The Unnamed Evil
Monday, March 27th, a 28-year-old woman entered an elementary school. Armed and with the intent to take precious life, this deranged individual took the lives of 6 innocent victims, three of them being 9 years old.
Numerous articles have been written about this tragedy. Some articles answer FAQ’s about school shootings. Others mourn the prevalence of school shootings in America. There are still other articles that dive into the complexity of the shooter’s upbringing (Here, here, and here).
With all this reporting about the tragedy, the discourse is clear. We can blame guns and gun policy. We can blame Christians and a Christian sexual ethic. We can blame outdated modes of parenting. But there is one thing we are not allowed to blame: the wicked, demonic ideology of transgenderism. While casting blame on everything else in society, we dare not speak of transgenderism as evil, lest we be condemned by those who would defend it. I fear this is a bad posture for Christians to take.
Many who have written responses to this tragedy are slow to state what needs to be said. What needs to be said is this: This evil act was the incarnation of transgender ideology drawn to its logical conclusions.
Russell Moore says in the article linked above that our great enemy right now is “moral numbness.” And what exactly are we as a society numb towards? Moore says anger. We have come to think that the world is supposed to be this way. We have come to believe outrage is common for all people at all times. We as a society have become numb to the effects of the fall. To Moore’s credit, there is a sense in which that is true.
However, if the last few days have shown Christians anything, it is that the world has grown numb toward the evils of transgenderism and sexual deviancy. Meanwhile, our world recoils in horror at the clear teaching of Scripture, decrying Christians as hateful when the most basic statements are made about the innate maleness or femaleness of a human person.
On Tuesday, Governor Bill Lee expressed in a five-minute video his response to the aftermath of Monday’s tragedy. In the video, he states that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against evil. It is time to name the evil.
Transgenderism is the unnamed evil we saw rear its head on Monday morning. It is an ideology that is void of any shred of moral credibility. And yet, it is the one thing that will not be criticized for Monday’s crime. To put it clearly and succinctly: transgender ideology is responsible for the death of 3 nine-year-olds and 3 school employees. Let us not gloss over this reality or pretend like other motivating factors were more prevalent in this scenario.
My argument unfolds in five parts, beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation. I trust any Christian will see the plain truth of the Word of God and be emboldened to speak it even where it will be despised. May we who belong to the Kingdom of God rejoice that we are worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 5:41).
Premise 1: Did God really say?
You can hear the serpent: Did God really say you shouldn’t do this? (Genesis 3:1). The voice of the serpent is the commanding authority behind transgenderism. It is demonic. And Satan has been at work since the beginning.
Every Christian must understand that it is not only what God commands in Genesis 1 and 2 but also what God does in Genesis 1 and 2 that sets the stage for the created order as we know it. God’s act of creation is supremely instructive for the way we order our lives.
God created man and breathed life into him. Adam was specially created, different and distinct from all other creations. Initially, it was Adam and Adam alone that God created in his image.
Until Eve was created. We have it recorded plainly in Scripture that God created male and female in his image (Genesis 1:27). God blessed Adam and Eve and gave them a work to do: to fill the earth and subdue it. This could never be accomplished alone but requires both men and women to do what men and women do. Society requires two genders, only two genders, and it requires the distinction between these two genders to be a fixed reality. Yet in order to advance the transgender cause, one must downplay biology (what I am) in order to focus on psychology (what I feel like).
“For transgenderism to be coherent, the society in which it occurs needs to place a decisive priority on the psychological over the physical in determining identity.” (Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 351).
God has said something in creation about creating. Like it or not, God has said from the beginning that men are to be men and women are to be women. Created differently. Gifted differently. All the while, imaging the same God who created them.
Fundamentally, for a Christian to disagree with this point also involves committing a Christological heresy, for Jesus was born of a woman and was a biological male. He is the last Adam. If you do not have a biological male after which Jesus descends, you no longer have a gospel. You cannot be saved. In this way, fighting against transgender ideology is fighting for the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
No Adam? No gender? No Christ. No salvation. (Romans 5:17)
Premise 2: Did God really mean it?
Maybe Genesis says that, but do we really think that’s what God meant? Surely such a design is overly simplistic. Perhaps men being men and women being women was fine for the Puritans and my parent’s generation, but now such views are antiquated. Haven’t we evolved since then?
No. We have not. This is still the best way to exist because it is God’s way.
The moment a Christian says these truths publicly, they will be accused of the vilest kind of intolerance imaginable. People will claim that we are erasing trans people. Perhaps it's okay to believe these things privately, but the moment we insist people live by these truths we become radicals to our modern culture.
Maybe God said it, but surely he didn’t really mean it.
I felt like I was coming back to sanity when I heard Rosaria Butterfield say in an interview that “There is no such thing as a gay person.” I could not agree more. We must also state the same is true about the issue of transgenderism.
To say such is not unloving or unhelpful. It is the exact same thing Jesus says:
Matthew 19:4–6 (ESV)
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 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’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”’
Regardless of your views on gender roles, Paul is in remarkable agreement with the Lord Jesus.
1 Corinthians 11:11–12 (ESV)
11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.
