:12.440 So the secular people are justifying things like transgenderism by denigrating the body,

00:12:19.040 denigrating biology, saying that your authentic self has nothing to do with your biological identity.

00:12:24.540 And some trans activists actually say the term biological sex is a hate term.

00:12:30.300 Right.

00:12:30.580 Because, of course, it reminds them that that's what they're ignoring.

00:12:34.960 And so when I talk to a Christian audience, I say what we need to do is show that the Christian

00:12:40.580 worldview has a very high view of the body.

00:12:42.860 The value and dignity of the body is God's handiwork.

00:12:46.060 You know, we're made in God's image.

00:12:47.620 And God made a physical universe.

00:12:50.520 You know, he didn't have to.

00:12:51.300 He could have made a totally spiritual realm where we float around, you know, as spirits.

00:12:55.600 But he chose to make a material world, which means you mentioned Lewis.

00:13:00.120 Lewis says God likes matter.

00:13:02.240 He made it.

00:13:03.520 So I have found that the most difficult thing in talking to Christians, though, is they've 1.00

00:13:07.800 been so trained in the idea that the body doesn't matter, that this world doesn't matter.

00:13:12.920 Here's how one of my students put it.

00:13:14.740 She said, growing up in the church, I was always taught spirit good, body bad.

00:13:19.280 And so even just getting over that, just training yourself in the vocabulary of saying the reason

00:13:28.200 for the Christian ethic is that we do value the body, the body that God gave you, you know,

00:13:34.160 you're female, you're male. 0.97

00:13:35.880 It's a good gift from God.

00:13:37.800 You want to honor your body, respect your biological sex, live in tune with who you really are in 0.81

00:13:43.340 terms of your biological sex.

00:13:46.380 And you have to almost train yourself to use that positive language.

00:13:50.720 And when you do, you will be much more effective in talking not only to non-Christians, but to 1.00

00:13:56.400 other Christians.

00:13:57.260 You know, maybe people in your family were having gender dysphoria or other questions.

00:14:01.460 And it goes back to this idea of telos and teleology that God actually gave our bodies

00:14:20.360 a purpose, which is what you argue.

00:14:23.020 And the idea of, and you can explain it way better than me, but just remembering how you

00:14:29.040 talked about the idea of dualism that has been so popular, like the separation of the

00:14:34.240 soul and the body or the real quote unquote authentic self that we feel inside versus the

00:14:39.000 body, which is basically just a trap for our authentic self that can be changed and manipulated

00:14:44.820 based on what we really feel on the inside.

00:14:48.080 And you argue, well, no, that's not the Christian worldview.

00:14:50.940 The Christian worldview believes that the body has purpose, that people have purpose, that

00:14:55.800 your biological sex actually has purpose.

00:14:57.900 And just like a bird would fail at trying to be a fish, so a man fails at trying to be 0.97

00:15:04.400 a woman and vice versa. 1.00

00:15:05.920 And the postmodern philosophical traditions that even Christians you mentioned have been

00:15:11.080 influenced by, they completely deny the importance of the body.

00:15:16.840 And really, I think that goes back thousands of years, right?

00:15:19.780 I mean, if you look at Christians and how we decided, okay, no, we're not just going to

00:15:23.860 discard children, we're not just going to discard the poor and the elderly, we're going to care

00:15:27.660 for them, we're going to build these hospitals, we're going to build these charities, we're

00:15:30.740 going to feed people, we are going to clothe people, we are going to heal people.

00:15:35.840 I mean, the history of the church has been combating that lie that the body, that the

00:15:39.880 physical world doesn't matter.

00:15:41.940 So I'm wondering, kind of, I don't know how we lost our way.

00:15:45.880 Oh, it was the impact of Greek philosophy.

00:15:49.440 Yeah, you're right.

00:15:50.860 It does go back to the early church.

00:15:52.420 The early church was born into a culture, Greek and Roman culture, that did have a very

00:15:58.260 low view of the body, that had that dualism that you're talking about, you know, matter,

00:16:04.260 they call it matter and form.

00:16:05.860 Form just meant, you know, abstract, abstract ideals.

00:16:11.520 So, you know, the humanity is an abstract ideal, and my body is matter.

00:16:17.360 So matter and ideal.

