July 16, 2025 • 32 mins
Join hosts Karen Potter and Theo McManigal in this powerful episode of the Covenant Eyes Podcast as they welcome renowned Catholic speaker and author Christopher West of the Theology of the Body Institute. In this inspiring conversation, Christopher unpacks the Theology of the Body, shares his personal story, and explores how Christian parents can raise their children with a biblical understanding of sexuality in today’s oversexualized culture.
🔥 Topics Covered:
✔️ Christopher's personal awakening and faith journey
✔️ The truth about Eros, Agape, and God's plan for love
✔️ Why sexuality is under spiritual attack
✔️ The difference between redemption from sexuality and of sexuality
✔️ Parenting advice on instilling biblical sexual ethics in children
✔️ How to combat pornographic culture with Gospel-centered truth
📖 Mentioned in this episode:
Theology of the Body Institute: https://www.theologyofthebody.com
Books by Christopher West
Saint John Paul II's teaching on human sexuality
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#TheologyOfTheBody #ChristopherWest #CovenantEyes #ChristianSexuality #ParentingTips #FaithAndCulture #PurityCulture #AntiPorn #ErosAndAgape
CHAPTERS:
00:00 | Intro – Welcome Back to the Covenant Eyes Podcast
00:24 | Guest Introduction: Christopher West’s Background
01:50 | Christopher’s Journey from Desire to Redemption
06:40 | What is the Theology of the Body?
10:15 | Eros vs. Porn: Reclaiming Sexual Desire
14:00 | The Wedding at Cana and the Symbolism of Wine
18:00 | Teaching Kids About Biblical Sexuality
21:00 | Gird Your Loins with Truth – Raising Resilient Children
25:00 | Satan’s Envy of the Human Body and Co-Creation
29:20 | Final Message of Hope & Redemption
30:45 | Closing Remarks & Resources
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Hey, welcome back to theCovenant Eyes podcast.
We're so glad to have youjoining us again today
for a great episode, Theo.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I know we're excited abouttoday's conversation, Karen.
As always, it'sgreat to be hosting with you.
Yes, we gota fantastic conversation
coming up today.
Absolutely.
We are going to be talkingwith Christopher West
(00:27):
with the theologyof the Body Institute,
and he never disappoints.
He brings the hehe brings the truth.
I love it every single timehe joins us.
So Theo, with that,would you mind
introducing Christopherand giving his bio?
Absolutely.
Christopher West co-founder,president and senior lecturer
of the theologyof the Body Institute
(00:48):
and professor of TheologicalAnthropology and the
jointly sponsored master programwith Pontifex University.
His global lecturing,bestselling
books, multiple audioand video programs,
and popular podcastco-hosted by his wife
Wendy have made himone of the world's
most recognized teachersof Saint John Paul the Second's
theology of the body.
(01:08):
Christopher Westis the author of more
than a dozen books,including Word
Made Flesh, cycles A, B, and Ctheology of the Body
Explained theology of the bodyfor beginners, and Good News
About Sex and Marriage.
His work has been featuredin The New York Times,
on ABC news, MSNBC and Fox News,and on countless
Catholic and evangelicalmedia platforms.
(01:29):
Christopher West.
Thank you for joining us today.
How are you?
I'm well, Theo and Karen, it'sgreat to be with you, and I
so appreciate the good workyou guys are doing and
happy to be part of it.
Well thank you.
You know, we like to start offby just letting our guests know
a little bit about how yougot started, why you got started
with the theology of the bodyand where did that passion
come from?
(01:49):
So many years back?
Yeah, well, I have to takeyou back to my childhood
days in the 70s.
I had this experienceone night, lying in bed,
and Bruce Springsteencame on the radio
singing his 70s anthemBorn to Run, and it cracked
something open in me.
(02:10):
I don't it set me on a journey.
And.
And years later,I read Bruce Springsteen
say when he wrote Born to Run,he said I wanted people
to feel something and that theyhad to go chase after something.
And that's exactlywhat happened to me.
I was eight years oldand and I, I awakened
I that song awakened in mea yearning I can't explain it,
(02:33):
a yearningthat set me on a journey to seek
happiness, to seek fulfillment,to seek love.
One of the lines in the song isI want to know if love is wild.
I want to know if love is real.
Well, yeah,I wanted to know that and I,
I was raisedin the Catholic Church
in the 70s and 80s,and, and I was raised
when it came to that yearning,that hunger, that desire.
(02:57):
I was raised onwhat you might call
the starvation diet gospel.
The basic message wasyour desires are bad.
They're only going toget you in trouble.
You need to repress all that.
But follow all these rulesand you'll be a good, upstanding
Christian citizen.
Well, that wasn't goingto cut it for me.
I was a hungry dude.
So I became a quick convertin my teenage years
(03:19):
to what I've cometo call the fast food gospel,
which is the secular culture'spromise of immediate
gratification for the hunger.
And I don't want anybodyto lie to me.
Those chicken nuggets tastepretty good going down,
especially whenyou're really hungry.
But if that becomesyour steady diet,
as it did for mein my teenage years,
(03:40):
eventually the greaseand the sodium is going to
catch up with you.
And that's a picture of mein my college years
in the late 80s.
I fell on my knees in acollege dorm
saying, God in heaven,if you exist, you better
show me why you gave meall these desires.
Because they'regetting me and everybody I know
into a hell of a lot of trouble.
What is your plan?
(04:02):
And I kept seeking and seeking.
And a few years later,now I'm in my
my early to mid 20s,I discovered the teaching
of this crazy Polish guy,known to the world
as Pope John Paul the Second.
He was the pope of my childhood.
This teaching called theologyof the body.
(04:22):
And and I remember reading itfor the first time.
I was 24 years old,and I felt like he was speaking
right to my heartand saying, Christopher,
do you remember thatyearning that God awakened
in your heartwhen you heard that
Bruce Springsteen song?
Do you remember that awakenthat yearning that God awakened
in your heartwhen when Stacy Reed
(04:43):
sat next to you in third grade?
Yeah.
Yeah, I sure do.
Well, there's a name for that.
And he says the churchborrows her language
from the Greeks and callsthat yearning for
for true joy, for truelove, for true happiness.
It's called eros.
Eros.
And I remember hearinggetting introduced to this word
(05:04):
in the Greek.
And I thought, well, in my mind,the erotic realm is synonymous
with the pornographicrealm, right?
That's that's the fast foodI had been bingeing on.
