Behind the Scenes with Nancy Pearcey: People, Books, and Life Experiences

all right friends you are in for a treat we're here with nancy piercy one of the leading christian writers and thinkers uh for a behind-the-scenes interview what that means is we're not going to discuss and debate apologetics as we have many times i'm going to ask nancy some questions about the people and books and experiences that she's had just to kind of hear some untold stories about her life and ministry nancy teaches at houston baptist university which is a sister school to biola apologetics we love what you're doing over there you've written a ton of books and one i definitely want to mention to our viewers to start off with is your book love thy body is just fantastic we're going to get into some of the reasons you wrote that and the nature of that conversation today but really appreciate you taking the time to come on thank you so much for having me i think this is a great that your purpose in this program is really great i like it a lot well last year you and i had a chance to go the group of apologists to israel and you shared some of your faith journey to me that i had never heard before and i think i've read i think all of your books maybe i missed it but would you be willing to share your journey to faith because it intersects with francis schaefer and labrie in a way that's just so interesting oh yes i love to talk about my faith journey um because it's so important to me and it has continued to shape my the rest of my life so it's it's also important for people who read my books to know where i'm coming from um so i grew up in a lutheran home i say lutheran rather than christian okay because uh like like italian catholics you know or um the italian the ethnicity overrides in some senses i think the uh the christianity i was in a i grew up in a scandinavian lutheran home my father was swedish my mother's norwegian and i don't know if you know but you know the state churches in scandinavia were all lutheran and so what i and midway through high school i started asking questions about christianity and my parents were just baffled because all they knew was hey hey we're swedish what else are you gonna be you know if not if not lutheran so this was difficult because i was attending a secular you know public school where all my teachers teachers were secular all my textbooks are secular and i'm asking my parents just one question really just one question sean i was saying how do we know christianity is true that's all i was asking how do we know it is true and my parents couldn't answer that because like i said it was more of it i i think it was more of an ethnic background thing for them my pastors couldn't answer it you know all the adults in my life i'll give you two examples so i talked to a christian university professor and i said how do you know christianity is true uh uh i actually the way i put it was um why are you a christian and he said works for me wow wow that's it that's all you have uh and then i had by the way he was lutheran and then i had a chance to talk to a seminary dean again lutheran um and i don't want to put down lutherans but they do have this ethnic background so i talked to a seminary dean and i asked him why he was a christian and he said um don't worry we all have doubts sometimes wow and so it was psychological phase that i was going through and after that i eventually decided that maybe christianity just didn't have any answers and i certainly had no reasons to believe it was true and and i about half this was about halfway through high school i came to the decision that i would have to um reject my christian background my christian upbringing and try to look go on a search for truth look at all the religions and philosophies of of the world that are out there and decide which one was really true and it was going to be up to me since the adult in my life couldn't answer my questions so that was a big decision um and i but i've the the upshot was that i very consciously started looking for truth i started very conscious that's how i ended up looking at philosophy it was not an academic interest it was a very personal interest because i thought well who is it and who is it who talks about questions like um is there meaning to life is there a purpose to life uh are there is there a objective foundation for ethics or is it just you know too familiar for you uh are we just on a rock flying through space well i pretty quickly realized that if there is no god then the answer is that no there is no purpose to life no there is no foundation for ethics no yeah we just don't we're just on a planet flying through uh empty space i was the one in my friend group in high school who was arguing for moral relativism a friend of mine for example a friend of mine said oh she's so wrong and i'm the one who jumps in and says you can't say anyone's wrong yeah so i was arguing supposedly for skepticism and well skepticism too because i began i began to realize again i was still in high school i began to realize if all i have is my puny brain and the vast scope of time in history how could i expect to know any kind of objective absolute universal truth ridiculous that's how it struck me as a teenager ridiculous of course i can't know that kind of truth and so i also went from you know from relativism into skepticism and by the way also determinism i had enough science background to think that we were basically biochemical machines and didn't have any free will anyway so i pretty rapidly became um a total relativist and skeptic and that's how i ended up at libri uh the labrie which is the ministry of friends and schaefer so you know i had had several years already of being a very very much an agnostic so so at this point can i jump in are you about 18 19 years old when you go to labrie and is this 80s or went just give me a sense of when when this might be i'm not trying to date you but just get some historical sense i know i know i was 19 it was 19 i was 19 years old okay what happened is i went up i went to europe because we had lived there when i was a child okay and i loved it i loved germany and i wanted to go back and so i did i went back and lived with a family my best friend's family um and so that's how eventually i ended up hearing about labrie which was in switzerland and i um sean you're going to laugh about this because people ask me well if you were not a christian by then why would you go to a christian ministry sure and the answer was i had some relatives who were stopping at labrie they were they were driving across the continent um to go to the cheap luxembourg flights back then everyone everyone who went to europe everyone who went to europe took took these these cheap luxembourg flights and so they said listen we're stopping at this place in switzerland