Designed with a Purpose

Dannah Gresh: Your body has a blueprint—your DNA. Nancy Pearcey identifies some key implications of that fact.

Nancy Pearcey: Science itself is on our side here. Science says that the human body is a product of planned purpose, design, and order. And so what we are arguing is that when you live in harmony with that order, you will be happier and healthier.

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for February 13, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh. And our host is co-author of True Woman 101, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, you probably noticed—who hasn’t?—the stores and the ads and the emphasis on love. That’s right, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re able to express your love for others in some sort of tangible way. I hope you do it more than just on February 14, too.

In 1 John chapter 4, we read that our love for God and our love for one another flows out of God’s love for us. So I hope as you celebrate love, you’ll keep it in the larger context of His love.

One way God shows His love, believe it or not, is through how He made us. King David praised the Lord for the fact that we’re “fearfully and wonderfully made,” Psalm 139:14.

Yesterday on Revive Our Hearts, we heard the first part of a conversation between my cohost Dannah Gresh and Nancy Pearcey. Nancy wrote a book titled Love Thy Body. Her premise is that much of the confusion we see happening today in our culture can be traced back to an underlying worldview, a misconception that says at its most basic, “Your body is bad.”

For a biblical response to that thinking, we need to go all the way back to creation. Let’s listen to more as Dannah Gresh talks with Nancy Pearcey.

Dannah: Why the maleness and the femaleness? Why those two distinct biological sexes?

Nancy P: Well, I think it’s interesting that if you go back to Genesis, God makes a bit of a point of it because He creates Adam first, and then He brings all of the rest of the living creatures and all of the animals to Adam so that He kind of makes a point that, “Adam, you’re not going to find a soul mate. You’re not going to find somebody like you in the rest of the creation.”

It’s pretty obvious that God was going to create humans to be sexually reproducing. After all, He’d already created most living things to be sexually reproducing—not only the animals, but even flowering plants.

So God knew He was going to create a woman, but did the man know? Did he realize how important that was? It’s almost as though God is making an object lesson, a very clever one, with this clever delay strategy where He says, “I’m not going to create a woman right away. I’m going to let Adam look around at all the rest of creation and find out, ‘Wait. There’s no suitable companion for me. There’s nobody who’s like for me.’”

The word “a helper suitable for Adam” . . . We tend to think “helper” is like a subordinate, inferior position, like a servant. In this portion in Scripture, the actual Hebrew word for helper is the one that’s used for God when He’s a helper. “I look to the hills, from whence comes my help” (Psalm 121:1). Most places in Scripture, the Hebrew word for help is used of God, when God is the helper. So it does not mean anything inferior.

And the second word is “fit for him,” “suitable for him.” And, again, the Hebrew word means “face to face.” Isn’t that interesting? It means somebody who’s face to face with you, somebody who’s in communion with you, like face to face communication, love, relationship.

So, a suitable help, or a helper fit for him, depending on how the English translates it, means someone who you need, who’s an ally, who is suitable, who corresponds to you perfectly.

Dannah: You’re stirring my heart with that, the face to face part, because I think that is why we’re distinctly different. We are in the image of God—male, female, distinctly different—and yet we can come together as social beings and be united into one flesh in much the same way that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are distinct and different, yet They are one. Right?

Nancy P: Perfect. Yes. It’s the Trinity. The Trinity shows how you can have equal status but different. The differences are important because they have different functions, different roles. The Father, Son, and Spirit have different functions in the economy of salvation. So exactly, I think the male, female difference is meant to mirror the difference but unity of the Trinity.

Dannah: So that means it matters. Period. It matters so much.

Nancy P: Yes. By the way, let’s just be frank and biological. Obviously, we wouldn’t have a human race if we couldn’t reproduce. So there’s also the very functional, basic fact that reproduction requires male and female.

There was an NPR program on gender and sex, and the NPR reporters went out and interviewed people at both high school and university levels. They found students who said they would literally change their gender within a single day.

They might go to one event as a he, and later the same day go to another event as a she. One high school student said, “We reject the male/female binary as an oppressive move by the dominant culture.”

 

So in this era, we need to be very clear that the sexual binary is a good gift from God, and that we do want to affirm that. I’m glad you brought us back to that point because I have students at a Christian college—especially the female students who have been influenced by feminism—who have literally said to me in class, “Male and female is just a social construct.

And I have to say, “Well, let’s go to something very basic: biology. Male and female are clearly different biologically. Let’s start with that.”