And the Pope was saying to me,no, no, no, no, do not confuse
the Greek word eroswith the Greek word poornima,
(05:24):
right where we get the wordpornography.
Porn is a twisting, a distortionof God's plan for erotic love.
And God gave us eros.
This is my analogy,but I got the idea from Gpt2.
God gave us Eros to be likethe fuel of a rocket
that is, thatthat has the power to
(05:45):
launch us towards the stars.
But here's the tragedy.
With Original Sin, our rocketengines got inverted.
And so we go out into the worldlooking for love,
looking for happiness.
But it backfires on us.
And what I learned fromJohn Paul the Second was Christ
came into the worldnot to condemn those
(06:05):
with inverted rocket engines.
He came into the worldto redirect our rocket engines
to the stars.
I learned from himthat Christianity is not
a starvation diet.
It's an invitationto a wedding feast.
And Karen and Theo,when I discovered
that in my mid 20s,I knew I had found
(06:28):
certainly the answerto the crisis of my life,
but also the answerto the crisis of our times.
And I knew then I would spendthe rest of my life studying
this, teaching and sharing itwith the world.
And and I've had the privilegeto do that over the
last 30 plus years.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Wow. Those stories.
And, you know, it's impressive.
(06:48):
The, you know, how vividlyyou're able
to recall all of that,but that is the beauty of,
an authentic encounterwith Christ and with ourselves.
That that is a wayof sticking with us.
As we.
And then, of course,leading us forward.
Tell us a little bitmore about how
theology of the bodycan help us understand
(07:09):
God's design for,human sexuality.
I think the key tothe whole thing is to recognize
that Christ invites usnot to experience a redemption
from our sexuality,but to the experience,
to experience the redemptionof our sexuality.
(07:30):
Right. That's the key.
Not redemption from sexuality,redemption of sexuality.
And if I couldgive you a visual here,
this is my favorite visual.
This is I want everybodyto imagine
if you're watching this,that this painting, this paper
I'm holding upis a painting of man and woman.
Just as Godcreated us to be, right?
(07:50):
When we were nakedand felt no shame.
Why were they nakedwithout shame?
John Paul the second tells usthey were naked without shame
because they experiencederotic desire as nothing
but the desireto love as God loves, right?
We're made in the imageand likeness of God
as male and female.
(08:11):
This painting is an imageof how God loves naked
without shame.
They realizedthey were called to love
in the gift of self, right?
Christ will ultimatelyreveal this in his own flesh
by saying, this is my bodygiven for you.
That was the sentimentof erotic desire
(08:31):
in the beginning.
That's self-giving lovethe enemy.
However, he hates this paintingbecause this is an
image of heaven.
What does Saint Paul tell us?
He tells usthat the union of men
and woman in oneflesh is a great mystery
that refers to Christin the church, right?
This painting is a great mysterythat points us to heaven.
(08:56):
That opens a window to heaven.
That's why the enemy hates it.
And this is what has happenedto the painting.
With the original sin,it got terribly twisted up
and distorted.
And here is the classicmistake of I'm going to put this
in quotes. Spirit.
Sure, people, because Iput it in quotes
because this is not authenticChristian spirituality.
(09:17):
This is a, a false spirituality,but spiritual people in quotes
discover this in itscrumpled up form
and they say, well, that's justlooks like garbage.
Throw it away.
And so they're trying toexperience a redemption
from the body, redemptionfrom sexuality.
(09:38):
They throw the crumpledpainting away.
This is,not Christianity at all.
That's a puritanical,fearful approach
to Christianity.
No, no, listen to this.
Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboymagazine, says in 1953,
I started Playboy magazineas my personal response
(10:03):
to the hurt and hypocrisyof Puritanism in my strict
Christian upbringing.
This is what, largelythe culture has been
raised on a puritanical,fearful approach to sexuality
when it comes to what peopletypically think of Christian.
And I'm putting thatin quotes, right?
(10:24):
Reject the body.
We don't know whatthe body's for.
I don't know whythey're balloons
floating behind my head,but I think it's
because I went like this and itactivated some weird
program on myself.
I wonder what that.
So that's great.
Hugh Hefner reaches intothe trash can, calls this out,
and starts saying to themodern world, you mustn't
(10:46):
throw this away.
And guess what?
On this point, he was right.
We shouldn't throw this away.
But where was he wrong and wrongwith horrific
consequences for us all.
He left the paintingjust like this
in its crumpled up form,and he started celebrating
(11:09):
this crumpled up,distorted picture of sexuality.
And because most of uswere raised on that starvation
approach, throw it away.
It's bad.
When Hugh Hefner startedshowing us the greasy
chicken nuggets,he's like, don't
you want some of this?
And we're like, yes, I'm hungry.
Give me some of that.
But you feast on that.
And just likemy life demonstrates,
(11:30):
you're going to get really sick.
Well, here's what John Paulthe Second did for me.
And this is what he's doing forthe whole world.
And this is why it is the answerto the crisis of our times.
Right at the same time, HughHefner started Playboy magazine,
when John Paulthe second was a young
Polish priest.
He also pulled thisout of the trash can
(11:52):
and started sayingto the modern world, you mustn't
throw this away.
But he did somethingHugh Hefner didn't do
by reflecting onGod's original plan
for making us male and female,and by reflecting on
what Saint Paul calls inRomans chapter eight,
the redemption of our bodies,not redemption from
(12:15):
redemption of our bodies.
This young Polish prieststarted, crumpling this painting
for the modern worldand showing us who we really are
restoring for us that original,beautiful, wonderful,
glorious, pure visionof our humanity,
(12:37):
male and female.
This is called the redemptionof the body, not redemption
from the body.
Redemption of sexuality,not redemption
from sexuality. Right?
If we're justthrowing it all away,
we aren't enteringinto the very reason Christ came
into the world.
(12:57):
So think about itfrom this perspective.
Where did Christ performhis first miracle?
At a wedding?
At a wedding?
And what did he do?
What did he do withthat wedding seal?
He turned water into wine.
So there's a married couple herewho's run out of wine.
Well, okay.
They actually ran out of wine.
It was a real celebration,and they actually
(13:19):
ran out of wine.
But there's a deeper symbolicmeaning here in John Paul.
The second saysrunning out of wine
is the symbol of original sin.
Wine poured outfor us is God's agape,
sacrificial love rightin the beginning, men and woman
were naked without shamebecause they were
(13:40):
drunk on God's wine.
