Nancy R. Pearcey > Quotes

“Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“The first step in conforming our intellect to God's truth is to die to our vanity, pride, and craving for respect from colleagues and the public. We must let go of the worldly motivations that drive us, praying to be motivated solely by a genuine desire to submit our minds to God's Word - and then to use that knowledge in service to others.”
― Nancy Pearcey

“The gospel is like a caged lion,' said the great baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. 'It does not need to be defended, it simply needs to be let out of it's cage' Today, the cage is our accommodation to the secular/sacred split that reduces Christianity to a matter of personal belief. To unlock the cage, we need to become utterly convinced that, as Francis Schaeffer said, Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth- truth about the whole of reality.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don’t know the characters and can’t make sense of the plot.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“Redemption is not just about being saved *from* the consequences of sin, it is also about being saved *to* something- to resume the task for which we were originally created. And what was that task? In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it."

"Be fruitful and multiply", means to develop the social world: build families, churches, cities, governments, laws.

The second phrase, "subdue the earth" means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music.

This passage is sometimes called the "cultural mandate" because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures and build civilizations- nothing less.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“Redemption is as comprehensive as Creation and Fall. God does not save our souls while leaving our minds to function on their own. He redeems the whole person. Conversion is meant to give new direction to our thoughts, emotions, wills and habits.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“The danger is that is Christians do not consciously develop a biblical approach to a subject, then we will unconsciously absorb some other philosophical approach.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“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

“The great historian of religion Martin Marty once said every religion serves two functions: First, it is a message of personal salvation telling is how to get right with God; and second, it is a lens for interpreting the world.

Historically, evangelicals have been good at the first functions- at "saving souls". But they have not been nearly so good at helping people to interpret the world around them- at providing a set of interrelated concepts that function as a lens to give a biblical view of areas like science, politics, economics, or bioethics.

As Marty puts it, evangelicals have typically "accentuated personal piety and individual salvation, leaving men to their own devices to interpret the world around them.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“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

“A Christian approach to any field needs to be both critical and constructive. We cannot simply borrow from the results of secular scholarship as though that were spiritually neutral territory discovered by people whose minds are completely open and objective- that is, *as though the fall had never happened*.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.

But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.

In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“secularism is not neutral, though it often claims to be. In relation to the biblical God, secularists may be skeptics. But in relation to their own god substitutes, they are true believers. To adapt an observation from C. S. Lewis, their skepticism is only on the surface. It is for use on other people’s beliefs. “They are not nearly skeptical enough” about their own beliefs.83 And when they enforce secular views in the realm of law, education, sexuality, and health care, they are imposing their own beliefs on everyone else across an entire society. The consequence of those secular views is inevitably dehumanizing. The reason is that secularism in all its forms is reductionistic. A worldview that does not start with God must start with something less than God—something within creation—which then becomes the category to explain all of reality. Think back to Walker Percy’s metaphor of a box. Empiricism puts everything in the box of the senses. Rationalism puts everything into the box of human reason. Anything that does not fit into the box is denied, denigrated, or declared to be unreal. The diverse and multi-faceted world God created is reduced to a single category.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning

“Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“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

“A biblically based worldview is capable of affirming the best insights of secular philosophies without ever falling into reductionism.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning

“For many women today, on a personal level, the problem is not male dominance so much as male desertion.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“How do we break free from the dichotomies that limit God's power in our lives? How can love and service to God become living sparks that light up our whole lives? By discovering a worldview perspective that unifies *both* secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework. By understanding that all honest work and creative enterprise can be a valid calling from the Lord. And by realizing that there are biblical principles that apply to every field of work. These insights will fill us with purpose, and we will begin to experience the joy that comes from relating to God in and through every dimension of our lives.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“A school superintendent once told me that most educators define "a Christian teacher" as strictly in terms of personal behavior: things like setting a good example and showing concern for the students. Almost none define it in terms of conveying a biblical worldview on the subjects they teach, whether literature, science, social studies, or the arts.

In other words, they are concerned about being a Christian *in* their work, but they don't think in terms of having a biblical framework *on* the work itself.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“To adapt a phrase, idols have consequences.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“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

“At the heart of the human condition, we might say, is an epistemological sin—the refusal to acknowledge what can be known about God and then to respond appropriately: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). They engage in willful blindness.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“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

“All of science is largely formalized common sense.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“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

“Artists are often the barometers of society.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“A merely symbolic religion does not threaten the ruling regime of materialistic science.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“Many Christians with Ph.D.'s have simply absorbed a two-track approach to their subject, treating science or sociology or history as though it consisted of religiously neutral knowledge, where biblical truth has nothing important to say.”
― Nancy Pearcey