Last updated on April 5, 2013
Douglas Wilson – Apparently I’m turning into a Reformed polemical Calvinist, if my consistent reading of Douglas Wilson shows any indication. Not that I tie myself with a particular denomination, but what can you do when something sounds correct and accurate? That seems to be the case with Mr. Wilson. Part G.K. Chesterton (that is, insufferably witty and also offensive at the same time) and part John Calvin, I’m finding his enjoyable writing style at Blog and Mablog hides subtle truths in pretty hilarious metaphors.
More than anything, I’ve been viewing this debate over whether or not Douglas Wilson is a racist. While that charge seems hilariously disproportionate (he’s said many times that he is not, but the language he uses to convey it, like describing himself as a “paleo-Confederate” drives people into a tizzy), not many people come to his lectures, debates, or conferences with the intent to learn, but to accuse. Thabiti Anyabwile remains a notable exception in this regard, but it’s plain and obvious that people don’t want to listen to what he has to say. What he says makes people uncomfortable; his satire has bite. And this might be a good thing. A bad polemicist just says stuff to offend without meaning behind it; a good polemicist uses satire, whether Horatian (subtle) or Juvenalian (explicit and distinctly not subtle), to prove a point without necessarily saying it out loud. It speaks to the person and says “well, maybe what you thought wasn’t really what you thought at all,” and that’s all you can ask for in the beginning.
If anything, we know the word “Satan” mean “accuser”. He is the judge in a court of law, and definitely not the judge on your side. His whole goal and end is to make you accuse others, even when you do not look at your own flaws and failings. Or, to look at James 4:
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend iton your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world ishostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? 6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
The problem, from Wilson’s view, is that we take a surface level appraisal of our desires, simply say “I will change them”, and then go on our merry way. Our submission to God takes that problem and shoves it away in the cupboard. Yet, we don’t admit that we are a tangled web of complex desires and lusts. These will continue; we are sinful, and that will always happen. It is then that we find the spirit of accusation comes, and we begin to judge the other because we appear to have fixed the problem…temporarily. Doesn’t mean a house that looks great has a good foundation. Humbling ourselves isn’t so easy in that context, is it? We’ve all done that before, right?
11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
We don’t seem to get that associating with the world’s social mores isn’t a good thing, but a bad one. We basically commit adultery to the world when we submit to the spirit of accusation; not the righteous kind (as in v.4) but in the devilish kind that boasts and places the self in a higher position. And, to get rid of that guilt of our own narcissism and self-justification, we blame each other and the world. Hence why Satan sits in the court and laughs at us and our fighting, and especially delights in our judging. Who wouldn’t? It’s like a spectacle. Just view any debate on any pressing moral/social issue in the past fifty years (if not more) and the mudslinging continues, all to avoid the clear and plain teaching of Scripture. Wilson says:
Now consider the wonderful promise of v. 7. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. But if we have superficial views of the nature of our relationships, and the nature of our conflicts, and the nature of our desires, then we can apply this verse until we turn blue, and the devil will not flee at all. He will just sit there, leering at you. And he will make comments from time to time, because he likes to watch you twitch.
If you view the “world of desire” as simple, then it will not be surprising that you are easily confounded. God says not to take that chocolate chip cookie, and so all you have to do is submit to God on the point of law, recognize that the cookie belongs to another, and poof! the devil vanishes. So if it is so simple, why doesn’t he vanish?
Submit to God means to submit to His entire evaluation, as described in this extended passage, of the tangled web of conflicting desires that makes up your world, and it means to break off your adulterous friendship with the world entirely. To resist the devil means to resist the spirit of accusation that whispers to you every day about how right you are. Who is that who tells you every morning that you are “quite right”? Do you really need to ask? If you want the devil to flee and your right to accuse others to stay, then you are a double-minded man, not knowing what on earth you are asking for.
Much of his writing makes a point of this: that the world runs on accusation. Then, he makes comments on pressing issues of the day, and then people accuse him of all manner of intolerance, bigotry, labeling, etc., thereby proving his point. We need to remove ourselves from that world of accusation and become salt and light instead. So if that’s all you get out of him, I think you get it. Plus, two books of his are on sale, so go get them! They’re cheap, interesting, funny, and true; how’s that for a pastor? It’s fascinating stuff, and I am beginning to think about these issues in an entirely different way.