They were filled to overflowingwith divine love.
So in the beginning,eros or erotic
love expressed agapedivine love.
This is whatenabled them to be naked
without shame.
Well, what's going to happento the sexual relationship
if we all run out of wine?
(14:03):
You cannot givewhat you do not have.
The purpose of thesexual relationship,
and God's plan is to sharethe love of God, to share
the wine of God.
But if you've run out of wine,when Eros gets
cut off from agape,what you have is lust.
What you have are two peopleusing each other for their own
(14:25):
selfish pleasure.
The very first miracleof Jesus is to restore
God's wine to erotic love.
The very first miracle of Jesusis to redeem Eros
by restoring agape.
Only in this contextcan we understand
(14:47):
when Saint Paul says,husbands, love your wives
as Christ loved the church,and what does he say?
Just a few verses earlier,he says, don't
get drunk on wine,get drunk on the spirit,
get drunk on the spirit.
And what did they accusethe apostles
of on Pentecost day,when the Holy
Spirit fell on them?
(15:09):
They thought they were drunk,and guess what they were?
They were drunk on God's wine.
The goal of the Christian lifeto live the redemption
of our sexuality, not redemptionfrom our sexuality.
We have to be drunk onGod's wine.
There's no other way to live it.
That's the goal ofthe Christian life,
(15:30):
is to get totally drunkon God's wine.
Only thencan we learn how to love
as we're called to love.
That was a reallygood explanation,
and I think that'sa really interesting way
to look at it.
I think culture,you know, around
us really is impactinghow so many view,
sexuality in general.
(15:50):
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(16:12):
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(16:38):
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Now back to the show.
I think culture,you know, around us
really is impactinghow so many of you,
sexuality in general.
I know that wehear a lot from parents.
(16:58):
You know, they're reallystruggling on, you know,
they don't want to exposekids to things.
How do I protect them?
Like, what do I need to teachand equip them with to be able
to navigate the world?
I'm sure you guys are confrontedwith those same challenges.
So for the parents out there,what advice do you have
and how can theology of the bodyhelp parents
teach their childrena biblical version of sexuality
(17:20):
in an age appropriateways, of course, but
how do we use that?
So I would say to all parentswhat I was just saying
a moment ago, we we cannotgive what we do not have.
It is our responsibility asparents to do all that
we are capable of doingin unfolding the beauty,
(17:43):
the splendor,the glory, the dignity,
the astounding wonderof what I've been
calling the banquet,the banquet, the wedding feast,
the weddingbanquet of God's plan
for man and woman.
If we are not leadingour children to the banquet,
they are goingto take their hunger
to the fast foodbecause the fast food
(18:05):
is on display everywhere, right?
But again, you can't givewhat you don't have.
We have to immerse ourselvesin this banquet.
We have to take it in.
We have to let it inform usand transform us
to be able to pass italong to our children.
It's it's kind of likeif I were to draw an analogy,
(18:25):
you know, peoplewho eat a lot of garlic,
they smell like garlic.
It like, comes outtheir pores. Right?
We have to take in this visionso deeply and so
continually, regularly.
We gotta eat a lot of garlic.
And if we do, it will comeout of our pores
to our children.
(18:45):
And, you know, I could.
I have five children.
My wife and I have raisedfive children.
Most of them arein their 20s now.
Some of them are already marriedand have children of their own,
and all of our childrenwould would have
plenty of things to sayabout what we got wrong,
what my wife and I got wrong.
(19:06):
But I think they wouldalso recognize that we we
we tried to speak of God's planfor sexuality in the context of
everyday life.
It wasn't just thisnervous conversation
that we gathered aroundand said, now you're old enough
and we have to have a talk,and we're really nervous
about it.
(19:26):
It was it was everyday life.
Like putting our kids to bedfor years and years.
We would tuck our kids into bedand say something like this.
Thank you, Lord, for this day.
Thank you for making mommyto be a woman.
Thank you for making daddyto be a man.
Thank youfor calling Mom and Dad
to the sacrament of marriage.
Thank you for bringingJohn, Paul and Thomas and Beth
(19:47):
and Isaac and Graceinto the world through Mommy
and Daddy love.
Thank you for making the boysto be boys.
Help them to growinto strong men.
To give their bodiesaway in love.
Thank you for makingthe girls to be girls.
Help them to growinto strong women.
To give theirbodies away in love.
If they're called to marriage,please prepare them
for their future spouseand wherever
their future spouse we.
(20:08):
We lift that person upright now in prayer.
So I mean, that wasthat was every night for 20
whatever years that our kidsgrew up with and that that,
you know, that putting itin the context of the holy,
the sacred, this is whereyou come from.
You came into the worldthrough mommy and daddy love.
And that that's a beautifuland wonderful thing.
(20:32):
We have to find a language,a vocabulary, and a
peace and comfort in ourselvesso that we can open up
these mysteries.
And we have to frame itin the context of the battle
between good and evil, right?
Saint Paul tells usin Ephesians five that this is a
great mystery that revealsthe greatest good
(20:57):
in the universe.
Christ's love for the church.
And then he saysin the next chapter
of his letter,you want to live what I was just
telling you about.
Get ready for a warand you want to win this war.
You got to put onthe armor of God.
And the veryfirst piece of armor
Saint Paul sayswe have to put on to win
this battle is to guard ourloins with the truth.
(21:21):
If our loins are not girdedin the truth, boom!
We're going to be taken out.
We are going to be taken out.
Gird your loins with the truth.
It's the first thing we must doto win this battle.
If we are not fighting the goodfight ourselves, what hope do
we have to equip our childrento fight the good fight?
(21:41):
We have to help them understandthe difference
between good and evil,and to understand, as John Paul
the second says,that the truth of
human sexuality takes usto the very center of the battle
between good and evil,between life and death,
between loveand all that is opposed to love.
(22:02):
We're in a battle,but that battle
has already been wonby Christ on the cross.
It isn't.
The crucifixionisn't all about war
against the valueand dignity of Christ's body.
And where is the dragon inrevelations 12?
(22:23):
He's right before thepregnant woman,
and he wants to devourthe child.
The enemyfrom the very beginning
has aimed all his diabolic furyat our creation
as male and female,and our ability
to bring new lifeinto the world.
Hey, we have to understandwhat is at stake.
(22:45):
We have to understandwho we are,
whom we are fighting.
We're not fightingflesh and blood.