why don't you come down and see us so i did not go to library to go to libri i went there to see my relatives wow my family members who were who are staying there for the weekend just the weekend um but but they had special they had a special discussion group for people who were there who were short-time visitors and and uh i don't know if you know this but back then uh a lot of the a lot of what they studied was taped lectures you know labrie grew up very organic very organically it started with schaefer giving lectures and then eventually they started taping the lectures um and then eventually people would be able to come and listen to these type of lectures by both fancy schaefer and by oz guinness and and others who were on staff and so they would they selected the lectures that they thought showed sort of the the core of the library message for short-term visitors and i was in that group and it was very evident that i was not a christian and so the the library staff person who was running the lectures said we have a free bed you want to stay okay that's how that's how it was back then it was very un unstructured yeah today you have to right ahead and you know get a reservation a year a year in advance but back then you know it was hey we have a free bed you want to stay and i have to tell you sean this is the first time i had ever encountered christian apologetics i had no idea that christianity could be defended with good reasons and arguments and logic i had never met by that time of course i was immersed in all kinds of secular philosophies um and i had never met a christian who could engage with those philosophies and the labrie the liberty staff could you know they knew i have to tell you they knew my questions better than they did because they were so well read in secular philosophy that they were able to say okay for example i said earlier i was a moral relativist do you think i had the term relativism no i was just a teenager i didn't even have the freight the term to describe what i was saying so i arrive at labrie and they say okay so you're a moral relativist okay so you're a skeptic so you know okay you're a determinist here's and here are all the good reasons against those positions i was astonished i was blown away i had never encountered christians like this and of course um i i should also add you know because labrie was a residential ministry and people actually lived in people's homes that was another big part of it um many people who went to liberty including myself would say that they were equally affected not just by the apologetics but also by viewing the kind of the the quality of christian community gotcha experiencing love in a way that we had never experienced it even in churches back home um that was equally impressive wow because what that meant is it was real right it wasn't just a bunch of abstract ideas that sounded good but these were people who actually lived it out and had a different quality of life now i have to tell you it was so impressive that i fled are you serious wow okay okay after only a month i i left wait you went for the weekend but you stayed a month though excuse me i stayed a month um yeah when they said you want to stay i said okay okay i need to find out more about these people oh i should add another thing i think you will appreciate this um okay so schaefer was into apologetics there was the uh there was the minis the um community there was also the arts because schaefer is well known for having encouraged christians to go into the arts yeah and i was studying at the um music conservatory in heidelberg germany so i was a musician and so the message of the arts was important to me but then the final thing was all the students at libri were hippies this was 1971. and everybody was a hippie and um back then hippies were the cool kids and so i was really again i was really impressed because i thought who are these christians who are able to reach across the cultural divide and appeal to these disaffected young people you know because back then there were no ministries to hippies you know later there were yeah um but at that time there were not there were not any ministries that were able to reach across that cultural divide so all that to say i was so impressed that i was afraid i might become a christian for emotional reasons you know because it was so attractive wow and i didn't want to do that you know christianity had already let me down once and i so i was not i was not going to become a christian unless i was intellectually convinced it was true wow and the internal pressure to make up my mind was so great at labrie that after a month i left okay and i went back to the states but at that because of my time at liberty i discovered that there was such a thing as apologetics i discovered c.s lewis i discovered gk chesterton you know all these people uh i of course continued reading schaefer's own books which had come out by then um i think osgoodes first book the dusty of death was out by then okay and so i continue reading continued reading and eventually became a christian in the in the quiet hours four o'clock in the morning one night now at four o'clock in the morning one night i was wrestling with god and and and saying you know what i am actually intellectually convinced by now um i don't know all the answers it'll take a lifetime to have all the answers but i know enough to be intellectually convinced that it's true and that was a that was my conversion that was you know people say you can't people say you don't have intellectual conversions well i did i had a purely except that i'd seen labrie of course so that i'd seen a very different form of christianity than most people um but when i actually made the decision it was just four o'clock in the morning one night wrestling with god and saying okay you won i basically i said you won the argument that's awesome okay okay you won the argument you want me you got it but then i wasn't i was not involved in a church or anything and so i said okay where do i find other christians and the answer was well i knew some at labrie so that's when i went back a year sean it was a year and a half later a year and a half later i went back to labrie in order to really get grounded and what did it mean to have a christian worldview you know what did it mean to be a christian um you know sort of across the board not just apologetics but personally and um and so on and i was there for four months which is uh about as long as most students were able to stay about three or four months because um of immigration laws you know you can stay on oh interesting okay there's a visa most european countries have a visa where you can stay for three months and so that's how it happened at labrie the vast majority of students came for three months which is roughly you know roughly a