This is an excellent companion volume to Carl Trueman‘s “Strange New World” for understanding our current cultural moment. Pearcey’s argument is that there is a profound degrading of the body in postmodern thought that is at the root of most of the most pressing ethical issues of the day. “The key to understanding all the controversial issues of our day is that the concept of the human being has been fragmented into an upper and lower story. Secular thought today assumes a body/person split….” (p.15).
Pearcey goes on to show how this neo-gnostic idea informs the issues of abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, the hookup culture, and euthanasia. If we dismiss what God is telling us through our physical bodies, then pretty much anything goes in all of these areas, and moral chaos results. And without any transcendent standard informing our convictions, the state will naturally fill the vacuum and make decisions for us regarding who has value and who does not. So the stakes are high.
Even Christians can be duped by the secular winds blowing through our culture. Believers should realize that their faith is not just a private spiritual experience that comforts them in hard times, but an alternative worldview that provides “not only a message of salvation but also a lens through which we view all of life – the human person, history, nature and society.” (p.108)