Between Faith & Reason with Dr. Jeff Lawrence "A Strange New World" Discussion on Carl Trueman's Book: Special Guest Jeremy Woods
Oct 30, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Jeremy Woods, the incoming senior pastor at First Baptist Winter Garden, delves into Carl Trueman's thought-provoking book. He explores how Western culture has redefined identity through expressive individualism and the influence of thinkers like Nietzsche and Freud. Woods also discusses the political nature of sexual liberation and the growing impact of gender theory. They highlight the dangers of losing God as an identity anchor and offer a gospel-centered perspective that brings renewed dignity and hope.
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Romantics Started The Inward Turn
- Carl Trueman and the hosts trace modern expressive individualism back to Rousseau and the Romantics who made inner feeling the moral center.
- This inward turn birthed the modern mantra "I feel, therefore I am," reshaping authority from transcendent truth to personal sentiment.
The Triple Influence On Modern Identity
- Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud combined to remove God, politicize morality, and make desire the core of identity.
- Their trio produced a cultural logic: my truth, my power, my desire, which helps explain modern identity politics.
Sexual Liberation Became Political
- Later thinkers like Reich and Marcuse politicized sexual liberation and framed sexual norms as repression.
- This reframed erotic desire as central to freedom and turned sexual ethics into political battlegrounds.