semester that's how that's how it worked so they invited me to stay longer but i decided it was time to go home and learn how to be a christian in the real world again hey talk to me a little bit if you can how francis schaefer shaped your thinking because i consider you in many ways a modern day francis schaefer especially kind of the split view of truth you've taken that idea and just articulated it so well what was it about his thinking in his philosophy that has particularly shaped you yeah you know to be honest for a while um you know when i was first a christian i read his books almost until i could memorize them because it was so it was so you know i read them over and over again because it was so different it was so new um and then i went through a period i don't know if you realize this but many christian academics um were kind of down on fancy schaefer because he was not an academic he was he was just a real live evangelist he was asked what i was at a um conference once where he was asked are you a theologian or a philosopher and he said neither one i'm an evangelist interesting and i isn't it and and that is very true if you read his books he's all about bringing people bringing people to a conversion experience that is his overwriting concern and so he's looking at secular world views um and analyzing them in order to overcome the barriers in people's minds to hearing the christian message that's over his overriding concern was always to and as he put it he said um this is one of his favorite quotes i give honest answers to honest questions that's great and christians weren't doing that i mean they still aren't to a large extent even today people will say if you come if you come to a christian leader with questions they will say you know do you have a moral problem you know i was asked that many times you know is it really a moral problem looking in the background is that really that you just want to party i have i was asked in a podcast not long ago i was asked this in a podcast you know is it really that you just wanted to party on the weekends you know is that what was driving you so your so-called agnosticism in other words people were not taking seriously the idea that hey if you are raised in a secular culture and you are told by the adult world around you that this is you know that these secular world views are true of course you're going to believe them you're going to sincerely believe these secular world views and so schaefer was right you have to deal with these secular worldviews that people have absorbed and not just dismiss them and say well you're really in rebellion you know you're really in some kind of spiritual rebellion or moral rebellion um no i didn't want to party on the weekends i'm sorry i was not attracted to that lifestyle i just sincerely had uh questions about whether christianity was true so schaefer was let me start with that in answer to your question first of all shaver was the first christian i ever met who acted as if my questions were valid that's amazing that's amazing up until then it was always uh if nothing else it was why don't you have enough faith you know you should have enough faith to overcome these questions um and until something's wrong with you right that was the message something's wrong with you whereas and when i went to labrie if anything it was the opposite it was oh cool you've got really nice questions let's dig in i've never been treated as though you know a person with questions was actually welcome um the the person by the way the person who led um you know i i told you labrie had these small small group um discussion groups for people who were there for just short term right sure trump and the person who was leading it when i was there um was daryl miller so i have to do a shout out okay daryl miller because he was uh he he taught at labrie for several years daryl is d-a-r-r-o-w and then he went into uh international development so he now talks about the importance of world view in international development you know you can't just throw money at development problems you have to address people's worldview so he was a he was important because he was the person who said hey we've got an extra bed would you like to stay and who said oh i'm so glad you i'm so glad you have questions you know we have answers so we're glad you have questions um so that was the beginning point is that schaefer um was the first person uh schaefer and his ministry was the first place i had ever encountered christians who welcomed questions because and weren't afraid of questions because they they knew christianity had answers i think a lot of reason people shame christians often shame people for their questions because they're because they really don't have answers and so they're afraid of questions and i'm sure you've run into this and you know apologetics is that that they're they're afraid they're afraid of questions because they don't really have answers and so they put it back on you and say something's wrong with you because you don't have enough faith so you asked about schaefer so that was the first thing great the second thing was this um there was a period of time when i thought i kind of outgrown shaver because you know he was not an academic and a lot of christian academics uh spoke badly of shaffer um and i have to tell you it was when i it was when i was writing a i was writing a review of phil johnson's book phil johnson is well known as a leader in the intelligent design movement and i think it was his book reason in the balance and i was writing a review for a publication and being a having been in the secular world of academia for so long this is this is what phil johnson brought to us by the way for a later question that you're going to ask um is that having you know he didn't convert until he was the late late 30s about 37 i think okay and so he had lived in the secular worldview and he had been um chief clerk to a supreme court justice warren i believe and he had been in the secular academia academic world you know the university of berkeley university of california at berkeley so he understood the secular world and he said he said in his book the main problem that faces christians is the fact value split that the concept of truth itself has been split apart that um you know in in most civilizations people have known that there's a natural order and a moral order and that the two are integrated there's one cosmic order that integrates them both and therefore truth is also an integrated system it's um truth will be an integrated whole and it's really only in the modern world since the rise of modern science that people began to say well no really the only uh reliable knowledge we have is of science is of empirically testable facts well what does that mean then for things that are things like morality