We're fighting principalitiesand powers
that hate our sexuality.
Scripture says thatSatan fell out of envy.
Well, what do we have thatthe fallen angels
don't have bodies?
(23:09):
And what do we get to do thatthe angels don't get to do
we get to co-create with God.
The good angels are an absoluteall of our bodies
in our fertility.
When the angelGabriel came to Mary,
he wasn't absolute or thatthe God he worshiped
(23:31):
was about to take fleshthrough this woman's fertility,
right through this woman's womb.
He was an absolute allbut the fallen angels are an
absolute envy of our bodies.
And envy is not just,oh, I wish I had what you had.
That's jealousy.
But envy says,I hate that you have it,
(23:52):
and I want you to hatethat you have it too, right?
There is a lot of body hatred.
The end result of pornographyis body hatred,
because pornography invites usinto idolizing the body,
but we will eventually despisewhatever we idolize
(24:14):
because our idolsnever satisfied,
they never give us what we want.
And so we start to hatethe thing that we once worshiped
the sexual revolution,which is really I don't even
like the term.
It wasn't a sexual revolution.
It was a pornographicrevolution.
It was a pornographicand contraceptive
and abortion revolution.
That's what it was.
That's not a sexual revolution.
(24:35):
That's a hatred of sexuality.
Those who go to pornographydon't love sexuality.
They actually hate it.
Those who use contraceptionand revert to abortion
don't love sexuality.
They actually hate it.
They're trying to alter it.
They're trying to change itinto something.
It's not right.
If you really love sexualityas God created it to be,
(24:57):
you would.
You would honor it.
You would honorit as God made it to be.
And that that, thatidolatry of the sexual will turn
to a hatred of the sexual.
And that's where we are now.
The pornographicrevolution began
by idolizing the body.
Now it's endingby despising the body.
We have to teach our childrenthe narrow way between
(25:22):
idolatry and that despisingor hatred of the body.
There's this narrow waywhere we come to honor the body.
We Revere the body.
As Saint Paul says,those parts of our body
that we thinkare less honorable.
These parts of the body deserveall the greater honor,
(25:45):
because God has bestowedon these parts of the body
the greater glory.
That's our marching ordersright there to learn
how to bestow onthe sexual parts of our body
the greater honor.
Because God has bestowedon these parts of the body
the greater glory.
(26:06):
Why the greater glory here?
Because this is what revealsthat we're made in the image
and likeness of God.
God is not sexual.
He's pure spirit.
But in the life ofthe Trinity, the
the God the Father,in a non-sexual way, in a purely
spiritual way, a divine way.
He is generating the sunfor all eternity.
(26:28):
He's generating the sun.
God's love is generous.
It generates.
And this is wherethe fallen angels go.
They hate this.
They hate this about us,and they want us to hate it to.
Blessed are those whotake no offense at me.
Jesus says,how do we take offense
(26:50):
at our own bodies?
Do we take offensethat God as a body?
Do we take offenseat the fact that God
wore diapers?
Do we take offense at the factthat God was born of a woman
and suckled that the breastof his mother?
Does that make us cringe?
Does that make usgo ill? Gross. Why?
(27:11):
Who told you that was gross?
Who told you the bodywas pornographic?
Who told youyou were naked? Right.
We've been listening to an enemyinform us about the meaning
of our bodiessince original sin.
And we have to stop.
Stop listening to that enemyinforming us about our bodies.
And we have to listento the Holy Spirit,
(27:32):
who is the thirdperson of the Trinity,
created all that exists, and Godthe Father, the son,
and the Holy Spiritlooked at everything they made
and said, behold,it is very good.
We overcome evil with good,and we have to understand,
I'm sorry, I'mgoing on and on here,
but I'll close with this.
(27:54):
We have to understandthis basic bedrock
biblical principle.
The devil doesn'thave his own clay.
The devil does not havehis own clay.
All he can dois take God's clay,
which, behold, it's very good.
And the enemy gets his hands onGod's clay and twist it all up.
(28:15):
We have to give our broken,twisted lives as they are
to the living God who took fleshas a male child, born of a woman
to redeem in masculinityand femininity.
We have to give himour diseased images.
We have to give themour disease ideas.
We have to give him all thosepornographic lies just as
(28:36):
they are in our heartsand our minds, and say, here
I am, Jesus.
Come, Holy Spirit,into this twisted mess
and untwist it in my lifeso that I might rediscover who
I really am.
That's the journey.
And if parents aren'ton that journey, there's no way
possible that they could leadtheir children on that journey.
(28:57):
The theology of the BodyInstitute exists to lead people
on that journey.
And if anybodywants to learn more,
please watch ourYouTube channel.
Listen to our podcast,come to our courses either
online, in person.
We we are here to helppeople, help lead people
on that journey.
I love that.
And what is the websiteaddress for you?
(29:19):
The theology of the body.com.
Great.
We're going to putthat in the show notes
for all of our listeners.
Well Christopher,we could probably go on
for three hours with you.
You are so knowledgeableand this is such
a good conversation.
I'm just loving it.
But unfortunately,we have to bring today's
episode to a close,and I do want to leave
our listeners with just amessage of hope.
You know, it canseem overwhelming.
(29:40):
You have sharedso much wisdom with us.
There's a lot to be done,a lot of work here, but we have
God on our side.
But let's leave our listenerswith some hope of,
you know, listen, thanks for theto look forward to.
He will bringto completion the work
he has begun in us.
That is our hopeand it doesn't matter
(30:01):
where we are on that journey,we all have more to do.
We all have to keep going.
We're all pilgrims.
I'm just a fellow pilgrimon the journey.
I'm a broken man.
I'm as broken as they come.
I can look back and I can saythank you, Lord.
By your graceI've come a long way.
But I still havea long way to go.
And our hope is thishe will bring
(30:22):
to completion the workhe has begun on in us.
And we just have to askalso for the grace to cooperate
with that work.
So, Lord, we ask right now,wherever we are on our journey,
help us to treasure your promisein our hearts
that you will bringto completion the work
you have begun in us,and give us the grace today
(30:43):
and tomorrow and the next dayand every day of our lives.
Just to say yes.
To say yes to what you arealready at work
doing in our lives, whereverthe obstacles are, Lord,
wherever the fears are,we ask that your perfect love
would cast out that fearwhere those disease
(31:03):
and pornographic imageshave have warped our minds
and our hearts and our capacityto love.