Dannah: So this is the world we are raising our children in. This is the world our grandchildren have to shine the light of Jesus Christ in. Let’s get practical and talk about how we can coach them up. Let’s start with something simple.

If the underlying argument you’re making is: if we would love our bodies, we would not be making some of these grave moves towards sinful living. So, how do we instill a love for the body into the heart of a young daughter or a young granddaughter?

Nancy P: I’m going to answer that in two ways. One is we sometimes appreciate what we have in Christianity better if we realized how bad the alternatives are. So, let me start with the alternative.

Why does the secular world denigrate the body? Well, because they say that the body is part of mindless, purposeless forces, and therefore, the body has no intrinsic purpose that we are morally obligated to respect.

There’s a fairly prominent public intellectual named Camille Paglia. She’s a feminist and a lesbian, and, by the way, she recently came out as trans. But at any rate, she makes the case. She denies that sex is just a social construction. She says, “No, no, no. Nature made us male and female.”

In fact, she actually has a quote where she says something like, “Our sexual bodies are designed for reproduction.” I thought, Designed? Where are you coming from?

Dannah: Who designed it?

Nancy P: Exactly. I was amazed that she would use that word. But then you say, “If we were designed for reproduction, male and female, being a part of nature, how do you defend being a lesbian or now being trans?” 

She said, “Nature made us male and female, but why not defy nature?” And she went on to say, “Fate, not God, has given us this flesh. We have absolute claim to our bodies, and we do with them as we see fit.”

Dannah: Okay, when you say, “Why not defy nature?” I think of Romans 1 where God says, “Hey listen, My creation displays My power, My character.” That’s Romans 1:20. And then He goes on to say, “When you give yourselves in to these sexual passions and a man lays with a man and a woman with a woman, you are saying, ‘I refuse, I refuse, I refuse to reflect the image of God.’” That’s what we’re told, right, in Romans 1?

Nancy P: Yes.

Dannah: And that’s what that woman is actually saying: “Why not defy nature?” She’s saying, “Why not defy God?” Romans 1.

Nancy P: Exactly. And, of course, her justification is that nature was not created by God. It’s created by blind material forces, so why not? And that is perfectly logical.

Dannah: But how do I say that to my ten-year-old daughter?

Nancy P: Okay, so the logic is pretty clear. If nature is the product of blind material forces, purposeless forces, it has no purpose we are morally obligated to respect. It gives no clue to identity. It gives us no moral message.

And so we turn that around and say, “Well, even science shows that’s not true. Even science says that nature is designed for a purpose.”

From the very fundamental level, eyes are made for seeing, ears are made for hearing, wings are made for flying, fins are made for swimming. In fact, if your kid is old enough to be in high school, the whole development of the entire organism is driven by an inbuilt plan or blueprint, which is DNA.

So, science itself is on our side here. Science says that the human body is a product of planned purpose, design and order. And so what we are arguing is that when you live in harmony with that order, you will be happier and healthier.

I said I had two arguments. So first of all, it’s recognizing what we have. There is no other worldview that has such a high view of the body. No other religion or secular philosophy has such a high view. We should be so excited about that.

Instead of arguing from a negative perspective, we should be arguing from . . .whoa, this is really wonderful! Look at this high view. It’s a wonderful meaning that Christianity gives.

Here’s my story: There’s a woman named Laura Perry whose written a book now.

Dannah: Yes. We know Laura. We love her. We’ve had her as a guest.

Nancy P: Oh, good! Well, this was her first article, I think. The first article was where she told her story where she’d lived, successfully passed, as a man for ten years and then converted to Christianity. And the interesting thing, of course, is that sanctification sometimes takes a while. At first she thought she could continue living as a man. She said, “I aspired to be a real man of God.”

Dannah: Yes, I remember. 

Nancy P: I love that! And then while she was praying one day, she seemed to hear God say to her, “You cannot claim to love Me and yet reject My creation.”

And that captured it so perfectly. She knew what that meant. “My body is part of God’s creation. I cannot claim to love God and not love my body, love His creation.”

So this is what we need to communicate to young people today, to children. The message is loving God’s creation. Loving God means you love His creation.

Dannah: Yes. And, of course, Laura transitioned back to female. She had a lot of surgeries. She had to go through a lot of other things again to reclaim her natural, biological self, her natural, biological body that God gave her.

And I don’t know if you know this, but she got married. 

Nancy P: I know.