or theology you know they cannot be stuffed into a test tube or studied under a microscope and so many people began to say well they don't really qualify as truths they are merely personal preference personal opinion you know your your own private experience what makes you feel better what helps you get through the night and shape and when i was doing this review of phil johnson's work on the fact value split that gave me the language to finally say oh wow that is what schaefer was talking about he was talking about it before we had the language you know the the labels of facts and values because he never used that those labels um and it was when i was reading phil johnson and who was steeped in secular philosophy and who was writing he was writing uh phil johnson was writing about how uh darwinism has essentially um cemented this fact that the fact realm right because now the fact realm is completely non-supernatural there's no need for a god to describe the natural worlds including biology including the origin of life and so on and so he was talking about the function that darwinism had served in cementing the fact value split because it has it essentially said the fact realm now is comprehensive enough to explain all of reality and therefore anything that you put in the value realm to use the fact value language anything you put in the value realm is not really true it's not really factual it's just your personal values which was identified with what it was really it really came from the verb what you personally value you know what's important to you yeah so it was very much very subjective very relativistic and schaefer had used a little diagram that was very helpful to people and he wasn't the first person to use this he got this because he was living in europe and a lot of european philosophers were already using this diagram that was something that christians didn't realize they thought this was some idios idiosyncratic thing that schaefer thought of but it wasn't it's very common among european philosophers he used it for the fact value split though he didn't use that language um he used the metaphor of two stories in a building so the lower story was the realm of facts and what we know by science and the upper story was the realm of values which is uh um morality theology and so on and when you say what was the main what was one of the main themes that i got from shaffer that turned out to be perhaps the most important theme that i got from schaefer was that the concept of truth has been split and the reason that christians are having trouble communicating with the secular world is because the secular world has put them in that upper story to use this two-story metaphor um or the value realm to use the fact value split you know facts are in the lower story values are in the upper story um christianity has been put in the upper story where it's really not about truth it's about your personal feelings what makes you feel better and so when you talk about christianity to a non-christian you intend to be communicating universal objective truth they hear you but in their mind my my students say this is the matrix once once they finally get this upper lower story divide they say this is a matrix because so many people think this way and they don't even know it that's right so when you make you make a claim about christian truth they don't hear it as a claim about christian truth they immediately non-reflectively in a knee-jerk reaction they put it in the upper story and think that you're giving them your personal preference your personal feelings and so shave because schaefer you know because he was primarily an evangelist that was his main concern is that we can no longer even communicate claims of christian truth without without being misunderstood and that we in a sense have to go through a two-step process we have to explain what we mean by truth and then explain how christianity is true and and and again because you want you want this to be personalized um that's what happened to me when i went to labrie that was exactly it i was so steeped in relativism and skepticism that i did go through that two-step process i first had to be convinced that there was such a thing as objective truth wow before i could even consider whether christianity was that truth so that uh when you say what's the most important thing i got from lewis lewis listen i'm this fall i'm teaching a course on lewis and shaffer so i'm constantly oh that's great lewis and shaffer but yeah the main thing i got from shaffer uh was that the concept of truth itself has been split apart well that makes perfect sense and i've seen that in your book total truth which i love i've got your book love thy body right here which is in my top five recommendations even for with high school students i took a group of high school students through it a year ago about a dozen and i think it just explains that especially now with gender and biological sex we're seeing that split even greater so that that makes sense walk me through after leaving labrie what was the decision for you to become an apologist become a thinker was it just obvious you wanted to do it right away did you decide at some point i want to be a professor want to write want to speak what was that journey like for you well um the latter there was no decision okay it was just you know you have to do what you're um what god has what god has equipped you for i i'm talking to some of my students about this right now so it's on my mind um i'm trying to persuade them that they have a life message they have a life message i have a i have a student who didn't convert until she was 37. um she has a law degree she works for the city government she's very high ranking um but she feels like a you know a newborn in terms of her christianity but which is true but it's time for her to start thinking about but what is your life message i do believe for all of my students god has given them a life message and that's what they need to find for me there was just no question about it i was so driven sean i was so driven i'm still driven yes you are i was so driven to find truth after here's here's the um maybe here's the larger answer after being at labrie um and with the second time the second time which was a year and a half later and i had become a christian i have to tell you i continued reading books on apologetics because i was afraid i'd just done something really stupid becoming that is becoming a christian i i was afraid i had me maybe i had made a mistake maybe i had become maybe i'd done something stupid um i was second guessing i was second guessing my decision to become a christian constantly and so for a long time for for years i was still reading mostly philosophy and apologetics um to be really really sure that christianity was true so again you know