We invite this great giftof the redemption of our bodies
into those liesand into those diseased
images, uncomfortable at all,and show us who
we really are, Lord,and help us,
help us in our weaknessto unfold the beauty
(31:24):
of this banquetfor our children.
We ask all this in thename of Jesus a.
That is a perfect way tobring today's
episode to a close.
Christopher.
Thank you so much for joiningthe Covenant Eyes podcast.
It is always such an honorto speak with you.
We hope that you'll come backand join us.
Then maybe we can doa little longer segment
so we can really dive into moreof your wisdom.
(31:45):
Karen and Theo, it's a pleasure.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Well, thanks, Theo,for joining us too.
It's been a great joyhaving you back and the
the shotgun seathere of the podcast, I love it.
You're always a pleasureto work with.
And to all our listenersout there, thanks so much
for tuning in to this episodeof the Covenant Eyes podcast.
We'll see you next time.
Take care. God bless.
Hey, welcome back to theCovenant Eyes podcast.
We're so glad to have youjoining us again today
for a great episode, Theo.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I know we're excited abouttoday's conversation, Karen.
As always, it'sgreat to be hosting with you.
Yes, we gota fantastic conversation
coming up today.
Absolutely.
We are going to be talkingwith Christopher West
(00:27):
with the theologyof the Body Institute,
and he never disappoints.
He brings the hehe brings the truth.
I love it every single timehe joins us.
So Theo, with that,would you mind
introducing Christopherand giving his bio?
Absolutely.
Christopher West co-founder,president and senior lecturer
of the theologyof the Body Institute
(00:48):
and professor of TheologicalAnthropology and the
jointly sponsored master programwith Pontifex University.
His global lecturing,bestselling
books, multiple audioand video programs,
and popular podcastco-hosted by his wife
Wendy have made himone of the world's
most recognized teachersof Saint John Paul the Second's
theology of the body.
(01:08):
Christopher Westis the author of more
than a dozen books,including Word
Made Flesh, cycles A, B, and Ctheology of the Body
Explained theology of the bodyfor beginners, and Good News
About Sex and Marriage.
His work has been featuredin The New York Times,
on ABC news, MSNBC and Fox News,and on countless
Catholic and evangelicalmedia platforms.
(01:29):
Christopher West.
Thank you for joining us today.
How are you?
I'm well, Theo and Karen, it'sgreat to be with you, and I
so appreciate the good workyou guys are doing and
happy to be part of it.
Well thank you.
You know, we like to start offby just letting our guests know
a little bit about how yougot started, why you got started
with the theology of the bodyand where did that passion
come from?
(01:49):
So many years back?
Yeah, well, I have to takeyou back to my childhood
days in the 70s.
I had this experienceone night, lying in bed,
and Bruce Springsteencame on the radio
singing his 70s anthemBorn to Run, and it cracked
something open in me.
(02:10):
I don't it set me on a journey.
And.
And years later,I read Bruce Springsteen
say when he wrote Born to Run,he said I wanted people
to feel something and that theyhad to go chase after something.
And that's exactlywhat happened to me.
I was eight years oldand and I, I awakened
I that song awakened in mea yearning I can't explain it,
(02:33):
a yearningthat set me on a journey to seek
happiness, to seek fulfillment,to seek love.
One of the lines in the song isI want to know if love is wild.
I want to know if love is real.
Well, yeah,I wanted to know that and I,
I was raisedin the Catholic Church
in the 70s and 80s,and, and I was raised
when it came to that yearning,that hunger, that desire.
(02:57):
I was raised onwhat you might call
the starvation diet gospel.
The basic message wasyour desires are bad.
They're only going toget you in trouble.
You need to repress all that.
But follow all these rulesand you'll be a good, upstanding
Christian citizen.
Well, that wasn't goingto cut it for me.
I was a hungry dude.
So I became a quick convertin my teenage years
(03:19):
to what I've cometo call the fast food gospel,
which is the secular culture'spromise of immediate
gratification for the hunger.
And I don't want anybodyto lie to me.
Those chicken nuggets tastepretty good going down,
especially whenyou're really hungry.
But if that becomesyour steady diet,
as it did for mein my teenage years,
(03:40):
eventually the greaseand the sodium is going to
catch up with you.
And that's a picture of mein my college years
in the late 80s.
I fell on my knees in acollege dorm
saying, God in heaven,if you exist, you better
show me why you gave meall these desires.
Because they'regetting me and everybody I know
into a hell of a lot of trouble.
What is your plan?
(04:02):
And I kept seeking and seeking.
And a few years later,now I'm in my
my early to mid 20s,I discovered the teaching
of this crazy Polish guy,known to the world
as Pope John Paul the Second.
He was the pope of my childhood.
This teaching called theologyof the body.
(04:22):
And and I remember reading itfor the first time.
I was 24 years old,and I felt like he was speaking
right to my heartand saying, Christopher,
do you remember thatyearning that God awakened
in your heartwhen you heard that
Bruce Springsteen song?
Do you remember that awakenthat yearning that God awakened
in your heartwhen when Stacy Reed
(04:43):
sat next to you in third grade?
Yeah.
Yeah, I sure do.
Well, there's a name for that.
And he says the churchborrows her language
from the Greeks and callsthat yearning for
for true joy, for truelove, for true happiness.
It's called eros.
Eros.
And I remember hearinggetting introduced to this word
(05:04):
in the Greek.
And I thought, well, in my mind,the erotic realm is synonymous
with the pornographicrealm, right?
That's that's the fast foodI had been bingeing on.
And the Pope was saying to me,no, no, no, no, do not confuse
the Greek word eroswith the Greek word poornima,
(05:24):
right where we get the wordpornography.
Porn is a twisting, a distortionof God's plan for erotic love.
And God gave us eros.
This is my analogy,but I got the idea from Gpt2.
God gave us Eros to be likethe fuel of a rocket
that is, thatthat has the power to
(05:45):
launch us towards the stars.
But here's the tragedy.
With Original Sin, our rocketengines got inverted.
And so we go out into the worldlooking for love,
looking for happiness.
But it backfires on us.
And what I learned fromJohn Paul the Second was Christ
came into the worldnot to condemn those
(06:05):
with inverted rocket engines.
He came into the worldto redirect our rocket engines
to the stars.
I learned from himthat Christianity is not
a starvation diet.
It's an invitationto a wedding feast.
