Though Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage helpfully lays out how the transgender movement is abusing teenage girls, it also contains a flaw that Christians should take note of and avoid. Namely, Christians should reject Shrier’s belief that history can determine right and wrong.
Throughout her book, Shrier makes science and history the foundations of her morality. For example citing science, she characterizes gender affirming therapy as endorsing “a falsehood: not that a girl feels more comfortable presenting as a boy – but that she is actually is a boy (98).” The scientific realities of the XY chromosomes cannot be denied. A girl cannot be a biological boy.
But the hard sciences do not justify Shrier’s defense of homosexuality. Consequently, she must turn albeit somewhat briefly to the historical record to prove why homosexuality is moral and transgenderism is not. She explains that homosexuality “can’t be eliminated through socialization – because it hasn’t been for thousands of years, in all kinds of cultures that specifically attempted to repress it.” Thus, it is moral. Conversely, she writes of transgenderism: “We don’t have any similar weight of history telling us that we can’t treat gender dysphoria.” In other words, if some practice survives the persecution of past ages, then it must possess some degree of goodness. But if it gets crushed by past ages, then it must be evil. Historical survivability determines right from wrong.
What History Cannot Do
Readers do not have to be historians to discern the unsatisfactory nature of this argument. Despite the efforts of the cultures that birthed the Ura Nammu, the Ten Commandments, and the Magna Carta, stealing, adultery, and murder have survived. The same can be said of sexual abuse and a host of other moral evils that have escaped past socialization efforts to squash them. Evil proves just as resilient as good.
In the later half of her book, Shrier indirectly acknowledges that history is an unsatisfactory determiner of good. She notes that George William Jorgensen’s transition to Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s was not condemned but rather met with “a warm media reception.” She also acknowledges that the United States culture has granted Bruce Jenner the acceptance he sought during his transition. Towards the end of the book, she also uncritically accepts one transman’s claim that her medical transition, “saved his life (205).” In short, the historical record which is generally against gender dysphoria also has rooms with adults who have successfully transitioned. Keeping in step with the historical record, Shrier concedes at her books end that some adult men and women should be allowed to transition in certain cases.
Moreover since the historical record keeps expanding, Shrier’s thesis could soon be undone by history. Once some white, teenage, middle-class teenage girls who have successfully undergone hormone treatments and reassignment surgeries become part of the historical record, she will have to concede that other teenage girls should also be allowed to medically transition. Those previous teenagers’ ability to survive the cultural suppression of Shrier and others would reveal that the teenagers’ actions were good, acceptable, and ultimately worthy of societal acceptance. In other words, the very history that Shrier cites today could destroy her argument tomorrow. History makes a poor judge of right and wrong and of good and evil.
What History Can Do
I suspect Shrier is aware of history’s ethical limits. She appeals to the discipline not out of conviction but necessity. Her Judaism does not justify the homosexual lifestyle. If she were she to fallback on the proofs of secularism, her argument would be reduced to: “I think it right therefore it is.” History, however poor, is one of the few authorities that Shirer has left. In other words, Shrier has not so much as mined morality from history as overlaid her ethics onto history.
Evangelical readers should not fault her for this move. Christians also make sense of history by overlaying their ethics onto history.
And in so doing, Christians (like Shrier) do not seek to recreate the truth of history but to make sense of it. For example, Christians do not deny the inconvenient truths of history. They admit that heroes like King David committed adultery and that the apostle Paul was complicit in murder. They embrace all the embarrassing moments of history because their faith depends upon the veracity of the historical record. In other words, Christians follow Jesus and embrace his morality because his resurrection was attested to by “more than five hundred brothers at one time (1 Cor 15:6).” Historical facts are the foundation of the Christian faith. The empty tomb proves that Jesus was the Son of God.
Consequently, the crux of Christian opposition to transgenderism and homosexuality does not rest primarily on scientific justifications nor upon some ideology’s presence in the historical record. It rests on the revelation of God’s Word which contains both facts and an interpretation of those facts. To quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “The Gospels are not simply objective statements; they are objective statements plus interpretation.”
Christians affirm that both science and history evidence the rightness of biblical sexuality. But, Christians base their rejection of homosexuality and transgenderism on Genesis and on Jesus’ interpretation of that history, especially the creation account. In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Christians claim that God created two genders and that sex belongs in the union of heterosexual marriage because the Lord of the universe has told them that creation serves as the template for what is good, moral, and best when it comes to understanding gender and the proper modes of sexual expression. God has made sense of history through the Scriptures. As Dr. Albert Mohler notes, “The affirmation of biblical authority is central to the church’s consideration of this issue or any other issue.” The Christian’s highest authority – an authority that never changes – is the Word of God. To quote the children’s song, “This I know for the Bible tells me so.”
Conclusion
True definitions of goodness cannot be mined from the historical record. Though Shrier claims the opposite in her book, her appeals to history prove it to be an inadequate judge of what is right and wrong.
But goodness can be found in the historical Jesus who triumphed over sin and death. The tomb is empty. When Christians enter the public square, they should never shy away from acknowledging that their morality rests on the Messiah who has interpreted history for them. He alone is the same “yesterday and today and forever (Heb 13:8).” May he and not the historical record by our final judge of right and wrong.
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