00:16:18.220 So at any rate, they felt like the ideal realm was the only thing that really mattered, that

00:16:22.840 the physical realm was the realm of death, decay, and destruction.

00:16:25.820 Right.

00:16:26.080 And many of us are familiar with this because it's part of Gnosticism, and many of the books

00:16:31.760 in the New Testament are written against Gnosticism.

00:16:35.320 That's why John says, how do you know someone's a true Christian? 0.98

00:16:39.760 They say that Jesus came in the flesh, in the body.

00:16:43.160 So the incarnation was the ultimate affirmation of the dignity of the human body, because the

00:16:48.980 Gnostics at the time, some of them tried to sort of meld Gnosticism and Christianity.

00:16:53.900 And what they said was, well, Jesus was just an avatar from the higher realms who came down

00:17:00.280 and wasn't really human.

00:17:02.720 You know, he just inhabited a body and then went back up to the higher spiritual realms.

00:17:06.460 And so that's why John says, no, no, Jesus had a body, a real body.

00:17:12.340 And of course, creation also is the theological foundation for respect for the body.

00:17:18.020 Anything God creates is good.

00:17:20.460 I think sometimes Christians have also felt too much like the fall destroyed creation.

00:17:26.740 Right.

00:17:26.880 Um, they tend to think whatever was in the original creation is not totally corrupt, but that's

00:17:34.220 not the biblical view.

00:17:35.300 Even after the fall, it's still, the text still says, Genesis still says that humans were

00:17:41.060 made in God's image.

00:17:43.140 And so the fall does not abrogate the image of God in us.

00:17:47.280 It's, it's like, um, a very famous masterpiece in an art museum, for example, and a child comes

00:17:54.260 with a magic marker and scribbles on it.

00:17:56.000 Well, yes, it's defaced, but the original beauty still shines through.

00:18:00.700 And that's how we should see God's creation.

00:18:03.240 It's been marred by the fall.

00:18:05.580 It's been defaced, but the original beauty still shines through.

00:18:10.040 And that's what we need to affirm.

00:18:11.760 If we're going to have an answer to the secular world today, which is denigrating the body,

00:18:16.480 which is saying your body doesn't matter.

00:18:18.540 I read, um, a book by a Princeton university professor.

00:18:23.000 You know, I read the academic literature because that's what filters down to ordinary people.

00:18:29.620 And I think it was the first book ever written, uh, defending transgenderism.

00:18:33.760 And the irony was, first of all, that she said transgender, transgenderism involves disconnect,

00:18:40.060 disjunction, self alienation.

00:18:41.760 And I thought, what, this is a defense.

00:18:44.380 Um, it sounds like my critique.

00:18:46.300 Um, but then she said, what the physical body tells us is nothing.

00:18:51.620 Right.

00:18:52.140 It has no meaning at all.

00:18:53.900 And I thought that captures the secular view.

00:18:56.980 Yes.

00:18:57.440 The physical body has no meaning or you, as you put it, tell us that's the Greek word for

00:19:02.500 meaning purpose.

00:19:04.600 And that's what she was saying, just point blank.

00:19:07.120 And that's what's filtering down all the way to kindergarten is today that your physical

00:19:11.360 body has no meaning at all.

00:19:13.280 It gives you no moral message.

00:19:15.100 It gives you no clue to your identity.

00:19:17.640 You know, you can do with it, whatever you see fit.

00:19:19.520 Yes.

00:19:20.600 And that is the exact opposite of what Christianity teaches.

00:19:24.960 You mentioned that in the, um, you know, Jesus becoming God, becoming Emmanuel, God with

00:19:31.420 us.

00:19:32.100 Um, it reminds me of that passage in Colossians.

00:19:34.780 I had to look it up on Bible gateway Colossians two, uh, nine for in hand, the whole fullness

00:19:40.400 of deity dwells bodily.

00:19:43.280 And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.

00:19:47.260 And it seems like in context, Paul is actually mentioning some of this Gnosticism and things

00:19:51.060 that people were, uh, wrestling with at the time.

00:19:53.920 But also we learned that there's going to be a resurrection of the bodies, um, which is

00:19:58.640 a pretty incredible aspect and a little bit of a mysterious aspect of Christianity.

00:20:03.040 We also read that sexual sin is actually different than other sins because you are sinning

00:20:08.040 against yourself.

