★★★★★ 5
Love Thy Body
Format: Hardcover
Love Thy Body, Nancy Pearcey
Written for Tenth Grade upwards (My granddaughter will read it.) Excellent for group studies. A study guide is included in the back of the book.
About a month ago Nancy Pearcey was kind enough to pull me into her pre-launch group for her new book, Love Thy Body. Her book was sent to me that I might read it prior to its release, the only requirement being that I write an “honest review.”
Apologetics can be a rollercoaster ride for me. With each page I found myself saying, “Yes. OK, that’s good. Excellent! Pure gold.” Then again, “Push that a step further. A chink in the wall opened, but now a bit further. Just a bit more!”
As Nancy Pearcey reminds her readers, we are not in a “cultural war,” but in a “rescue mission.” Apologetics aims at understanding the position of the “other” in order to find their weaknesses and demonstrate them so their logic falls on itself. Pearcey is an excellent cultural dissector. Every chapter addresses a specific cultural concern, those that are on the forefront of every Christian’s mind. Love Thy Body tackles issues of abortion, euthanasia, the hook up, sexuality, transgenderism, homosexuality, marriage and parenthood.
Pearcey does a thorough job explaining the philosophical underpinnings of the dualist worldview splitting personhood and body supporting abortion that eventually evolves into the cultural disavowal of both gender and body. This dualist secular thought which prizes emotion over the body or biology I foundational to euthanasia, matters of sexuality, and the family. Pearcey defends the Christian scriptural worldview of the embodied soul created by God and redeemed, saved, and restored in Christ as the one that is truly freeing. She does this without using the Bible as a “battering ram.”
"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 that Bible is hateful, narrow and negative. While it is crucial to be clear about the biblical teaching of 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."
There were times though, that I wanted stronger suggestions, “Get thee to a church!” But, again, this is apologetics. This is the wall-breaker. This is, “Oh, wow! Yeah! Now what do I do?” And in the hands of Christians, we should know what next to do.
Sometimes repetitive, but that’s a good thing for students and people like me with short attention spans.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2018
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