Friends, this is a distinction created by God. Transgender ideology is opposed to humanity as it is created and intended to function. We cannot shy away from declaring this to be the case.
Premise 3: Don’t you see what you’re doing to me?
At this point, the transgender ideology shifts to place the blame upon the person making the argument I’ve just been trying to sustain: That God created men to be men and women to be women, and the two are not interchangeable. The narrative goes something along these lines: “This creates trauma and mental health concerns for trans people and is harmful to them.”
But Paul tells us in Romans that actually, living according to this lie comes with a penalty (Romans 1:27). Paul calls it error. I am sure it is traumatizing to the patient for a doctor to give a cancer diagnosis. Nevertheless, pretending that the cancer doesn’t even exist and is just normal has to be at least as evil if not more evil than the disease itself.
Perhaps the truth of Scripture does cause distress to the person who accepts transgender ideology. But is a “trans person’s” mental health more important than the mental health of others? Consider the fact that in honor of “Women’s history month,” ESPN recognized a man as having achieved a remarkable victory. Can we just stop and ask what this does to the actual women who he competed against? Do men make better women than women do? Do we realize how insane all this actually sounds?
I can only imagine that it is at least as traumatizing if not more traumatizing to be beaten by a man in a woman’s sport than to claim you are a woman trapped in a man’s body.
But at the end of the day, the argument is not “What causes more trauma” but “What has God said in His Word?” The clarity is refreshing for those living in a fallen world.
The transgender argument maintains that a Christian’s radical commitment to basic biology is doing them harm, even though all you’ve asked is that a person’s God-given sexuality be embraced.
Do not fear, Christian. It is never wrong to insist upon that which God has declared to be true.
Jesus tells us in Luke Luke 6:22–23 (ESV):
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
It is not your job to make everyone feel comfortable. It is your job to say what God has said. If they reject the truth, it is God they are truly rejecting. If they persecute you, leap for joy! This is what it means to carry the cross of Christ.
Nevertheless, the trans ideology will move towards insisting that any God who says these kinds of things cannot be a God of love.
Premise 4: Your God must be evil.
Inevitably, the next move is to insist that anyone who believes in fixed biology as a theological point of doctrine is a monster for weaponizing theology against those who identify as “sexual minorities.” From the perspective of transgenderism, the evil party is not the trans person or the “ally” of the trans person, but the Christian who holds to a historic, orthodox sexual ethic.
Consider the prophet Isaiah:
Isaiah 5:20 (ESV)
20 Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet,
and sweet for bitter!
The whole LGBT movement attempts to call evil good, exchanging light for darkness. Surely it is time that we as Christians say this. We do not say this as those who are free of sin, but those who have acknowledged our sin before the Lord, asking for forgiveness. No Christian I know is saying that embracing a transgender self-conception is an unforgivable sin. God can surely redeem the darkest of hearts from such vile lies. He does it through the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has given his only son to redeem sinners from their sins.
We who are called the Church of Jesus Christ must not only tell the truth about the evils of transgenderism but also tell the truth about the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to be salt and light to a world that has lost any semblance of sanity. Let us be careful not only to realize that God hates the ideologies of transgenderism but also that he is able to save all kinds of people, even those who have drunk the kool-aid of this wicked ideology. I pray 1 Corinthians 6 may one day be said of those who once embraced this ideology, that “such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.” May we never forget that our God is able to save to the uttermost. We must believe that the gospel’s saving power can even be applied by God’s Grace to the heart of those in the LGBT community.
To allow for a point of caution, I have taken great pains to describe this evil as the philosophy of transgenderism, distinguishing the philosophy from the person who believes the philosophy. Paul says that we are to destroy arguments and take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) and that sound doctrine ensures that no one deceives us with plausible-sounding arguments (Col 2:4). As a Christian, we should use every argument available to us to discount the LGBTQ movement. At the same time, we must not be violent or hard hearted with others in the process. The evils of transgenderism as a philosophy are what is in view in this specific article. The philosophy itself comes from the pit of hell. That does not mean that we desire those who embrace this philosophy to spend eternity there. We should pray for the salvation of those who have embraced the lie of transgenderism.
However, this is precisely why we must insist on preaching these truths and opposing transgenderism. It is the only cure for the disease of sin. We will never herald the gospel of Jesus Christ if we are afraid to decry transgender ideology because transgenderism and the gospel are diametrically opposed to one another!
The goal of transgenderism is not to lead to repentance of sin, but acceptance of it. Any attempt to persuade an individual to look outside themselves for salvation is seen as a ruinous evil. The two ideas could not be any further apart.
What happens whenever one group of people is convinced that another group of people worships a God who is truly evil? They take matters into their own hands. This moves the transgender argument to the final premise.
Premise 5: You get what you deserve.
At the time I am writing this, you can still purchase from various vendors a shirt that says “Trans Rights or Else” with several different firearms displayed below the phrase (Link). What could this possibly insinuate other than the simple fact that unless transgenderism is accepted in every sphere of life, that violence will be used to further their cause?
The evil of transgenderism insinuates that the tragedy that occurred on March 27th is not really the fault of the shooter, but of Christians. They do not accept the transgender ideology. Rather, Christians believe God’s Word and desire to teach other human beings to obey God’s Word.