And Karen and Theo,when I discovered
that in my mid 20s,I knew I had found
(06:28):
certainly the answerto the crisis of my life,
but also the answerto the crisis of our times.
And I knew then I would spendthe rest of my life studying
this, teaching and sharing itwith the world.
And and I've had the privilegeto do that over the
last 30 plus years.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Wow. Those stories.
And, you know, it's impressive.
(06:48):
The, you know, how vividlyyou're able
to recall all of that,but that is the beauty of,
an authentic encounterwith Christ and with ourselves.
That that is a wayof sticking with us.
As we.
And then, of course,leading us forward.
Tell us a little bitmore about how
theology of the bodycan help us understand
(07:09):
God's design for,human sexuality.
I think the key tothe whole thing is to recognize
that Christ invites usnot to experience a redemption
from our sexuality,but to the experience,
to experience the redemptionof our sexuality.
(07:30):
Right. That's the key.
Not redemption from sexuality,redemption of sexuality.
And if I couldgive you a visual here,
this is my favorite visual.
This is I want everybodyto imagine
if you're watching this,that this painting, this paper
I'm holding upis a painting of man and woman.
Just as Godcreated us to be, right?
(07:50):
When we were nakedand felt no shame.
Why were they nakedwithout shame?
John Paul the second tells usthey were naked without shame
because they experiencederotic desire as nothing
but the desireto love as God loves, right?
We're made in the imageand likeness of God
as male and female.
(08:11):
This painting is an imageof how God loves naked
without shame.
They realizedthey were called to love
in the gift of self, right?
Christ will ultimatelyreveal this in his own flesh
by saying, this is my bodygiven for you.
That was the sentimentof erotic desire
(08:31):
in the beginning.
That's self-giving lovethe enemy.
However, he hates this paintingbecause this is an
image of heaven.
What does Saint Paul tell us?
He tells usthat the union of men
and woman in oneflesh is a great mystery
that refers to Christin the church, right?
This painting is a great mysterythat points us to heaven.
(08:56):
That opens a window to heaven.
That's why the enemy hates it.
And this is what has happenedto the painting.
With the original sin,it got terribly twisted up
and distorted.
And here is the classicmistake of I'm going to put this
in quotes. Spirit.
Sure, people, because Iput it in quotes
because this is not authenticChristian spirituality.
(09:17):
This is a, a false spirituality,but spiritual people in quotes
discover this in itscrumpled up form
and they say, well, that's justlooks like garbage.
Throw it away.
And so they're trying toexperience a redemption
from the body, redemptionfrom sexuality.
(09:38):
They throw the crumpledpainting away.
This is,not Christianity at all.
That's a puritanical,fearful approach
to Christianity.
No, no, listen to this.
Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboymagazine, says in 1953,
I started Playboy magazineas my personal response
(10:03):
to the hurt and hypocrisyof Puritanism in my strict
Christian upbringing.
This is what, largelythe culture has been
raised on a puritanical,fearful approach to sexuality
when it comes to what peopletypically think of Christian.
And I'm putting thatin quotes, right?
(10:24):
Reject the body.
We don't know whatthe body's for.
I don't know whythey're balloons
floating behind my head,but I think it's
because I went like this and itactivated some weird
program on myself.
I wonder what that.
So that's great.
Hugh Hefner reaches intothe trash can, calls this out,
and starts saying to themodern world, you mustn't
(10:46):
throw this away.
And guess what?
On this point, he was right.
We shouldn't throw this away.
But where was he wrong and wrongwith horrific
consequences for us all.
He left the paintingjust like this
in its crumpled up form,and he started celebrating
(11:09):
this crumpled up,distorted picture of sexuality.
And because most of uswere raised on that starvation
approach, throw it away.
It's bad.
When Hugh Hefner startedshowing us the greasy
chicken nuggets,he's like, don't
you want some of this?
And we're like, yes, I'm hungry.
Give me some of that.
But you feast on that.
And just likemy life demonstrates,
(11:30):
you're going to get really sick.
Well, here's what John Paulthe Second did for me.
And this is what he's doing forthe whole world.
And this is why it is the answerto the crisis of our times.
Right at the same time, HughHefner started Playboy magazine,
when John Paulthe second was a young
Polish priest.
He also pulled thisout of the trash can
(11:52):
and started sayingto the modern world, you mustn't
throw this away.
But he did somethingHugh Hefner didn't do
by reflecting onGod's original plan
for making us male and female,and by reflecting on
what Saint Paul calls inRomans chapter eight,
the redemption of our bodies,not redemption from
(12:15):
redemption of our bodies.
This young Polish prieststarted, crumpling this painting
for the modern worldand showing us who we really are
restoring for us that original,beautiful, wonderful,
glorious, pure visionof our humanity,
(12:37):
male and female.
This is called the redemptionof the body, not redemption
from the body.
Redemption of sexuality,not redemption
from sexuality. Right?
If we're justthrowing it all away,
we aren't enteringinto the very reason Christ came
into the world.
(12:57):
So think about itfrom this perspective.
Where did Christ performhis first miracle?
At a wedding?
At a wedding?
And what did he do?
What did he do withthat wedding seal?
He turned water into wine.
So there's a married couple herewho's run out of wine.
Well, okay.
They actually ran out of wine.
It was a real celebration,and they actually
(13:19):
ran out of wine.
But there's a deeper symbolicmeaning here in John Paul.
The second saysrunning out of wine
is the symbol of original sin.
Wine poured outfor us is God's agape,
sacrificial love rightin the beginning, men and woman
were naked without shamebecause they were
(13:40):
drunk on God's wine.
They were filled to overflowingwith divine love.
So in the beginning,eros or erotic
love expressed agapedivine love.
This is whatenabled them to be naked
without shame.
Well, what's going to happento the sexual relationship
if we all run out of wine?
(14:03):
You cannot givewhat you do not have.
The purpose of thesexual relationship,
and God's plan is to sharethe love of God, to share
the wine of God.
But if you've run out of wine,when Eros gets
cut off from agape,what you have is lust.
What you have are two peopleusing each other for their own
(14:25):
selfish pleasure.
The very first miracleof Jesus is to restore
God's wine to erotic love.
The very first miracle of Jesusis to redeem Eros
by restoring agape.
Only in this contextcan we understand
(14:47):
when Saint Paul says,husbands, love your wives
as Christ loved the church,and what does he say?
Just a few verses earlier,he says, don't
get drunk on wine,get drunk on the spirit,
get drunk on the spirit.