this wasn't an academic interest this was very much driven by my own need to find truth and to make sure that now that even though even though i had become a christian i still needed to search and confirm that um christianity it was true that you could make a good reasoned argument for it and so on so so for so i'll like to say that for several years um there was no decision about this it was an internal drive to know um and then it seemed of course then it seemed most logical that i got married to a man who wanted to attend seminary in a while that makes sense that makes total sense i'll do that i'll attend seminary with him so that's how i got my m.a degree oh that's great uh and then he knew of a christian graduate school in toronto canada um called the institute for christian studies um which i don't particularly recommend anymore because it's gone so liberal okay uh but it was it was great at the time about half about half the professors at the time we're still we're still biblical and orthodox um and it had the same um philosophical roots that schaefer had when i say that schaefer understood the fact the fact value split before americans did is because he was living in europe um and there were there was a european there was a dutch philosopher who was a christian whose name was herman d'orjeerd dorya d-o-o you know this name d-o-o-y-e-w-e-e-r-d so that you know the double vowels is very dutch um but diamond had was the first system he was the first you have to realize here's the first systematic uh protestant philosopher so we've had a lot of philoso philosophical um philosophy professors you know historians of philosophy but in terms of somebody who said hey i'm i'm going to construct what i think is a biblical philosophy deuter is the only one we have as as protestants and he's worth yeah he's worth knowing for that reason alone um uh and he was he was the one who influenced schaefer then gotcha so that makes sense so if you read chief you read schaefer and then you would read dory where did you say okay schaefer was sort of the populized version of dory red oh that's good to know i i didn't know so if you want to go beyond schaefer and say you asked me where i went where went intellectually after labrie well i kept that i kept saying where did schaefer get this where did he get this i want to know the sources i want to go back behind shaffer and find out where he got this stuff and a lot of people didn't do that um but but dirty weird was one of his most important sources um so uh and dory weird was the inspiration for this christian graduate school in toronto so there's the connection so by going to toronto we were able to dig more deeply into deutsche thought which was in a which was therefore digging into the sources of schaefer's thought that makes sense doesn't it yeah so it's actually called doingwords philosophy is called reformational philosophy because they were in a sense trying to go back to the reformation you remember the reformation was about saying okay medieval christian thought was largely dominated by greek philosophy you know when the early church said hey we've got a new theology but how do we express it philosophically many of them picked up neo neoplatonism was the most popular philosophy okay through the middle ages and then uh you know then aquinas uh in the days of aquinas uh like aristotle was being rediscovered so so aquinas in a sense christianizes aristotle and then the reformation comes along and says why are you guys connecting christianity to these pagan philosophies right don't we don't we have a truly biblical philosophy so that's been the in a sense that's been the goal of protestants all along unfortunately they didn't really succeed after the reformation they they went back to teaching scholasticism in their in the protestant universities um but that was the goal and and that's what dorywood's goal was so he was writing in the late 19th early 20th century interesting and he was yeah he was trying to recover that goal he was trying to recover is there a distinctively biblical philosophy or do we have to rely like the middle ages did on plato and aristotle i mean can't isn't there a biblical philosophy and that's what he was trying to do i have to i have to tell you in many ways then he was like all of us he was still a child of his times and so he kind of um a lot of his influence were uh phenomenology for example oh gotcha and um a lot of catholic thinkers are influenced by phenomenology a lot of them think that phenomenal of all the isms out there um that phenomenology is perhaps the most compatible with christianity secular phenomenologists have complained about what they call the theological turn that's the term they've used the theological term turn within phenomenology because there's so many christians who are phenomenologists who are interpreting it within a christian perspective so doing it would fall into that category to some indeed to some degree just to you know just as a heads up but that was what we were that's that's what we did when we went to toronto it was this it was called the institute for christian studies it was an offshoot of the free university of amsterdam which dory red had started and so it taught this dory radiant philosophy which was in a sense you know the the metaphysics behind what schaefer said gotcha that's that's how i went yeah that's super fascinating i i had i had no idea that was his connection i've read some of his stuff seeing him cited but that makes a lot of sense of the thinking behind him i i have a bunch of questions for you but one i'm curious about is as a female apologist have you faced what you think are some just kind of unique challenges and that apologetics has pretty much been dominated mostly by men has that given you advantages been more difficult what's been that like for you oh it's definitely more difficult yeah yeah no no doubt about it it's definitely more difficult but sean there's actually another problem and that is i don't i don't have a phd i have never had the time or the money to take to take time off from writing is all my books behind me i know that's awesome um i've never been able to take time off from writing so i i have to to be honest i'd have to say it was it was twofold okay um in the academic world as you well know because i know you you went back and got your phd um it is harder if you don't have a phd i did uh yeah i'm very very grateful that um uh hbu i i teach now at houston baptist university and i'm very grateful that they were willing to essentially take my books as a substitute for a phd every book is at least one dissertation absolutely they really are um yeah but in spite of that you know i tried to get jobs at christian universities because i'm a teacher at heart i love to teach yeah um my writing is all teaching as you can tell