Disregarding The Body – Podcast
The Crisis of our Time
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
Companion Posts
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Starting Again
I was born in the sixties. But I am not a child of the 60’s. My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way. Dad was a minister. If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years. It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain. But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.
So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history. There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives. We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public. That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation. It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse. You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.” You might even have your career derailed. If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger. In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift. (See the following posts, here & here.)
As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”
The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.
A long and winding road brought us to this point. I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here. As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)
The Promise of Disembodiment? A Big Lie!
Modern culture is haunted by a fantasy: that our bodies don’t matter, that they are clay to be reshaped at will, or husks to be cast aside when they no longer serve us. Liel Leibovitz, in a striking First Things essay, names this trend “the promise of disembodiment”—and shows how dangerous it truly is.
“Those of us who know that we were created in God’s image have no choice but to acknowledge our bodies, those awkward earthly vessels that matter and cannot be manipulated as if they were raw material for our disembodied wills.”
From abortion to assisted suicide, from the sexual revolution to today’s transgender movement, the same underlying assumption appears again and again: the body is not sacred. It is merely a tool, an accident, or worse—a hindrance.
Leibovitz observes:
“Take away this belief in the sacred character of the body and it becomes not a temple but a speed bump.”
And once our bodies are seen as speed bumps, it becomes easier to justify all kinds of destruction. Babies in the womb are “clumps of cells.” The elderly and the sick become “burdens.” Male and female cease to be God-given realities and are recast as fluid “identities” invented in the imagination.
Why the Lie Is So Appealing
The disembodiment lie seduces because it offers a counterfeit freedom. If my body is irrelevant, then I can define myself however I wish. I can erase biological sex, evade the natural consequences of sex, or reject life itself when it no longer feels worth living.
But this “freedom” comes at a terrible cost. As Leibovitz warns, it is really an escape from reality itself:
“When you do away with the sanctity of the body, you invite tyranny, because you are no longer bound to acknowledge what is real, only what is willed.”
This is not just a philosophical mistake. It is a spiritual rebellion. To reject the body is to reject the Creator who formed us from the dust and breathed into us the breath of life (Gen. 2:7).
The Christian Response
The Christian worldview stands in radical opposition to this false promise. Scripture declares:
- “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
- Jesus himself affirms this when he says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4).
- St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you…? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
In other words: the body is not an afterthought. It is sacred. It is integral to our personhood. It is destined for resurrection glory.
Why This Matters Now
We live in a culture where disembodiment is the new orthodoxy. Children are taught they can “change” their sex. Courts and legislatures increasingly normalize euthanasia. The abortion industry insists that unborn life is expendable. And technologies—from artificial wombs to digital fantasies of “uploading consciousness”—offer new variations of the same old lie: that we can escape the body.
But Christians must speak clearly: these are not paths to freedom. They are forms of bondage. To despise the body is to despise the very goodness of creation. To mutilate the body is to mutilate the image of God.
As Leibovitz writes:
“The rejection of the body is the rejection of limits, and the rejection of limits is the rejection of responsibility. And where responsibility vanishes, so does love.”
This last point is crucial. A world that despises the body cannot sustain love, because love, as humans, requires embodiment. It requires showing up in the flesh, bearing burdens, honoring the vulnerable, cherishing the other as they are given to us.
The True Promise: Resurrection
The gospel gives us not the false promise of disembodiment, but the true promise of resurrection. Christ himself was raised bodily from the grave. His glorified flesh is the guarantee of our future. The destiny of the Christian is not escape from the body, but the redemption of the body (Rom. 8:23).
The big lie of disembodiment ends in alienation, confusion, and death. You won’t find love there. The truth of the gospel ends in communion, clarity, and eternal life.
So let us reject the false prophets of disembodiment. Let us instead proclaim and live the truth: our bodies matter, because God made them, Christ redeemed them, and the Spirit indwells them.