00:20:09.540 It's a special kind of a front.

00:20:12.340 We also read that, uh, our bodies are a dwelling place for the Holy spirit.

00:20:18.680 Um, and so there is a very elevated sense of the body, even while, and I think this is

00:20:23.740 why it's confusing.

00:20:24.440 So maybe you can differentiate this for us and then we'll move on to your current book.

00:20:29.120 It'll be a good transition.

00:20:30.040 But we also do believe in a self denial.

00:20:34.040 We believe in the, um, the traps of the flesh, which is kind of, uh, the use or the word that

00:20:41.840 we use for sin, for carnal desire that is actually opposed to God's will, just following

00:20:48.080 our physical desires, following our physical whims, not without any thought to God's standard,

00:20:54.840 holiness, righteousness, Christ likeness.

00:20:57.760 And so how do we parse that out?

00:21:01.000 On the one hand, the body is really good.

00:21:02.980 God gave us our body.

00:21:04.600 God gave us matter.

00:21:05.540 It's really good.

00:21:06.200 On the other hand, we are to deny the carnal desires, the fleshly bodily desires that God

00:21:12.940 calls sin.

00:21:13.840 We are to deny those things in favor of what is spiritual and eternal.

00:21:20.140 Yeah, it's, um, it's tough because all languages have words that mean different things.

00:21:26.280 Like God so loved the world, world, there is something we should love.

00:21:31.360 And then there are other verses that say you have to die to the world.

00:21:34.260 You have to reject the world.

00:21:35.340 And it's the same with the word flesh.

00:21:37.240 There are times when it does mean your sinful nature.

00:21:39.800 And then there are times when it just means your body.

00:21:42.360 And that's, I agree with you.

00:21:44.200 That's where a lot of the confusion comes in.

00:21:46.340 Here's how I would differentiate it.

00:21:47.740 We're not called to deny ourselves in sense of who God made us, our, you know, our, our

00:21:53.620 gifts, our talents, our abilities, our basic personality.

00:21:57.340 That's not the self we're supposed to deny.

00:21:59.380 We're supposed to deny our sin.

00:22:01.660 I'll, I'll illustrate.

00:22:03.040 I had a student once who was very, very good at, um, computer, computer science.

00:22:08.600 And so as he was graduating, I said, well, what are you going to do?

00:22:11.860 He said, I'm going to become a lawyer.

00:22:13.160 I said, what, you obviously are extremely gifted in, in computer science.

00:22:19.120 Why are you doing this?

00:22:20.500 And he said, well, cause I have Christian teachers who told me I have to deny myself.

00:22:25.720 And I think being a lawyer might be more important because I can defend religious liberty cases.

00:22:31.780 And I said, if you are in computer science, you can create great programs, um, that have

00:22:37.840 a tremendous influence.

00:22:39.280 Young people are on their computers and their games all day.

00:22:42.440 You could create games that are redemptive and beautiful and they draw people to the

00:22:47.440 truth.

00:22:48.880 Um, do you see, he was thinking, I have to deny my basic talents that God gave me.

00:22:55.220 And that's not what it means.

00:22:57.180 It doesn't mean you deny who God created you to be.

00:22:59.880 It means you deny your sin.

00:23:02.000 And by the way, he did end up in computers.

00:23:04.260 He's doing a great job now.

00:23:06.120 Yeah.

00:23:06.500 I was glad when we hooked up several years later and, and, and he did end up in computers.

00:23:11.680 But the point is we use the word deny self without carefully defining what we mean by

00:23:17.560 self.

00:23:18.300 And of course, it's not even just carnal desires.

00:23:20.520 It's spiritual sin.

00:23:22.060 A lot of the sins listed in scripture are not necessarily physical.

00:23:26.000 They're also spiritual beginning with pride, right?

00:23:30.140 Pride and self-centeredness and hatred and so on.

00:23:33.380 These are spiritual sins.

00:23:34.880 So it would be a mistake to just think of physical sins.

00:23:39.940 When we think of denying yourself, we have to make sure that we're also including the

00:23:44.060 spiritual thing, sins, which can sometimes be even more devastating, more destructive in

00:23:50.600 our lives and in the lives of other people.