totally that's been my main my writing is has been my main form of teaching um so i have tried to get jobs at christian universities and because phds are so common as you again you probably know because you get a phd there's so many unemployed or underemployed phds these days yeah so even christian even tiny christian colleges won't even look at you without a phd um so i'm very deeply grateful that hbu uh it was when denmark reynolds was the provost so i have to give him credit john mark reynolds um wanted to start a program in cultural apologetics and you probably know this but hbu is the only christian university that has a degree program in cultural apologetics yeah there are other universities like biola that have courses in cultural apologetics but there's no under no uh i think union you know maybe some other universities um but this is the only um you know christian university that has a degree program in cultural apologetics um and he and drum mark reynolds you know was well it was my book well i'll hold it up it was my book saving leonardo it was this book great book saving saving leonardo um which talks about how intellectual history how the history of ideas percolates down to the arts and since we were talking about schaefer i'll add i'll add this the term cultural apologetics uh was first coined to describe what schaefer did and a lot of people don't know that um but schaefer was the first person to say you know apologetics doesn't need to be these abstract arguments floating around in the ether even though those those are good of course but he said apologetic can also be looking at how ideas percolate down to ordinary people through cultural means through art and literature and music movies advertisements you know the whole the whole shebang um and so because he was that was new nobody's nobody had done that before um and so because he was looking at how ideas percolate down through the culture um there was termed cultural apologetics okay yeah that's where the term came from and so i mean there are today there are people who don't know the history uh there are people who think uh for example i run into people who think cultural politic apologetics means learning how to write narnia stories like lewis did you know because that's literature right so that's culture sure um so it's important to note that the term cultural apologetics which is what we're trying to do here houston came from shaffer it was his um it was his form of ministry where he it was it was wonderful i mean again back back to my time at labrie this was really impressive that he he was able to bring together um the cognitive in other words the um the philosophical ideas yeah and arguments with the arts with art and literature and and even movies and so on so that he was addressing the whole person the cognitive and the creative and that's what i love about cultural apologetics that he that he pioneered is that it involves the whole person and you know so the people who come like my students who come to the program you know you don't just get built in one area you you get built up across the board anyway so that's great and uh that's what we do at um hbo your question was i'm thinking back to your question now so yes so hb was the only christian college that was willing to to say hey you you qualify for your books you know if you talk about if you talk about an artist in residence or a writer in residence they're not hired for having their phds they're hired for what they can do yep and so that's essentially how hbu decided to treat my position you're hired for what you can do and so that made a big difference you know that that i have you know all of my all of my books have reached bestseller status in terms of the number of of volumes sold and so hbu was willing to say okay fine you are doing cultural apologetics love it um and so you know we're going to hire you for this position that's awesome that makes sense well i love that you're doing that at hbu cultural apologetics is so important um so it sounds like you found a good home a question for you i've got is do you have a favorite biblical book that you just go to and you enjoy the most well you're gonna laugh [Laughter] um my favorite book is habakkuk okay i love it tell me why um and and i will give you the reason because um well it ties back to labrie again when i went to labrie as an agnostic and had a lot of intellectual questions uh there were also emotional issues and on staff at labrie was a psych psychiatric social worker her name was sheila bird and she was affectionately called birdie and she realized that for many people their objections to christianity were not just intellectual but also emotional especially if they grew up in a christian home that they were reacting against and of course this is primarily true of pastors kids and missionary kids uh sheila bird birdie grew up as a missionary kid you know so she was very aware of this and she too went through a period of being a non-christian and you know before coming back so she agreed when when labrie asked her to come on staff she agreed because she knew that you needed both you needed both both the intellectual message and the arguments and the um emotional psychological issues and um i had grown up in a severely abusive home oh wow um and i'm starting to say it publicly these days you know it took a long time as long as my father was still alive i didn't say it probably hmm he died a few years ago and um he was severely abused not just a little bit you know like punching us closest punching was his favorite was his favorite way of of hitting us and um so that was another i did have very strong emotional objections to christianity because my parents claimed to be christians and i thought i don't want that form of christianity that's not something i want that's something i want to leave behind when i moved away from home after high school i wanted to leave everything behind that i'd known as a child i wanted to start over with a clean slate i wanted to rebuild my whole life that's of course you can't do that birdie showed me you can't do that you actually have to work through the issues of your childhood so at age this is good at age 19 seeing birdie write well it was really more on my second trip to library my second trip to library i was there four months so i and i i saw what you know i said i said originally that i went to liberty because i had some family members there it was my parents so birdie saw my father and she she told me she told me when she saw my father her response was there's a man who oppresses everyone around him wow she could see it and therefore she been praying for me i hadn't even decided to go see her yet right because i didn't know she existed she started praying for me when she saw my father because she knew i would have father issues um the