And what did they accusethe apostles
of on Pentecost day,when the Holy
Spirit fell on them?
(15:09):
They thought they were drunk,and guess what they were?
They were drunk on God's wine.
The goal of the Christian lifeto live the redemption
of our sexuality, not redemptionfrom our sexuality.
We have to be drunk onGod's wine.
There's no other way to live it.
That's the goal ofthe Christian life,
(15:30):
is to get totally drunkon God's wine.
Only thencan we learn how to love
as we're called to love.
That was a reallygood explanation,
and I think that'sa really interesting way
to look at it.
I think culture,you know, around
us really is impactinghow so many view,
sexuality in general.
(15:50):
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(16:12):
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Now back to the show.
I think culture,you know, around us
really is impactinghow so many of you,
sexuality in general.
I know that wehear a lot from parents.
(16:58):
You know, they're reallystruggling on, you know,
they don't want to exposekids to things.
How do I protect them?
Like, what do I need to teachand equip them with to be able
to navigate the world?
I'm sure you guys are confrontedwith those same challenges.
So for the parents out there,what advice do you have
and how can theology of the bodyhelp parents
teach their childrena biblical version of sexuality
(17:20):
in an age appropriateways, of course, but
how do we use that?
So I would say to all parentswhat I was just saying
a moment ago, we we cannotgive what we do not have.
It is our responsibility asparents to do all that
we are capable of doingin unfolding the beauty,
(17:43):
the splendor,the glory, the dignity,
the astounding wonderof what I've been
calling the banquet,the banquet, the wedding feast,
the weddingbanquet of God's plan
for man and woman.
If we are not leadingour children to the banquet,
they are goingto take their hunger
to the fast foodbecause the fast food
(18:05):
is on display everywhere, right?
But again, you can't givewhat you don't have.
We have to immerse ourselvesin this banquet.
We have to take it in.
We have to let it inform usand transform us
to be able to pass italong to our children.
It's it's kind of likeif I were to draw an analogy,
(18:25):
you know, peoplewho eat a lot of garlic,
they smell like garlic.
It like, comes outtheir pores. Right?
We have to take in this visionso deeply and so
continually, regularly.
We gotta eat a lot of garlic.
And if we do, it will comeout of our pores
to our children.
(18:45):
And, you know, I could.
I have five children.
My wife and I have raisedfive children.
Most of them arein their 20s now.
Some of them are already marriedand have children of their own,
and all of our childrenwould would have
plenty of things to sayabout what we got wrong,
what my wife and I got wrong.
(19:06):
But I think they wouldalso recognize that we we
we tried to speak of God's planfor sexuality in the context of
everyday life.
It wasn't just thisnervous conversation
that we gathered aroundand said, now you're old enough
and we have to have a talk,and we're really nervous
about it.
(19:26):
It was it was everyday life.
Like putting our kids to bedfor years and years.
We would tuck our kids into bedand say something like this.
Thank you, Lord, for this day.
Thank you for making mommyto be a woman.
Thank you for making daddyto be a man.
Thank youfor calling Mom and Dad
to the sacrament of marriage.
Thank you for bringingJohn, Paul and Thomas and Beth
(19:47):
and Isaac and Graceinto the world through Mommy
and Daddy love.
Thank you for making the boysto be boys.
Help them to growinto strong men.
To give their bodiesaway in love.
Thank you for makingthe girls to be girls.
Help them to growinto strong women.
To give theirbodies away in love.
If they're called to marriage,please prepare them
for their future spouseand wherever
their future spouse we.
(20:08):
We lift that person upright now in prayer.
So I mean, that wasthat was every night for 20
whatever years that our kidsgrew up with and that that,
you know, that putting itin the context of the holy,
the sacred, this is whereyou come from.
You came into the worldthrough mommy and daddy love.
And that that's a beautifuland wonderful thing.
(20:32):
We have to find a language,a vocabulary, and a
peace and comfort in ourselvesso that we can open up
these mysteries.
And we have to frame itin the context of the battle
between good and evil, right?
Saint Paul tells usin Ephesians five that this is a
great mystery that revealsthe greatest good
(20:57):
in the universe.
Christ's love for the church.
And then he saysin the next chapter
of his letter,you want to live what I was just
telling you about.
Get ready for a warand you want to win this war.
You got to put onthe armor of God.
And the veryfirst piece of armor
Saint Paul sayswe have to put on to win
this battle is to guard ourloins with the truth.
(21:21):
If our loins are not girdedin the truth, boom!
We're going to be taken out.
We are going to be taken out.
Gird your loins with the truth.
It's the first thing we must doto win this battle.
If we are not fighting the goodfight ourselves, what hope do
we have to equip our childrento fight the good fight?
(21:41):
We have to help them understandthe difference
between good and evil,and to understand, as John Paul
the second says,that the truth of
human sexuality takes usto the very center of the battle
between good and evil,between life and death,
between loveand all that is opposed to love.
(22:02):
We're in a battle,but that battle
has already been wonby Christ on the cross.
It isn't.
The crucifixionisn't all about war
against the valueand dignity of Christ's body.
And where is the dragon inrevelations 12?
(22:23):
He's right before thepregnant woman,
and he wants to devourthe child.
The enemyfrom the very beginning
has aimed all his diabolic furyat our creation
as male and female,and our ability
to bring new lifeinto the world.
Hey, we have to understandwhat is at stake.
(22:45):
We have to understandwho we are,
whom we are fighting.
We're not fightingflesh and blood.
We're fighting principalitiesand powers
that hate our sexuality.
Scripture says thatSatan fell out of envy.
Well, what do we have thatthe fallen angels
don't have bodies?
(23:09):
And what do we get to do thatthe angels don't get to do
we get to co-create with God.
The good angels are an absoluteall of our bodies
in our fertility.
When the angelGabriel came to Mary,
he wasn't absolute or thatthe God he worshiped
(23:31):
was about to take fleshthrough this woman's fertility,
right through this woman's womb.
He was an absolute allbut the fallen angels are an
absolute envy of our bodies.
And envy is not just,oh, I wish I had what you had.
That's jealousy.
But envy says,I hate that you have it,
(23:52):
and I want you to hatethat you have it too, right?
There is a lot of body hatred.
The end result of pornographyis body hatred,
because pornography invites usinto idolizing the body,
but we will eventually despisewhatever we idolize
(24:14):
because our idolsnever satisfied,
they never give us what we want.
