Gods, Monsters and Modernity
Hugh Hewitt > Blog
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Mary Shelley’s original novel, Frankenstein, is a cautionary tale. Written in 1818, it is by today’s standards a difficult read, and since it has been made into countless movies, no one generally bothers. But the heart of the book is that when man attempts to do things reserved only for God (in this case create life by unnatural processes) monstrosity results – despite our best intentions. It can be thought of as an affirmation of Natural Law. I wonder if we are not living it.
In the killing of Charlie Kirk, we may well have experienced our first pro-trans assassination.
Is anyone surprised? The trans cause has been infused with an irrational fervor from the beginning, its ethos deeply illiberal and even threatening. Just ask J.K. Rowling.
Whether it was accurate or not, the implicit message of the gay-rights movement was “Live and let live,” while the implicit pro-trans demand is, “Agree to every claim we make, no matter how implausible.”
Why would the pro-trans movement make such demands? I would argue that they have travelled so far from the created order that monstrosity, in this case an assassination, has become inevitable. As I wrote last Thursday, we have been sliding in that direction for decades now. One must wonder if, with gender-reassignment on a whim, we have crossed some Rubicon.
An interview with Utah Governor Spencer Cox:
Sitting at the end of a mahogany table, he was still wrestling with what had happened. Not just the murder, but, perhaps more so, the reaction to it—the ironic, smirking, nihilistic meme culture he was just learning about, the “not insignificant portion of our country that was happy or, at least, not sad that this happened.”
Cox called that “outrageous.” Quoting the psychologist (and Free Press contributor) Jonathan Haidt, he said it was imperative that we “talk about the God-shaped hole in our hearts.”
Steyn suggested that transgender ideology and other left-wing ideologies are filling a post-Christian vacuum in the West, and that transgenderism especially allows adherents to replace traditional Christian faith by becoming their own gods.
“When you live in a society where faith is weak, as the entire Western world is, and a society where the Mainline churches are almost all post-Christian to one degree or another, the need for a transcendental meaning to life will become overwhelming for most people, so they look elsewhere,” he said.
“[Transgenderism] presupposes that you are God,” he later continued.
First we eliminated God – then we made ourselves God and the result is monstrosity. There is no Boris Karloff running around with green skin, a flat head and electrodes protruding from his neck, but there is little doubt that we have produced a monster.
I have made the argument many times, generally about environmental issues, that we think we are God. So often when we mess with creation, our efforts backfire. Not far from my Tennessee home is an older house that has quite literally been swallowed by kudzu. You have to be here in winter to even know there is a house inside that mound of vines. And kudzu is one of the minor cases of environmental disaster caused by our presupposed environment brilliance.
When we begin to think we are God, when we try to do things reserved only for God – bad stuff happens.
Which means that the road back from this awful place we currently find ourselves begins by putting God back on His throne. That is a job for the church, not government. That is what made Erika Kirk’s remarks at her deceased husband’s memorial so potent – they were an effort to put God on His throne with the resurrected Christ on His throne at His side.
It seems an impossible task, with so many religious institutions, as Steyn noted, “post-Christian to one degree or another” – a media that is hellbent on sympathizing with the monster – countless others lost and confused, but knowing that if God is on His throne they are not in control and therefore resistant. And yet, Christianity has survived many times in history when history seemed narrowly focused on its destruction. Empires have come and gone, but Christianity remains. So it will again.
All that is necessary is that we stand firm.
ADDENDUM: This:
The Late Show host Stephen Colbert celebrated that he was “once again” the “only martyr in late night” as he cheered Disney’s reinstatement of his ABC rival Jimmy Kimmel.
Follow the link, watch the clip – he really does use the word “martyr.” He thinks he is being cute, but in light of recent events it is disgusting. He gets to go home to his family. He has made enough money in the years of the show that he need not worry for the rest of his life. (His staff may be a different story, but he also used the word “I,” even after acknowledging Kimmel’s staff.) Colbert was fired, but martyred? Not in a million years. To claim such, even in seeming jest, at this time is beyond tasteless. See Steyn’s comment above.