00:24:04.560 So now you've written a book called The Toxic War on Masculinity, How Christianity 0.90

00:24:09.640 Reconciles the Sexes. 0.74

00:24:11.880 As people are listening to this or watching this, the book just came out a few days ago,

00:24:16.880 so it's available everywhere.

00:24:19.200 And as we're talking about the differences in the body, the differences in gender, the

00:24:22.900 differences in strengths and weaknesses that people have, as well as a lot of just the

00:24:28.000 worldly confusion and worldly philosophies that not just, they don't just affect secular

00:24:32.140 culture.

00:24:32.580 They also affect how Christians think about these things.

00:24:35.240 I mean, one of the toughest things that the church, for example, I'm Southern Baptist,

00:24:38.460 the church is still dealing with today and debating not what is a man, what is a woman

00:24:44.080 biologically, but what is a man, what is a woman when it comes to our roles, when it 0.98

00:24:48.020 comes to what God has called us to do.

00:24:49.600 So tell us about this.

00:24:51.880 Tell us about your book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, in particular how this affects

00:24:57.180 men, but how it affects or how the Bible should affect how we see men and women.

00:25:03.300 Well, I like the way you are starting with biology.

00:25:05.840 I figured that was probably the best way to start my book.

00:25:09.600 I mean, I put it right in chapter one, you know, because people always start with, well,

00:25:14.060 what are the differences between men and women then?

00:25:16.860 And the reason it's sometimes confusing is on personality traits, men and women are more

00:25:22.500 similar than they are different.

00:25:24.160 I mean, when Adam sees Eve, his first response is, oh, somebody like me, you know, bone of my

00:25:30.260 bones, flesh of my flesh.

00:25:31.480 So he's overwhelmed with excitement because here's somebody like me.

00:25:36.640 So we have to be careful that in discussing differences, we keep in mind that even scientifically,

00:25:42.000 if you plot a particular trait, like even aggression, if you plot a trait like aggression, in men,

00:25:49.260 you get a bell curve and in women, you get a bell curve. 1.00

00:25:51.880 And those bell curves overlap quite closely.

00:25:55.200 You know, the differences are mostly at the edges, at the extremes, which is why most people

00:25:59.620 sitting in prison are male.

00:26:01.560 Those are the ones at the extreme.

00:26:04.700 But in terms of physical characteristics, I think that's the one that's with the transgender 1.00

00:26:09.680 movement today that has become controversial.

00:26:12.420 And yet it shouldn't be because it was a quite clear scientifically that men are bigger, stronger,

00:26:18.800 faster, have greater bone density, greater upper body strength, 90% more upper body strength

00:26:25.720 than women. 0.99

00:26:26.980 Because of testosterone, they tend to be more aggressive and more risk-taking.

00:26:31.340 And we have to affirm that these are good things.

00:26:34.460 These are things that God made men to be.

00:26:38.160 And the difference is how do they use these masculine strengths.

00:26:43.160 I quote a study.

00:26:45.500 It was done by an anthropologist.

00:26:47.000 And it was the first study ever done of cross-cultural concepts of masculinity.

00:26:55.060 And what he found was that no matter how much they differed in how they defined masculinity,

00:27:02.100 maybe more aggressive in some cultures, less aggressive and so on.

00:27:06.180 But they all agreed on three things.

00:27:08.460 They all agreed, as he put it, the anthropologist said, they agree on the three Ps, protect, provide,

00:27:17.580 and procreate. 0.91

00:27:18.680 In other words, become a father, build into the next generation.

00:27:22.620 And he said, all cultures share this.

00:27:24.200 This is the universal expectation on men.

00:27:28.160 What it means to be a man is that you don't use your unique masculine strengths to get what you want,

00:27:34.380 but to provide, protect the people that you love.

00:27:37.780 And if necessary, even maybe fight for them, you know, to protect them.

00:27:40.820 So I thought this was a great finding because what it means is men universally across all cultures

00:27:48.440 understand what manhood is in a positive way, provide, protect, procreate.

00:27:55.220 And it's intrinsic.

00:27:56.540 They're made in God's image.

00:27:57.580 And so they do understand what it means to be a good man, no matter how their culture teaches them.

00:28:03.120 Otherwise, they've got down the three Ps.

00:28:05.700 And that's encouraging to know that every culture recognizes, oh, let's use your word,

00:28:11.020 tell us again.