first time i went to see her you know i was still an agnostic and she said um i knew you were coming god always tells me who's going to come see me because of course she couldn't see every student who came through labrie right of too many and so she told me god would tell her who was going to come see her and so god had told her i was going to come and she'd seen my father so all that to say um what was your i somehow it's tied back to your original question it was about habakkuk and your favorite biblical book thank you so my first several years as a christian i read apologetics and suffering i read books on apologetics as i said earlier because you know i still felt like i needed to really get grounded on suffering i had to come to grips with how did christianity address the problem of suffering wow and i read a lot of books on emotional healing books on christian christianity and psychology and so on but i read solzhenitsyn you know i read books sultanate since all three volumes i read because i wanted to know how do people survive suffering that was my biggest practical question as a christian how do people survive suffering and i've read a lot of prison uh prison memoirs um you may know some of the others like there's a book called the vietnamese gulag by a vietnamese person who was put into um a gulag style prison after the north when the north vietnamese came in when the communists came in and took over south vietnam there's a book called against all hope by i think is his name um he's a poet and a catholic and he was put into cuba's prisons he writes he writes very eloquently about the years he spent in um castro's prisons it's called against all hope all that to say to give to give you an idea of the the uplifting literature i was reading but that's i have found that many christians don't really face the problem of suffering sometimes until later in their christian life when some you know some some crisis happens and so i i have discovered that this i've discovered that this was somewhat unusual that as soon as i became a christian i just dove in to questions uh uh to books and literature on suffering habakkuk the end of the book of habakkuk says you know if this i haven't read it for a little while here so i don't have it memorized word for word but remember the book well in the book he's challenges god and he says why are you bringing why are you bringing the babylonians to conquer your people i mean these are your people why are you doing this and um you know he says i'm going to stand on the ramparts and ask god until god tells me the answer um and basically god says yeah well i sometimes use secular people or none back then it would be pagan not secular i i use pagan people you know to uh to chastise my people i do that and um but as soon as they've accomplished that i'm of course i'm going to chastise them too they're not going to get away with it um but i i do use suffering to chastise my people um and so habakkuk is reconciled to it as a result and at the end remember he says though the figs don't grow on the trees you know and the though the the crops don't grow in the fields uh that we don't have animals in our in our pens yet i will rejoice in the lord yeah and even though everything goes bad even though there's a lot of suffering and deprivation yet i will rejoice in the lord so actually that is my favorite book of the bible that makes sense that's that's beautiful can i ask what was it as you were reading so much stuff on suffering about the christian worldview that made you find the christian worldview plausible so i know it answered some of the philosophical questions about objective morality and truth etc but what was it in terms of its approach to suffering and evil that made sense to you yeah that's a really good question sean um a lot of it comes down you know uh let me refer back to uh what wasn't it lewis lewis who says um we're fighting a battle we're fighting a battle and there are times when it will look like we're on the losing side there were times there will even be times when it looks like the supreme commander is not even on our side right in other words it looks like god's not on my side uh lewis uses the analogy of you're in a battle and sometimes it may look like the supreme commander is not really doing he's he seems to be helping the enemy not you um and he says in those times we have to trust what we do know about the commander in other words it's not blind faith because we do know a lot about the commander we do know a lot about god you know all of that back on in philosophy and science was a big part too it's sean we haven't even touched on that but i wrote for 13 years for a creationist organization um that was my first writing job uh and i wrote it was fun i first wrote for children they had a little science reader that was a child yeah i recommend this for anyone who wants to become a writer learn to write for children first that's great advice you find out all of the things that you think you know but when you really you know you use an abstract term of some kind and if somebody says yeah but what does that really mean you find out that it's very difficult to unpack it and take it apart and for children of course you have to do that so i uh it was kind of like the did you ever you're so young you might not have grown up on these but i grew up on weekly readers did you have weekly readers i don't recall the weekly readers this was an attempt to get young uh young students to to to to read newspapers you know so uh when i was young there were these things called weekly readers and they were like little newspapers for elementary school kids um so this was kind of a weekly reader on science though just on science and it was put out by uh the bible science association so i started writing for first through third grade and then second and and then uh fourth through sixth grade and then junior high and then high school and then finally i was writing for their uh adult newsletter and i was writing you know four to five thousand word background is for the adult news daily so yeah these were quite substantial and over time i talked them into letting me write on world view issues not just science in other words my my prime example would be say somebody like john dewey who's considered you know the father of american education because he had so much influence but you know he was a very committed darwinian and his theory of how the mind learns you know how children learn was modeled on darwinian evolution so he said you know an organism evolves when it encounters a challenge in its environment and so it involves an adaptation and adaptation to the environment and he said the same thing in education you put a problem in front of the kid and you let them evolve an adaptation you know a problem-solving strategy to deal with it and