Dannah: Yes, we’ve been in touch.

Okay, this has been a lofty conversation. You’ve used a lot of big words. You kept saying, “I want to say this in layman’s terms,” and I thought, Is that layman’s terms? But I followed you, and I believe our listeners will, too.

I want to throw a scenario at you that I’m hearing a lot of right now. It’s about pronouns and schools. I want to just role play.

Let’s imagine a Christian mom is talking to another mom at her daughter’s school. You’re that Christian mom.

These two moms differ on the school’s handling of pronouns. The Christian mom is concerned about the freedom of the children to change their pronouns at will without notifying parents. She doesn’t want to hear that happen. She’s offended and concerned about what the school district has decided is okay.

And many times in many schools . . . One of the school districts in my home county, these children can fill out a paper, change their pronoun, take it into the school office, and Mom and Dad are not told. That’s becoming more and more common.

The non-Christian mom in this scenario is celebrating this. She thinks it’s a great movement forward, and she is just so excited. As they talk, the non-Christian mom calls the Christian mom (that’s you) a bigot.

How should that Christian mom respond to that word?

Nancy P: I believe what we need to do when we talk to our secular friends or progressive Christian friends is look at the bigger issue. Is this really loving to support a child to go into transition, especially apart from his parents?

And you’re right, schools are doing this without parental notification. I just saw a video of a teacher who was bragging that the changing room . . . Changing room means a place where the students can come and change into the opposite sex’s clothing without telling their parents.

So that is common. And, by the way, this won in Florida and in many other states now. Florida led the way in passing the law saying that you cannot—the public schools cannot—deal with sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K through 3.

And the reason for that law was because there was a child who was being transitioned—the verb now is transing. The school was transing the child without telling the parents, and the child attempted to commit suicide at school. She tried to hang herself in the bathroom.

Dannah: And the parents had no idea that she was struggling.

Nancy P: The parents had no idea. So here they are being called to the school, “Come get your kid; she’s trying to commit suicide.” And they had no idea she was having difficulties with gender.

So, number one, you’re absolutely right. It’s especially harmful when schools are doing this without notifying the parents.

Secondly, it is well known that most of these kids outgrow it. Most, depending on the study, 80–95 percent of children who have some form of gender distress end up outgrowing it, generally during puberty because of the rush of hormones. So it is much better to wait and let them go through that natural process. 

Post-puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not problem free. Promoters say, “Well, you’re just putting puberty on hold.” No, you’re not. You’re creating a lot (I’m not a medical person) but there’s a lot of side effects from puberty blockers, such as, especially for girls, changing their bone density. There’s a very sad story about a girl who was on puberty blockers for many years. Now she’s in a wheelchair because she has no bone density.

So it’s not harmless to put them on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. There are a lot of side effects.

And finally, most of these children are very fragile. There’s been a study done, it’s the first study done on girls who are transitioning as teenagers. So, like I said before, gender dysphoria has traditionally been starting very young, so this is something new. This has never happened before that you have kids “discovering” that they are actually opposite sex when they’re teenagers.

Researchers had to come up with a new name for it. They call it rapid onset gender dysphoria because it’s showing up suddenly in the teenage years, to kids who had no gender distress, no signs of being unhappy with their gender when they were younger.

Dannah: You mentioned previously that it’s girls who are suddenly experiencing that more often.

Nancy P: Exactly. That’s different, too, because back when we used to call it transexualism, it was primarily a male phenomenon. It was mostly men. And now, when I give my lecture on the subject, I have a slide with graphs. You should see the graphs of the increase of young girls claiming a transgender identity. It’s kind of a horizontal line that suddenly goes up in a steep cliff.

Dannah: Just like in the last 10 to 15 years.

Nancy P: Yes. Britain keeps better stats than we do here. In the last decade it’s gone up 4,000 percent.

And, by the way, while we’re on Britain, Britain is turning around. They’re starting to say, “No, no, no.” They closed their largest gender clinic. It’s called Tavistock. The largest gender clinic in the whole country just closed down because young girls were being transitioned without adequate health care.

Dannah: Yes. They were finding that there wasn’t thorough psychological conversation and research done on individuals before they started getting the knife out to make the cuts.

Nancy P: Yes. And it was largely detransitionists who led the way, That is, girls who had transitioned and then decided they had made a huge mistake, and they had detransitioned. They led the way. But also a lot of the clinic staff themselves said, “We’re not doing a good job. We’re not being professional here because we’re not dealing with psychological issues.