00:28:12.160 The tell us, the goal, the purpose of masculinity is recognized everywhere because people are made in God's image.

00:28:18.560 And yet we do see in some, you know, different parts of the United States even that masculinity,

00:28:28.060 well, on one end, masculinity for some people is seen as exclusively toxic.

00:28:34.140 It is seen as something that just wants power, just wants control, that we really need to feminize and weaken.

00:28:41.580 And then you do see, I mean, especially we see this with, um, uh, with the young men who are fatherless,

00:28:48.820 how there is a misconception of masculinity, just being brute strength, just being, being able to prove

00:28:55.840 yourself, just being able to be, you know, to protect your own turf, not necessarily care for the

00:29:00.960 vulnerable, but to watch out for yourself and to assert your own dominance at all times.

00:29:06.960 And so, um, even though there's an understanding across cultures of what a man should be, we do,

00:29:12.820 we do seem to disagree on that a lot, even in the United States of the importance of masculinity

00:29:17.900 and what healthy masculinity really is.

00:29:21.560 Yes.

00:29:22.160 Um, I, I have another study on that.

00:29:24.840 Um, by the way, this is the most fact-based book I've written because it has a lot of studies

00:29:29.920 first on masculinity and then later on history, the history of concepts of masculinity.

00:29:34.300 Um, so this was a study by a sociologist, which I really, um, found helpful and which

00:29:40.520 by my, um, students found helpful.

00:29:43.260 Let me give you some background on it.

00:29:44.920 Um, when, when I, I taught my, the manuscript in my class and I ran reading groups on it and

00:29:52.620 they would tell their family and friends, they were reading a book on masculinity and invariably

00:29:58.040 the first question was whose side is she on with that tone, right? 0.71

00:30:03.140 Whose side is she on? 1.00

00:30:05.000 And, and the next question was, and why is a woman writing a book on masculinity anyway? 1.00

00:30:11.720 So this book has proven to be more controversial than any I've written.

00:30:15.580 You know, the book we talked about earlier, Love Thy Body, I thought would be more controversial

00:30:19.680 because it does deal with issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, and so on.

00:30:24.460 But in fact, this one has proven to be more controversial.

00:30:28.580 And so right at the beginning, I found this study helpful.

00:30:32.880 I put it right at the beginning of the book.

00:30:35.180 So this is a sociologist.

00:30:36.760 He's not a Christian, but he is well known in his field.

00:30:39.960 So he gets invited to speak all around the world.

00:30:41.980 And he came up with this clever experiment where he asks young men two questions.

00:30:49.320 And the first question is, what does it mean to be a good man?

00:30:54.120 You know, if you're at a funeral and in the eulogy, somebody says he was a good man.

00:30:59.460 What does that mean?

00:31:01.420 And he said, all around the world, young men had no problem answering that.

00:31:05.480 They would say things like honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice, do the right thing, look out for the little guy.

00:31:13.540 I kind of like that one.

00:31:14.780 Look out for the little guy, be a protector, be a provider, be responsible.

00:31:20.420 And that's what they would answer, like from Brazil, you know, to Nigeria, to Australia.

00:31:28.280 They would all answer that.

00:31:30.040 And he would say, the sociologist would say, where did you learn that?

00:31:33.540 And they would say, it's just in the air we breathe.

00:31:37.820 Or if they were in a Western country, they would say, it's part of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

00:31:43.060 So then he would follow up with the second question.

00:31:45.740 And he'd say, well, what does it mean if I say to you, man up, be a real man?

00:31:50.700 And the young man would say, oh, no, that is completely different.

00:31:55.500 That means be, in fact, I'll read it to you.

00:31:58.280 So you get their words, not mine.

00:32:00.120 That means be tough, be strong, never show weakness, win at all costs, suck it up, be competitive, get rich, get laid.

00:32:11.400 So, in other words, when he asked about the real man, the traits that they listed tended to be the things that our culture calls toxic, or at least if disconnected from the ideal of the real man, a moral ideal, it can slide into entitlements, dominance, control, and so on.

00:32:32.200 And so, clearly, young men have two scripts going on, running through their minds.

00:32:40.220 On the one hand, it reinforces that earlier study, showing that they do know what the good man is.