SOURCE: Radical Disembodiment by Liel Leibovitz
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Don’t Believe the Lies
Two Gametes, Two Sexes, and the Truth About Creation
Walk across almost any college campus today and you’ll hear that “sex is a spectrum” or that “male and female are just social constructs.” Yet when you strip away the slogans and look at the science, the truth is simple: there are two gametes, two sexes, and therefore two genders. This isn’t a matter of prejudice—it’s the foundation of biology itself. And it’s a truth that aligns deeply with the Christian understanding of creation.
What the Biologists Are Saying
Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist from Harvard, recently wrote in Tablet:
“Sexual reproduction in animals can only occur when two distinct types of gametes (specialized sex cells containing DNA) fuse: the small mobile ones (sperm) and the large immobile ones (eggs). We call animals that produce sperm ‘male’ and those that produce eggs ‘female.’ That’s about it. The bottom line is that there are two gamete types and thus two sexes.”
Hooven points out that this is not a controversial view in her field. Among mainstream evolutionary biologists, the “gametic view” is the consensus. The controversy, she argues, is political, not scientific.
Francis (Sid) Dougan makes the same case in his paper published in Archives of Sexual Behavior. He explains the evolutionary process called anisogamy, where reproduction depends on the existence of two—and only two—types of gametes. Dougan writes:
“The two-sex system originates in anisogamy: the condition where reproduction involves two distinct gamete morphs, large and small. This evolutionary split is the foundation of ‘female’ and ‘male.’ Claims about ‘third sexes’ misunderstand or misapply this biology.”
In other words, while there may be rare medical conditions or variations, there is no such thing as a “third sex.” Dougan continues:
“The existence of only two sexes is not a cultural construct, but a biologically constrained inevitability of anisogamous reproduction. As such, there are only two sexes, and there can never be more.”
Why This Matters
Hooven warns that confusing identity with biology leads to real-world harm:
- In medicine, ignoring sex differences can obscure crucial data on disease risk and treatment.
- In sports, blurring the categories of male and female undermines fairness and safety.
- In law and policy, redefining sex creates ambiguity that destabilizes rights and protections.
As she puts it:
“Facts do matter. The gametic definition matters in science. It’s the only one that applies across all sexually reproducing species. It is indispensable in evolutionary biology, medicine, and public health.”
A Christian Response
For Christians, none of this should come as a surprise. Scripture is clear from the beginning: “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Creation is not chaotic but ordered, and the existence of two sexes is part of God’s design for life, family, and fruitfulness.
This does not mean we dismiss or mock people who are confused about their identity. Compassion is essential. But compassion must be anchored in truth. To affirm what is false—whether scientifically or biblically—is not love, but harm.
St. Paul reminds us that creation itself reveals God’s order (Romans 1:20). Biology is bearing witness to what Scripture has declared all along. Hooven and Dougan, though not writing from a Christian framework, are echoing the reality that God has woven into creation: there are two gametes, two sexes, two genders.
Conclusion
In a culture that insists everything is fluid, it takes courage to affirm what is fixed. But truth and love belong together. Christians can and must speak with both clarity and compassion: honoring the biological reality of male and female while pointing to the deeper truth that our identity is most fully found in Christ 1For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
Or as Jesus Himself said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” (Matthew 19:4).
There are only two gametes. There are only two sexes. And that is not a problem to overcome but a gift to receive.
SOURCES:
Carole Hooven
Tablet Magazine Article
F. S. Dougan
X-account
Companion Post
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Polyamory & Adoption in Canada
For those who shouted “That’s just fearmongering, nothing more!” Or worse….
Three gay men in a polyamorous relationship adopt a three year old child in Quebec, Canada. “[Quebec’s Youth Protection Services] learned that we are a little different because we’re three, but we’re not different from any other family.”
Appalling and evil. This should be illegal. But it isn’t.
Video link here: https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1971944709804511583
and here:
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“But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’“
Jesus
(Mark 10:6)