so there's really not a question of true or false it's just you know is that a viable strategy for dealing with the um you know with this with this particular intellectual challenge and so it's by it's you know inherently relativistic but if you don't know that you don't understand dewey dewey was a darwinian through and through yeah i got to say so i had 13 years writing on these issues you know on science and so even when i had doubts you know i think we'll all be set by doubts at times um god doesn't come through on um a prayer that we've prayed very devoutly you know we really really want this and god doesn't come through you know i think we're all challenged by doubts at times but i have to tell you after writing for 13 years on science um i knew that whatever emotional doubts i had you know there's just there's no secular worldview that answers the questions that from science from science in particular philosophy as well but after 13 years of writing on science and you know that was kind of my intellectual stronghold um so that anytime i had emotional doubts or questions i knew christianity was true i knew there were no secular worldviews that answered the questions the way that christianity does so the combination of the philosophical arguments from liberty as well as the scientific arguments um so i've forgotten your question again i'm sorry no that that that's okay i'm trying to get inside your thinking in your life so you're doing awesome it was about what was it about the evil and suffering in the christian worldview and you started with lewis how he would say in these battles it feels like we're losing but i have enough confidence that we're winning so it sounds like if i heard you right you were saying there was evidence that christianity was true as a whole and the basis to put trust in god even when you didn't know particular reasons for things that happened is that fair oh that's excellent that's an excellent summary exactly so between the philosophical arguments that i'd sort of worked through at labrie and the scientific arguments that i'd worked through for all these years working for the bible science association which by the way doesn't exist anymore um when emotional issues arose very uh connected to suffering you know why is my life so bad why am i so unhappy why are why are things not working out you know uh you there was a big contrast between this beautiful truth that i knew of christianity it was beautiful right compared to secular worldviews christianity is very positive it says that humans have you know great value and dignity it says that there's like you said ultimately good is going to win out you know it's a beautiful it's beautiful as well as convincing um but my life wasn't beautiful well my life was such a mess i had this beautiful system over here system of thought and theology and doctrine and then my life was such a mess what kept me going is as you said is knowing christianity was true that there were good reasons for it intellectually i could not deny it and i think this is a good example of where when you're intellectually convinced that is your stronghold when your emotions go up and down amen when you know that it's true that will keep you stable that's a that's a great word i've got so many questions for you but i also want to i want to respect your time for coming on so maybe we'll do a follow-up at some point but i i want to encourage you if i if i can thanks for sharing you said publicly you've been sharing recently about the abuse hadn't for years my dad grew up with a different kind of abuse from his dad it was very s pretty not from his dad and his family severe sexual abuse and about i don't know a dozen years ago he sat us down as a family and shared that he was going to share it publicly and the amount of people that have been ministered to by his willingness to share that absolutely just blows me away so i think it's powerful to have somebody so committed to truth like you are from the get-go you wanted to know truth what keeps you grounded is truth to share that labrie it was the love and the relationship and your heart was like i just want a life that is true and gives me satisfaction and meaning and i just want to feel better make sense of this pain that is so powerful and just well-rounded that i from rhyme sit for what it's worth i'd encourage you to incorporate that in when you get the chance to speak there's a couple comments just about how how powerful that was that you shared that so thanks for doing that i want to encourage all your books are awesome they're behind you in particular i can't even say a favor because i love total truth but love thy body again if anybody watching this has not read love thy body it's a must it's a road map especially with lgbtq issues today it will just help you see things with clarity that i think are often missing so hope people will pick that up and if you want to study cultural apologetics you're right we have a class at biola but if you want to go in depth and sometimes john mark reynolds will come teach that class for us but if you want a full degree on cultural apologetics uh check out hbu so we consider again hbu a sister school we're in partnership we need as many people doing and training this as possible so really grateful for what you do thank you nancy well thank you sean those were wonderful questions and uh you don't i don't get an i don't often get an opportunity to talk about my own experience so this was very special i appreciate it well thanks thanks for doing that very quick to our list our viewers here uh make sure you hit subscribe because we have some interviews coming up you are not going to want to miss we're going behind the scenes with wayne grudem with craig keener interestingly enough next friday we have craig evans coming on to talk about the new dead sea scrolls discovery and i some of the stuff he has to say is fascinating and then i've just had an agreement from a progressive christian to come on we're not going to debate but have a conversation about the differences between evangelical christianity and progressive christianity the goal is just to model a healthy civil conversation highlight the similarities and also some of the stark differences so if you're new to the channel brought to you by biola apologetics make sure you hit subscribe notification button you're not going to miss stuff we have connect coming up pick up love thy body uh nancy don't disappear yet hang in there but thanks so much for everybody for uh for joining us today you

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 10,973

Keywords: Nancy pearcey, total truth, saving leonardo, love thy body, background, life, testimony, experience, author, francis schaeffer

Id: 8bIJ25Snz04

Length: 62min 50sec (3770 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021