So let me give you the study, though, of the psychological issues. This was done by Lisa Littman at Brown University, and it was the first study of rapid onset gender dysphoria.

They were all girls. She found that about 63 percent of girls who transitioned had already been diagnosed with some preexisting psychological disorder. It was things like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, OCD, ADHD—there’s a whole host of them.

And let me emphasize the word “diagnosed,” because many teenagers do have some anxiety and depression. These were young girls for whom their symptoms were so severe that they had been brought to a clinic and had been diagnosed. And this was prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria.

This is something we need to keep in mind also when we’re in practical situations dealing with these young people. They are very fragile young people, and we need to keep that in mind.

Dannah: That should drive us to compassion.

Nancy P: We need to be very loving and compassionate and careful because there’s two issues here. There’s kind of the public, political side where transgender activists are trying to pass laws that would prevent Christian schools and Christian churches and Christian ministries from being able to live out the Christian sex ethic. We’ve got to be active on that side. We need to be voting for school board members, running for school board, looking at the laws. 

That is the personal side. And on the personal side, that’s sort of the pastoral side, we need to bear in mind this is a very gentle, sensitive, fragile, emotionally sensitive kid. Bear in mind that most of them have already some diagnosed mental health disorder. And so, it’s not loving to go along with that. It’s more loving to treat it.

Dannah: Right. Exactly. I believe that there’s some significant research that indicates that simply transitioning them, whether it’s changing the way they dress and what they call their name, or all the way, surgical, the underlying psychological conditions did not abate after those individuals were allowed to pursue transitioning.

So, is it loving to give them false hope in something that’s going to be destructive and mutilate their body? I don’t think that it is.

Nancy P: Yes. I think the largest study was in Sweden, because they had had laws allowing for transitioning. They have the longest history of transitioning people who were back then called transexuals. The study showed that it did not help their psychological condition. In fact, they had worse psychological problems than the average population.

So that’s the study that’s cited most often to show that transitioning does not in fact deal with the underlying psychological issues.

So, I agree with you. Christian parents and leaders, ministry leaders need to educate themselves on some of the basic facts in order to respond well.

Dannah: With compassion.

Nancy P: Yes.

Dannah: Actually, I think this is a beautiful place to end our conversation because Jesus was a friend to sinners. He was compassionate to them. I think of the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15.

In fact, let me just open my Bible and let me just read this to you. Let’s just soak in this. Maybe think about the person you know who’s struggling with gender dysphoria or the person you know who’s struggling because they know someone with gender dysphoria, and so they’re struggling with what they believe about it.

Let compassion drive us the way that it drove Jesus. Luke 15:1 says:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” (vv. 1–2)

It was an accusation. Some versions say, “He was friends with them.” So Jesus told them this parable.

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost." Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. (vv. 4–7)

Friends, let us have the compassion of Christ. Let us invite sinners to eat with us. Let us make them feel like our friend. May we go after them and carry their burden until we can one day rejoice that they have come back to their Savior.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: That’s Dannah Gresh with a great reminder for anyone praying for a loved one who’s wandered far astray.

Dannah’s been talking with Nancy Pearcey about the high value our bodies have because we’re made in God’s image. This is why the conversations about male and female and DNA and pronouns are so important.

Listen, the world is saying, “Love is love, and your body doesn’t matter. You do you.” But God says, through the pen of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (vv. 19–20).

Thank you, Dannah, for the reminder about saying all of this, couching it all in a context of compassion, care, and love.

Well, I want to encourage you to read Nancy Pearcey’s book, Love Thy Body. We have more information about the book at the link in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

The other book I hope you’re ready to dive into is my newest book, Incomparable: 50 Days with Jesus. I say ready to dive into because tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts we’re going to launch a series that goes from now through Easter, and a week beyond Easter. It follows the same themes and topics that are covered in my book, Incomparable. We’re going to be looking at things like who Jesus is, why He came, and what He accomplished in His life, His death, His resurrection, and His soon return.

The Incomparable book, along with a reading plan for this spring, is available from us here at Revive Our Hearts. They’re our way of thanking you for your donation of any amount to help support the outreaches of Revive Our Hearts as we continue helping women around the world know the incomparable Savior.

Be sure to ask about this devotional book, Incomparable: 50 Days with Jesus, when you contact us to make your gift. And to do that, you can just visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Thank you for listening today, and don’t forget, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Worship the Lord for that. And, please be back tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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