00:32:45.920 Universally, across all cultures, they do know what it means to be the good man.

00:32:51.120 I keep coming back to, they are made in God's image.

00:32:54.120 Or Romans 2, right, which says we all have a conscience.

00:32:57.220 We all inherently, innately know right from wrong.

00:32:59.900 But cultures create a cultural script, a secular script for masculinity that is telling them, you know, what you just said a moment ago.

00:33:10.360 Even here in the States, we have these competing scripts.

00:33:14.240 But knowing this gets us, I think, a better strategy for dealing with it.

00:33:19.840 Men don't respond very well to being called toxic, right?

00:33:23.300 Nobody would.

00:33:23.840 So, this study shows us that we might have a better strategy if we focus on the good man, which men already know.

00:33:34.480 If we focus on that and support it and affirm it and encourage it, encourage their innate knowledge of what it means to be good,

00:33:43.940 that gives us a much more positive approach for dealing with these issues.

00:33:47.080 I did a video back in, gosh, it was probably 2018 for PragerU, and it was Make Men Masculine Again.

00:34:08.580 And, you know, some of the same questions of why is a girl talking about this?

00:34:13.900 And it was controversial, but it was also their most watched video for several years.

00:34:19.340 I think it's been surpassed now.

00:34:21.320 But because, you know, we kind of deal with the issue of, yes, because you explained, like, the bell curves and the extremes.

00:34:29.020 So, men's extremes, when it comes to aggression, are more extreme than women, mostly, I think, because of the physical differences.

00:34:38.000 Also, God, I think, wired their brain differently in some ways.

00:34:41.180 But those physical differences, men actually can dominate.

00:34:43.960 Even if a woman desires to dominate, she physically just can't do the same things that men can. 1.00

00:34:49.540 But also, that just natural desire to protect and provide can easily be channeled into a desire to destroy.

00:35:00.700 Men are really good at building.

00:35:02.940 They're really good at protecting.

00:35:04.640 They're really good at going into the heart of danger and making sacrifices.

00:35:09.560 And that kind of bravery can be used for good.

00:35:13.480 It can also be used for wrong.

00:35:15.200 And it seems like men just have a greater capacity both for building and for destruction than women do. 0.99

00:35:23.940 That's how it seems to me.

00:35:25.720 And so, it seems to be very dire that we distinguish between how masculinity and aggression and bravery and courage and toughness can be used for edification and how it can also be used to destroy.

00:35:41.240 I think about fatherlessness, which has an effect that motherlessness, motherlessness is rare, is more rare.

00:35:48.320 But it also is less, it seems to have less of an effect or different effects than fatherlessness does.

00:35:54.560 Like men have a unique capacity to create coherent and strong communities and families and also the unique capacity through their absence to completely destroy them.

00:36:07.620 So, you could kind of see, I don't know, from a secular and certainly feminist perspective, when you see the destructive parts of men or masculinity or what they do to just say, you know what?

00:36:20.560 It's masculinity that's wrong.

00:36:22.600 It's men that are bad.

00:36:24.480 And if they were just more like us, then everything would be calmer, less crime, all of that. 0.96

00:36:31.460 Because men are, I mean, men are responsible for the vast majority of sexual crimes, for the vast majority of violent crimes, for the vast majority of sex trafficking and pornography consumption and things like that.

00:36:42.480 So, from a feminist perspective, you could see how they're just like, ugh, masculinity is the problem without thinking of all the good that masculinity has done. 1.00

00:36:50.620 Yes, I totally agree with you, and I do have two chapters in the book on domestic violence and abuse.

00:37:01.000 But let's get there, let's get there through another sociological study.

00:37:06.800 Christian men show that same divergence between, you know, the good man and the real man, to use the language of that study. 0.73

00:37:15.920 And this is actually the main reason I wrote the book, because sociologically, it turns out that Christian men do far better than any other major group in America.

00:37:27.800 Yes, yes.

00:37:28.440 And this is good news, you know.

00:37:30.160 So, I put this, it used to be at the back of the book, and then I realized, hey, people are going to be a lot happier if you put the good news first.

00:37:37.460 So, this is right at the beginning of the book.

00:37:39.440 Look, if there are, if we acknowledge that there's a lot of hostility against masculinity today, like you were mentioning, you know, what caught my eye was the Washington Post had an article called, Why Can't We Hate Men?