The Covenant School is one example of human flourishing. You have parents investing in their young children’s education, educators who are excited about their mission, administrators who understand the calling, and a church that gladly hosts this endeavor on their campus. The Covenant School is one thing we can point to in society and say this is a good thing.
Yet transgenderism is not interested in human flourishing. It is interested in itself, its own ideologies, and advancing them at all costs. The Covenant school is a threat to the transgender community, not because anyone at the Covenant School wishes ill will on those who have embraced such an ideology, but because Christians understand that the way God has created the world is better than the world created by transgender ideology. Therefore, the threat to this ideology must be opposed at all costs.
Consider that the majority of teachers and educators at this school are Christian women. The Head of School was renowned amongst the greater Nashville community as a kind-hearted woman who loved education and those she educated. What would possess someone to attack a building filled with women?
Transgender ideology.
As I said before, this is transgender ideology carried to its logical conclusions. This philosophy asserts that if God made me a man, but I don’t want to be a man, I can just remake myself into a woman.
Alternatively, if I want to be a woman, but you tell me I can’t, well not only do I get to play God with my own existence, I get to play God with yours. And if God determines not only what gender people are but also who lives and who dies, and I am God, then I get to determine who lives and dies.
Vile. Wicked. Horrid. Sinful. Damnable. This is the logical implication of the ideas we’re dealing with here.
If trans people cannot exist, neither can Christian women. This is the rhetoric behind the transgender movement. Now, in the wake of the tragedy, the news is saying that the fault is really the parents of this woman or the presence of Ben Shapiro in the greater Nashville community.
Moreover, to pour salt on the wounds of those who are mourning the deaths of their 9 year old children, President Biden named March 31 to be Trans Day of Visibility. The following Sunday, a country music star performed a song entitled “If you go down I’m going down too” while being surrounded by drag queens. The lack of compassion towards those who embrace a traditional sexual ethic is baffling. Christians cannot afford to call this anything other than what it is: evil.
Name this evil. Decry it. Teach about it. Educate yourself on the evils therein. And at the end of the day, remember that they killed Jesus. They killed the apostles. Some Christians will die for what they believe in.
These are not victims of a school shooting. These are martyrs for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their names are
Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9;
Mike Hill, 61;
William Kinney, 9;
Katherine Koonce, 60;
Cynthia Peak, 61; and
Hallie Scruggs, 9.
Revelation 14:13 (ESV)
13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”
Come, Lord Jesus.
Potential Questions:
This is a big issue and a tough topic. Some anticipated questions are below.
1) Is it fair to say that transgender ideology is responsible for this? Is this not making a blanket statement that condemns many non-violent transgender people?
I find it interesting that an ideology is not blameworthy so long as it exists on the opposite side of the political aisle. If a white man killed a black man, it would be a racially motivated crime. Why do we nuance something like this to death? This seems unnecessary.
Further, I don’t find it helpful that people are willing to condemn everything under the sun for this crime except transgenderism. This is an embarrassment for Christians, who should be speaking the truth about a situation like this one.
As an example, it is not out of the ordinary to blame an extreme ideology for a violent crime. I am grieved that there are many examples of shootings. But consider these three examples:
Charleston, South Carolina, 2015 - the shooter is identified as a white supremacist.
Atlanta, Georgia 2021 - the shooter is suspected of anti-Asian bias.
Orlando, Florida, 2016 - the shooter is reported to have an anti LGBT bias
If you check these stories, you see that what I’ve done in this article is simply to do what was done in each instance. Evaluate beliefs and attribute what seems to be a motivating factor.
I believe each of these above instances is a tragedy, and that many were radicalized by godless ideologies. It is consistent to attribute the motivation for this tragedy to a transgender ideology.
It’s not wrong to condemn a racist ideology as evil when a white man attacks a black church. Neither is it wrong to name transgender ideology evil when a transgender person attacks a religious organization that explicitly denies her view. All I’m trying to do is discern and name the evil which no one seems to want to name. We should view this as a targeted hate crime against Christians and their children.
Moreover, the fact that a manifesto was found but never released tells us something. I fear it makes explicit what is implicit so far, and the LGBTQ agenda cannot be blamed for this crime. Nevertheless, anyone paying attention to the details of this crime must understand that this is not an unimportant factor as it relates to the motivation of the crime.
2) Are you suggesting that all trans people are going to resort to the same kind of violence?
No. The activities of one person do not represent the suspected activities of an entire group of people. Nevertheless, the ideology which underlies this point of view is just as vile as the racism that motivated the Charleston shooter.
In comparison, I despise racism and think it is from the pit of hell. Anyone who sees differently colored people as less valuable people has misread their Bible. However, I do not suspect that all racists will always harm all those people they despise.
Likewise, I despise transgenderism and think it is from the pit of hell. Yet I do not suspect that all people who support a trans ideology will be violent towards those who disagree with them. Nevertheless, transgenderism is just as wicked as racism, and it’s time we clearly state such a fact. This is what many Christians have been reluctant to do in the wake of the tragedy in Nashville.