The itch is the most innate experience of human desire. It is so well understood that to say you want to “scratch an itch” is synonymous with fulfilling one’s desires exclusively for its gratification; despite the well-known consequences. “Don’t scratch!”, we warn our children – and sometimes ourselves – for we know that scratching accomplishes no long term benefit. At the same time, scratching an itch will not only fail to relieve the desire, but make the desire to scratch more intense.

Those of us that live in the 21st century post-Christian era need a reminder of the effects of “scratching an itch”.

Morality from Desire

Andrea Long Chu is a writer who specializes in gender theory. While born a male, he is transgender and considers himself a female. Last year, he wrote an article for the New York Times reflecting on his decision to have gender reassignment surgery, titled “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy“. His opening paragraph summarizes his opinion of his desire to remove his penis and manufacture a vagina:

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it.

The article argues that both conservative and liberal opinions on these medical treatments are erroneous. Conservatives say these surgeries shouldn’t happen because they feed a delusion and don’t heal the patient. Liberals say the surgeries should happen because affirming an individual’s convictions about their sexual identity is humane and leads to psychological healing. In Chu’s view, both approach a trans individual’s request as “little kings” over their bodies. So, Chu argues, both are wrong because they deny the individual the right to do what they want with their body.

In other words, a parent’s warning to their child, “don’t scratch that itch because it will damage your skin and make it itch more” is just as bad as encouraging “scratch the itch as much as you can, as often as you can, as hard as you can. You’ll feel better!” That’s because both deny the child the right to experience the itch in the way he or she chooses to experience it.

Chu’s argument is imbued with the spirit of our age. That is, the discussion about how an individual understands and lives with their desires no longer rests upon identifying and pursuing what is “good”; for both conservatives and liberals believe they are doing so. Chu argues that both are mistaken because their understanding of “good” does not include “desire” as a factor; to which Chu factors “desire” almost exclusively as that which is “good”

Although this argument is not mainstream, it has appeared on mainstream media and is being praised by the academics that maintain the ever evolving gender studies in modern academia.

More importantly, this view is born from a culture that has no connection to religion, which has historically been the institution that guides us toward the “good”, so it would be understandable that our culture as a whole will come to the same conclusion: what is Good is what I Desire.

Desire as Master

The 21st century Christian is at a major impasse. On the one hand, Jesus proclaims that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed”. And St. Paul tells us that “all things are lawful”. So,