And so we start to hatethe thing that we once worshiped
the sexual revolution,which is really I don't even
like the term.
It wasn't a sexual revolution.
It was a pornographicrevolution.
It was a pornographicand contraceptive
and abortion revolution.
That's what it was.
That's not a sexual revolution.
(24:35):
That's a hatred of sexuality.
Those who go to pornographydon't love sexuality.
They actually hate it.
Those who use contraceptionand revert to abortion
don't love sexuality.
They actually hate it.
They're trying to alter it.
They're trying to change itinto something.
It's not right.
If you really love sexualityas God created it to be,
(24:57):
you would.
You would honor it.
You would honorit as God made it to be.
And that that, thatidolatry of the sexual will turn
to a hatred of the sexual.
And that's where we are now.
The pornographicrevolution began
by idolizing the body.
Now it's endingby despising the body.
We have to teach our childrenthe narrow way between
(25:22):
idolatry and that despisingor hatred of the body.
There's this narrow waywhere we come to honor the body.
We Revere the body.
As Saint Paul says,those parts of our body
that we thinkare less honorable.
These parts of the body deserveall the greater honor,
(25:45):
because God has bestowedon these parts of the body
the greater glory.
That's our marching ordersright there to learn
how to bestow onthe sexual parts of our body
the greater honor.
Because God has bestowedon these parts of the body
the greater glory.
(26:06):
Why the greater glory here?
Because this is what revealsthat we're made in the image
and likeness of God.
God is not sexual.
He's pure spirit.
But in the life ofthe Trinity, the
the God the Father,in a non-sexual way, in a purely
spiritual way, a divine way.
He is generating the sunfor all eternity.
(26:28):
He's generating the sun.
God's love is generous.
It generates.
And this is wherethe fallen angels go.
They hate this.
They hate this about us,and they want us to hate it to.
Blessed are those whotake no offense at me.
Jesus says,how do we take offense
(26:50):
at our own bodies?
Do we take offensethat God as a body?
Do we take offenseat the fact that God
wore diapers?
Do we take offense at the factthat God was born of a woman
and suckled that the breastof his mother?
Does that make us cringe?
Does that make usgo ill? Gross. Why?
(27:11):
Who told you that was gross?
Who told you the bodywas pornographic?
Who told youyou were naked? Right.
We've been listening to an enemyinform us about the meaning
of our bodiessince original sin.
And we have to stop.
Stop listening to that enemyinforming us about our bodies.
And we have to listento the Holy Spirit,
(27:32):
who is the thirdperson of the Trinity,
created all that exists, and Godthe Father, the son,
and the Holy Spiritlooked at everything they made
and said, behold,it is very good.
We overcome evil with good,and we have to understand,
I'm sorry, I'mgoing on and on here,
but I'll close with this.
(27:54):
We have to understandthis basic bedrock
biblical principle.
The devil doesn'thave his own clay.
The devil does not havehis own clay.
All he can dois take God's clay,
which, behold, it's very good.
And the enemy gets his hands onGod's clay and twist it all up.
(28:15):
We have to give our broken,twisted lives as they are
to the living God who took fleshas a male child, born of a woman
to redeem in masculinityand femininity.
We have to give himour diseased images.
We have to give themour disease ideas.
We have to give him all thosepornographic lies just as
(28:36):
they are in our heartsand our minds, and say, here
I am, Jesus.
Come, Holy Spirit,into this twisted mess
and untwist it in my lifeso that I might rediscover who
I really am.
That's the journey.
And if parents aren'ton that journey, there's no way
possible that they could leadtheir children on that journey.
(28:57):
The theology of the BodyInstitute exists to lead people
on that journey.
And if anybodywants to learn more,
please watch ourYouTube channel.
Listen to our podcast,come to our courses either
online, in person.
We we are here to helppeople, help lead people
on that journey.
I love that.
And what is the websiteaddress for you?
(29:19):
The theology of the body.com.
Great.
We're going to putthat in the show notes
for all of our listeners.
Well Christopher,we could probably go on
for three hours with you.
You are so knowledgeableand this is such
a good conversation.
I'm just loving it.
But unfortunately,we have to bring today's
episode to a close,and I do want to leave
our listeners with just amessage of hope.
You know, it canseem overwhelming.
(29:40):
You have sharedso much wisdom with us.
There's a lot to be done,a lot of work here, but we have
God on our side.
But let's leave our listenerswith some hope of,
you know, listen, thanks for theto look forward to.
He will bringto completion the work
he has begun in us.
That is our hopeand it doesn't matter
(30:01):
where we are on that journey,we all have more to do.
We all have to keep going.
We're all pilgrims.
I'm just a fellow pilgrimon the journey.
I'm a broken man.
I'm as broken as they come.
I can look back and I can saythank you, Lord.
By your graceI've come a long way.
But I still havea long way to go.
And our hope is thishe will bring
(30:22):
to completion the workhe has begun on in us.
And we just have to askalso for the grace to cooperate
with that work.
So, Lord, we ask right now,wherever we are on our journey,
help us to treasure your promisein our hearts
that you will bringto completion the work
you have begun in us,and give us the grace today
(30:43):
and tomorrow and the next dayand every day of our lives.
Just to say yes.
To say yes to what you arealready at work
doing in our lives, whereverthe obstacles are, Lord,
wherever the fears are,we ask that your perfect love
would cast out that fearwhere those disease
(31:03):
and pornographic imageshave have warped our minds
and our hearts and our capacityto love.
We invite this great giftof the redemption of our bodies
into those liesand into those diseased
images, uncomfortable at all,and show us who
we really are, Lord,and help us,
help us in our weaknessto unfold the beauty
(31:24):
of this banquetfor our children.
We ask all this in thename of Jesus a.
That is a perfect way tobring today's
episode to a close.
Christopher.
Thank you so much for joiningthe Covenant Eyes podcast.
It is always such an honorto speak with you.
We hope that you'll come backand join us.
Then maybe we can doa little longer segment
so we can really dive into moreof your wisdom.
(31:45):
Karen and Theo, it's a pleasure.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Well, thanks, Theo,for joining us too.
It's been a great joyhaving you back and the
the shotgun seathere of the podcast, I love it.
You're always a pleasureto work with.
And to all our listenersout there, thanks so much
for tuning in to this episodeof the Covenant Eyes podcast.
We'll see you next time.
Take care. God bless.
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