00:37:53.380 Yeah.

00:37:53.740 I thought, really? 1.00

00:37:54.940 Or a Huffington Post editor who had a hashtag, kill all men. 1.00

00:37:59.420 Wow. 0.99

00:38:00.260 You can buy t-shirts that say, so many men, so little ammunition.

00:38:05.920 Wow.

00:38:06.260 And there are books out titled, I Hate Men, and No Good Men, and Are Men Necessary?

00:38:13.520 So, this is the, you know, reason I wrote the book to begin with.

00:38:18.240 Okay, how do we explain where this hostility is coming from?

00:38:21.640 And even then, there's a book by a male author that says, talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer.

00:38:31.260 So, I thought, where is this coming from?

00:38:32.980 We need to get to the bottom of this.

00:38:34.320 And that was kind of the big project I undertook with this book.

00:38:37.740 But, of course, we've all heard that exhibit A of toxic masculinity is evangelical men, you know, the Christian men, if you believe in any sort of male headship or authority in the home. 0.87

00:38:48.860 And that was easy to find, too, by the way.

00:38:51.360 A quick Google search, I found lots of examples of people saying things like, you know, any notion of male headship in the home is going to lead to abuse.

00:38:59.640 Or the founder of the church tomb movement said, Protestant theology on headship feeds the rape culture that we see permeating Christianity today.

00:39:13.360 So, it's Christian men who are particularly targeted in the media as being toxic.

00:39:21.720 Well, what I found out is that this is contrary to what social sciences say.

00:39:26.820 The social sciences have completely debunked this.

00:39:29.700 What happened is that the psychologists and sociologists were reading these accusations and saying, where's your evidence?

00:39:36.960 Wait, what is your evidence for those positions, for your accusations?

00:39:42.060 And so, they went and did the studies.

00:39:43.780 So, most of them are fairly recent studies.

00:39:46.800 And what they found was just the opposite.

00:39:48.680 They found that evangelical family men, men who are married and have kids, are more loving fathers and more loving husbands than any other group in America.

00:39:58.880 And they do, by the way, interview the wives separately, which is important if there is abuse, for example.

00:40:07.640 So, what they're actually saying is that the wives report being the happiest with their husbands' expressions of love and affection.

00:40:15.260 Evangelical fathers test out as the most engaged with their children, both in terms of shared activities like sports and church youth group,

00:40:24.820 and in terms of discipline, like setting limits on screen time or enforcing bedtime.

00:40:30.820 Evangelical couples are the least likely to divorce.

00:40:35.040 And here's the real stunner.

00:40:37.220 They have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any major group in America.

00:40:43.820 Yes.

00:40:44.260 So, it's exactly contrary to the media message.

00:40:48.820 And let me summarize it.

00:40:50.260 Let me give you one quote because it's so good.

00:40:52.180 My go-to sociologist, so to speak, is Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia.

00:40:59.580 He's considered by many people to be, you know, perhaps the top marriage researcher in the nation.

00:41:06.560 Yes.

00:41:07.020 And he said, you can tell because he gets published in places like the New York Times.

00:41:12.460 Yes.

00:41:13.100 And so, they will even publish, even though he's conservative, they will publish him.

00:41:19.060 So, this was in the New York Times, and he said, it turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives.

00:41:29.000 And, of course, they focus on the wives because the assumption is that evangelical men are oppressive, tyrannical patriarchs.

00:41:37.200 So, it turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. 0.66

00:41:42.940 Fully 73% of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages.

00:41:52.100 Even Christians don't know this. 0.56

00:41:55.740 You know, if I use these statistics, you know, in Christian audiences, you see people visibly sit back and their mouths drop open because we've all heard that Christian men are, in fact, you know, the worst in terms of toxic masculinity. 0.77

00:42:08.380 And the numbers are now totally debunking the media stereotypes.

00:42:13.040 And that was the final reason I decided I have to write this book.

00:42:17.020 I've got to get this literature out there.

00:42:19.260 Because right now, I had to go digging in academic sociological journals to find this material.

00:42:26.500 And I wanted to bring it out and make it accessible to Christians so that Christian men can be encouraged.

00:42:31.220 They are actually doing a very good job.

