Love Thy Body Quotes

“The problem is that many people treat morality as a list of rules. But in reality, every moral system rests on a worldview. In every decision we make, we are not just deciding what we want to do. We are expressing our view of the purpose of human life. In the words of theologian Stanley Hauerwas, a moral act “cannot be seen as just an isolated act, but involves fundamental options about the nature and significance of life itself.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“You may not believe in God. . . . But I do, and because of that I believe in the value of all people. I believe we are all made in His image and likeness. That’s why I believe all people are worth something. If you believe that people only get their value from each other, then people can take that away. But if our value comes from God, then nobody has the right to say someone who walks is worth more than someone who doesn’t.74”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“To protect women’s rights, we must be able to say what a woman is. If postmodernism is correct—that the body itself is a social construct—then it becomes impossible to argue for rights based on the sheer fact of being female. We cannot legally protect a category of people if we cannot identify that category.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“We live in a moral wasteland where human beings are desperately seeking answers to hard questions about life and sexuality. But there is hope. In the wasteland we can cultivate a garden. We can discover a reality-based morality that expresses a positive, life-affirming view of the human person—one that is more inspiring, more appealing, and more liberating than the secular worldview.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“The main reason to address moral issues is that they have become a barrier to even hearing the message of salvation. People are inundated with rhetoric telling them that the Bible is hateful and hurtful, narrow and negative. While it’s crucial to be clear about the biblical teaching on sin, the context must be an overall positive message: that Christianity alone gives the basis for a high view of the value and meaning of the body as a good gift from God. In our communication with people struggling with moral issues, we need to reach out with a life-giving, life-affirming message. We should work to draw people in by the beauty of the biblical vision of life.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Young people are trying to live out a worldview that does not match their true nature, and it is tearing them apart with its pain and heartache.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. When a society accepts, endorses, and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the accompanying worldview. And all the more so if those practices are enshrined in law. The law functions as a teacher, educating people on what society considers to be morally acceptable. If America accepts abortion, euthanasia, gender-free marriage, and transgender policies, in the process it will absorb the worldview that justifies those practices—a two-story fragmentation of the human being that denigrates the body and biological bonds such as the family. And the dehumanizing consequences will reach into every aspect of our communal life.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Liberals often say, “If you’re against abortion, don’t have one. If you’re against assisted suicide, don’t do it. But don’t impose your views on others.” At first, that might sound fair. But what progressives fail to understand is that every social practice rests on certain assumptions of what the world is like—a worldview. When a society accepts the practice, it absorbs the worldview that justifies it.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“At the foot of the cross, the poor, the slave, the oppressed, the young, and the weak are all equal to the rich and powerful. Christians are forbidden to show favoritism (James 2:1–9; 5:1–6).”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Indeed, the reason the fall is such a tragedy is precisely because humans have such high value to begin with. When a cheap trinket is broken, we toss it aside without a second thought. But when a priceless work of art is destroyed, we are heartbroken. The reason sin is so tragic is that it destroys a human being—a priceless masterpiece that reflects the character of the Supreme Artist.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“In every decision we make, we are not just deciding what we want to do. We are expressing our view of the purpose of human life.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“The challenge today is to create new structural supports for the practice of celibacy—structures that integrate singles into our families and churches again, especially older singles who are often overlooked.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“the disability rights movement is almost unified in opposing assisted suicide—precisely because disabled people know they are the prime targets of the death movement.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“One reason issues like euthanasia are so salient today is that people no longer have positive ways to respond to suffering.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“When Christians argue ethical issues in the public square, they are not seeking to impose their values on everyone else, as they are often accused of doing. They are not seeking power and control for themselves. Instead they are working to protect human rights in ways that benefit everyone.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“In the classic theological formulation, God is one in being and three in person. Both are equally real, equally ultimate, and equally integral to God’s nature. That might sound paradoxical until you realize it is a way of saying that ultimate reality includes a perfect balance of both individuality and relationship. Or, as philosophers say, it includes both unity and diversity, both the one and the many. Each of the three persons of the Trinity is individually unique, yet they are so united they form a single deity. In the same way, writes John Wyatt, “each human person is unique, yet made for relationship with others. Personhood is not something we can have in isolation—in Christian thinking it is a relational concept.”76”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Social contract theory is based on the autonomous individual, apart from any natural relationships. The atomistic creature running around under the trees appears to be an independent, fully developed adult—say, a twenty-one-year-old male. But this Robinson Crusoe image is not true of anyone. Contrary to Hobbes, we do not pop up overnight like mushrooms after a rain. Each of us begins life as a dependent, helpless baby, born into a pre-existing family, clan, church, town, and nation. We grow into mature adults only because other people, especially our parents, commit to us sacrificially—to love, teach, and care for us.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Many people concluded that morality does not qualify as objective truth. It consists of merely personal feelings and preferences.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“C. S. Lewis put it this way: “The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Some of the early martyrs were women who rejected suitors or arranged marriages in favor of remaining single—an option that was not tolerated by the surrounding culture.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“this was an era when for a male or female slave to refuse porneia could mean capital punishment. Some of the early martyrs were slaves who proclaimed their freedom in Christ by refusing to sexually service their masters—and were executed for it.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“The essence of porneia, then, “was treating another human being as a thing,” Ruden explains. What Paul’s early readers would have understood is that it is no longer acceptable to treat a person as an object.72 “Put to death” the old life, Paul says, with its porneia and other sins (Col. 3:5). The body is not meant for porneia “but for the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:13).”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“But the truth is that Christianity has a much more respectful view of our psycho-sexual identity. It is not anti-sex, it is pro-body.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“What bioethicists debate eventually becomes law, enforced through the courts. This is already happening in countries that have legalized assisted suicide.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Most people do not know that the hospice movement has Christian roots. It was the brainchild of an English medical humanitarian, Dame Cecily Saunders, in the 1960s, and it arose directly from her deep Anglican faith.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Eventually, as Christians gained political influence in the Roman empire, they succeeded in getting laws passed outlawing infanticide (in AD 374). They also passed laws granting government aid to poor families who did not have the means to raise their children, so they would not be tempted to abandon or expose them.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“The mainspring of sin is not that we have bodies but that we put things besides God at the center of our lives and turn them into idols.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“By telling Christians they are citizens of heaven, then, Paul was telling them to permeate the world with a heavenly culture.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“The most complete and intimate physical union is meant to express the most complete and intimate personal union of marriage.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

“Though evil is still evil, the wonder is that God is greater and can turn it to good.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality