An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors.
“I think the trans community deserves a response from @AskTarget @Target as to why they are selling this book about the ‘transgender epidemic sweeping the country.’ Trigger warning: Transphobia,” wrote the user.
Shrier’s book is not about sexual orientation or transgender adults. It examines the growing social phenomenon of transgender identification among teen girls and how underage medical “transitions” can be a form of self-harm.
“Girls who might have encouraged each other in bulimia, anorexia or cutting are today deciding they have ‘gender dysphoria,’ pushing for hormones and surgeries—and easily obtaining them,” writes Shrier.
Target is not the first corporate entity to censor Shirer’s book. When the book was released in June, Amazon barred Shrier’s publisher from running ads for the book because it contained copy and content that “infers or claims to diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation.”
I want to draw your attention to a talk on “Vision in Life” given by Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig is the ablest defender of the Christian faith operating today. He has done formal academic debates with all of the best known atheists on major university campuses in front of thousands of university students.
It turns out that he owes a lot of his success to his amazing wife Jan.
This talk was Dr. Craig’s chapel address to Biola University students.
About 11 minutes into the talk, Bill describes what happened after he finished his Bachelor’s degree at Wheaton:
And so I joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ for 2 years, and was assigned to Northern Illinois University. And that was where I met my wife Jan. She was a graduate of the University of North Dakota where she had come to faith in Christ. And she had a similar vision for her life of evangelism and discipleship.
And as we worked at NIU together, she with gals and I with the guys, leading students to Christ and discipling them to walk with the Lord, we fell in love. And we decided that we would be more effective if we joined forces and became a team.
So their reason for getting together was because they thought that they would be more effective in evangelism and discipleship if they worked as a team.
It is at this point in the talk where Bill begins to explain just how Jan molded him into the lean, mean debating machine that travels the world striking terror into the hearts of atheists.
Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:
And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”
And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.
As graduation from Trinity neared, Jan and I were sitting one evening at the supper table in our little campus apartment, talking about what to do after graduation. Neither of us had any clear leading or inclination of what we should do next.
So Jan said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”
I replied, “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to England and do a doctorate under John Hick.”
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“Oh, he’s this famous British philosopher who’s written extensively on arguments for the existence of God,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a cosmological argument for God’s existence.”
But it hardly seemed a realistic idea.
The next evening at supper Jan handed me a slip of paper with John Hick’s address on it. “I went to the library today and found out that he’s at the University of Birmingham in England,” she said. “Why don’t you write him a letter and ask him if you can do a doctoral thesis under him on the cosmological argument?”
What a woman! So I did, and to our amazement and delight Professor Hick wrote back saying he’d be very pleased to supervise my doctoral work on that subject. So it was an open door!
And in the same article, he explains how Jan encouraged him to get his second Ph.D:
As Jan and I neared the completion of my doctoral studies in Birmingham, our future path was again unclear to us. I had sent out a number of applications for teaching positions in philosophy at American universities but had received no bites. We didn’t know what to do.
I remember it like yesterday. We were sitting at the supper table in our little house outside Birmingham, and Jan suddenly said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”
I laughed because I remembered how the Lord had used her question to guide us in the past. I had no trouble answering the question. “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to Germany and study under Wolfhart Pannenberg.”
“Who’s he?”
“Oh, he’s this famous German theologian who’s defended the resurrection of Christ historically,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a historical apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus.”
Our conversation drifted to other subjects, but Jan later told me that my remark had just lit a fire under her. The next day while I was at the university, she slipped away to the library and began to research grants-in-aid for study at German universities. Most of the leads proved to be defunct or otherwise inapplicable to our situation. But there were two grants she found that were possibilities. You can imagine how surprised I was when she sprung them on me!
Both of these Ph.D experiences are also described in the talk. And the talk concludes as follows:
I am so thankful to be married to a woman who is tremendously resourceful, tremendously talented and energetic, who could have pursued an independent career in any number of areas, but instead, she has chose to wed her aspirations to mine, and to make it her goal to make me the most effective person I can be, for Christ. And she has been like my right arm in ministry over these many years. And it is a tremendous privilege to be a team with a person like that.
And you young men, I would encourage you, if you marry, to find a gal who shares your vision, not some independent vision, but who is interested in aligning herself with you, and pursuing together a common vision and goal that will draw you [together], so that you will avoid the growing separateness that so often creeps into marriages.
And now you know the rest of Bill’s story. The person you marry will have an enormous influence on the impact you will have for Christ and his Kingdom. It is up to you to decide whether that influence is going to be positive or negative, by deciding if you will marry, and if you do marry, by deciding whom you will marry.
You may also be interested in this talk given by William Lane Craig, entitled “Healthy Relationships” (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008) (audio here) In that talk, he offers advice to Christians who want to have a marriage that is consistent with their Christian faith.
I link to Laura’s blog “An Affair With Reason” a lot, because she is very bold about her Christian convictions and uses reason and evidence when defending her views. She has started a new series where she talks about the conversations she has, where she is able to bring up Christian topics. This time, she had a conversation with a 13-year-old boy about his lack of interest in books.
She writes:
It was 9:15am and we were about to begin another grueling CrossFit workout. Nolan, a homeschooled eighth-grader and the youngest member of our morning workout crew, was moaning at the prospect of exerting so much energy on so little sleep.
“I was up so late! I just don’t know if I can do this,” he agonized.
I replied jokingly, “Were you up late doing some extra reading just for the sake of becoming a more excellent and informed person?”
He smiled. “I hate reading! Reading is the worst. I don’t think I’ve read a book since sixth grade.”
Knowing the critical impact that great books can make in a person’s life, I pushed back a little. “Well maybe you just haven’t found the right books yet.”
He replied, “Why do I have to read, anyway?”
And with this question I saw a teachable moment. After all, he needs to know the answer to that if he is to make the most of the knowledge and wisdom that are available to him through great books. Many activities compete for the attention of young people. If they don’t understand why something like reading is important, they aren’t likely to prioritize it, and when they are forced to read, they may look for shortcuts and complete their assignments with mediocrity rather than gaining the full benefits available to them. Without understanding the purpose or benefits of reading, they are likely to discontinue as soon as they no longer feel the threats of a teacher, parents, or a bad grade hanging over them.
“Well,” I said, “there’s the fact that reading great books can shape your values and priorities so that you’re better equipped to make good decisions that lead to thriving for you and those around you. Reading the right books will make you a better man, a better leader, a better husband, and a better citizen. You aren’t going to learn those things from the culture. Today’s movies, music, and tv shows will weaken you until you have nothing of value to offer a woman or a neighbor or your community. Our modern forms of entertainment are written with an agenda to spread values that are contrary to God’s values and contrary to the way He created reality. If you succumb to that garbage, you may be popular with your peers, but you won’t be successful in any sort of meaningful or ultimate way. You have to counter the constant lies with truth and goodness.
“Plus,” I added, “great books not only educate and inform; they also inspire and motivate us toward worthy goals. They point us toward all that is good, excellent, noble and praiseworthy.” (I had just read Philippians chapter 4 a few days earlier.)
“Daaang,” he said, in his yet-unrefined 13-year-old vocabulary. “Fine. What should I read?”
She goes on from there to explain why she is going to take up the task of recommending books to Nolan, and why it’s important to do so in the current culture. If you’re a man, and you’re feeling undervalued in this society, you’ll be very encouraged by what she had to say. She started out by looking ahead to what Nolan could grow into. Then she talks about how men are being treated today in a society that doesn’t value them. She talks about the kind of man she’d like Nolan to be. She’s very optimistic about the difference that Christianity would make to Nolan’s character and effectiveness.
What would I recommend to Nolan?
Lately, one my female friends has been investigating where I get my character traits from. It turns out that lots comes from the Bible. I was just reading Ephesians 4 for my Bible study, and I noticed how in verse 28 it talks about making sure that you work in order to have something to share. I made that same point in the podcast that I did on BLM with Tim Stratton of Free Thinking Ministries. I got my view of education and career from Ephesians 4. Many of my character traits and views came from reading the Bible at the right time in my life. So I recommend that boys read the Bible, and put it into practice. Start with Phillipians.
My female friend also found out that a lot of my views go back to classical literature and classical movies. When I was young, I was very disappointed with my parents. They seemed to have no plan for me. They made demands, but just to get good grades and to make money. They didn’t have any character goals for me. And most importantly, they didn’t lift a finger from day to day to help me to achieve anything – success, character, wisdom, etc. So I had to parent myself. And I did that by reading classical books and watching classical movies. I listed a bunch of them in my About WK page. For example, I taught myself to look past a woman’s looks to her character by reading “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens.
I was influenced by classical literature, military biography, military history, military strategy, and evidential apologetics. So, here are my recommendations for a 13-year-old boy would be: “The Hobbit”, “Rifleman Dodd”, “The Screwtape Letters”, “Mere Christianity”, “The Problem of Pain”, “A Man for All Seasons”. I also noticed that people love this new book “Great Battles for Boys: WW2 Europe” – there’s a whole series of them. I also like classic TV shoes like “The Rifleman”, “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide”.
Laura’s series on conversations
This is not the first time I’ve linked to Laura’s blog. I also did here for her post about apologetics and here for her post about talking to Muslims and here where she introduced her new series on conversations. What I like about her is that she has a mature view of the Christian life that I really respect. When I read her writing, I can tell that she is not involved in Christianity to feel good or to be liked. Her approach to being persuasive relies on reason and evidence.