00:42:33.000 I want to read something by Brad Wilcox.

00:42:47.320 We reference him a lot, too.

00:42:48.840 You reference him several times in your book.

00:42:51.740 And so, here's something he wrote in Christianity Today.

00:42:53.960 In general, setting aside nominal Christians, the research indicates that evangelical Protestantism does not pose the kind of risks that are often alleged.

00:43:03.000 Indeed, at least judging from the studies here in the United States, it looks like churchgoing may may well help men steer clear of violence.

00:43:12.120 In the National Survey of Families and Households, Wilcox found that churchgoing evangelical Protestant husbands were the least likely to be engaged in abusive behavior.

00:43:22.420 Sociologist Christopher Ellison also found that men who attend religious services several times a week are 72% less likely to abuse their female partners than men from comparable backgrounds who do not attend services.

00:43:38.720 He does say that nominal Christianity, people who are nominally Christian, so people who just say that they're Christian, they don't attend church, they don't really have a relationship with Christ, that there is vulnerability for abuse there.

00:43:51.220 But the faithful evangelical Christians who are going to church, who, as far as we know, are reading their Bible, trying to actually live out their faith, according to these studies, he talks about them in his book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, are the least likely to be abusive and oppressive.

00:44:08.580 And you're exactly right. We hear the opposite every day. And I've heard I've seen several studies over the years saying people, though, people who are happiest with their sex lives, people who are just happiest in general, happiest with their work life balance, happiest with their home life are actually Christian women.

00:44:25.560 Yes, and I'm glad you brought up the nominal men, because the first pushback I always get is, but wait a minute, haven't we all heard that Christians divorce at the same rate as the rest of society?

00:44:40.340 In fact, in my research, I found that that's one of the most widely stated statistics among Christian leaders. And it turns out that it's false.

00:44:48.540 But the reason we know it's false is researchers went back to the data, and they made that important distinction that you just mentioned, between committed Christian men who actually do attend church regularly and live it out from nominal Christian men.

00:45:03.420 And by the way, my students don't know what the word nominal means anymore. So I have to explain to them, it means in name only, N-O-M is Latin for name.

00:45:12.520 And the research shows that these two groups diverge dramatically, that nominal Christian men, if you ask, you know, if you say for their wives, their wives report the lowest level of happiness in their marriage.

00:45:28.060 They are the least engaged with their children. They have the highest levels of divorce, even higher than secular men. 0.98

00:45:36.340 And they have the highest rates of domestic violence, even higher than secular men. 0.96

00:45:42.520 So this is the real shocker. These are men who hang around the fringes of the Christian world, enough to pick up religious language like headship and submission. 0.94

00:45:54.600 But then they infuse those words with secular meaning and concepts like entitlement and dominance and so on.

00:46:04.340 And so they really are, they end up worse than secular men. I have people ask me, well, why would they be even worse? 0.99

00:46:10.160 Apparently, it's because they're taking the secular ideas of masculinity, but they're putting a Christian venue on top so that they feel justified.

00:46:20.160 They feel as though, you know, their religion has given them permission to act like this.

00:46:24.240 And so they end up actually being worse than secular men. 0.97

00:46:26.840 So this is the challenge I would say for us today is how do we, in a church, for example, how do you minister to both sides of the good man and the real man?

00:46:41.620 You know, this is the Christian version of the two scripts, right?

00:46:44.520 The good man who's living out a biblical worldview and the real man who's actually living out a secular worldview, but who claims an evangelical identity.

00:46:53.520 You know, we want to encourage the men who are doing a good job.

00:46:56.220 And we want to reach out to the men who think that they're Christians, but who actually are living out a very secular view of masculinity.

00:47:04.740 Okay, I know you loved the first part of that conversation, and the second part is even better.

00:47:15.580 Such a fascinating look at the history of masculinity, the history of the view of women,

00:47:22.500 and how Christianity totally changed the game and still changes the game on these things.

00:47:28.280 And why we actually need a biblical masculinity and femininity to have a healthy relationship between men and women in society today. 0.67

00:47:37.720 So stay tuned for that episode coming up.

00:47:41.460 See you guys then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 03, 2023

Ep 832 ｜ Fighting the Toxic War on Masculinity ｜ Guest： Nancy Pearcey (Part One)

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