Unusually Cogent Responses to Letters Today

No Forgiveness/White Orcs

For the most part I really enjoy your blog. But every now and then I get the impression you’re in a war against the content you find in memes instead of actual issues. Can we agree that sin in the form of racism is a thing that exists? Can we agree that humanity has a tremendous ability to ignore or not appreciate the depth of their sin and its consequences? Is it at least plausible that some of that overt or underappreciated sin has crept its way into countless aspects of our life from day to day interactions all the way to official policies. If any of these is possible why in the world would the practical wisdom of taking a step back and listening for a moment be a bad thing? I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was 100% in the right regarding a tiff with my wife. Fully expecting an apology and after doing the hard work of figuring out what really happened realized that I was blind to all sorts of habits, routines, rhythms that had cause the spat that were entirely my fault. So I think people are just taking a moment and stepping back and giving space to the idea that maybe the way we’ve been seeing the world is not entirely accurate. Maybe I’ve experienced benefits that others have not based on nothing more than the color of my skin. My wife’s sister (white) is married to a black man in Tampa. The stories involving buying their home for example were astounding.

I just wanted to reiterate how much I appreciate much of the wisdom and viewpoints you express on this blog that challenge me. And I think I’ve been reading long enough to get a feel for what you think your mission is, at least online, and understand that tough things need to be said and said bluntly. But man, giving sin and justice issues a second look just seems wise to me. And the flare and accusations of “Precisely because they have spent many decades excluding a transcendent God from all their reckoning, and precisely because they have necessarily rejected Christ, the Son of that transcendent God, the one who came as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin, they have been consigned to a closed system of guilt and retribution, a system that demands a never-ending line of sacrifices” is just way off the mark, in most examples I think.

BTW I’ve always really enjoyed how the Bible Project explains justice in their video.

Jim

You named a name! Ligon Duncan. Just look at his suggested resources on race and you can see how his influence on RTS and the PCA, with respect to race issues, has been, let’s just say, less than stellar.

Mark

Last week’s Dilbert (start with this) skewered the diversity thing brilliantly. Today’s cartoon pokes the aberrant alphabet group with the term “sapiosexual”.

It is sad that Scott Adams, a non-believing cartoonist, continues to mock the current Zeitgeist in ways that evangelicals are afraid to. (Note that I exclude you and Cross Politic from this assertion.) Please encourage the high-flying evangelicals in your acquaintance to step up the pace.

John

Does the following quote from Mitch McConnell bother you like it does me? ““And if this were the final decision, that was the point that it should be resolved one way or another in the legislative process. So yeah, it’s possible,” ​McConnell told USA Today Saturday when asked if a nationwide abortion ban is worthy of debate.”

1. Why say this? Inflame Dems more?

2. “One way or the other”??

3. We’ve been saying this is a state issue – but he thinks it should be Federal? Makes us look like hypocrites for debating purposes.

I’ve been trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but the only way to continue that now it to assume he’s getting as senile as the Resident.

From Epoch Times: “McConnell: Nationwide Ban on Abortion ‘Possible’”

Craig

I enjoyed hearing your story about your dad Jim Wilson’s book Answers to Prayer on the Plodcast this week. I would like to know your thoughts about this approach to Christian living and use of finances, which was made famous by George Muller’s example. Do you think this approach should be entirely voluntary as God leads, or should it be something every Christian should aspire to?

Over the last few years as I’ve read about George Muller, Hudson Taylor and others, I began to feel a lot of guilt that I didn’t live that way, either because I didn’t have that kind of faith, or I just didn’t sense a leading to take their approach to my finances. I would just work, save, give, etc, as God provided opportunity. But it would nag me sometimes that I was just selling out, or lacked faith, if I didn’t take their approach to money. I know this is not a good approach to living by faith in light of Christ’s salvation by grace, but it has been hard to shake this mentality.

Something else that I would like to know your thoughts on that is related to this: If I remember correctly, Muller did not believe in going into debt for any reason, which means no mortgage for a house. “Owe no-one anything, except to love each other”, as Paul says in Romans 13 (on the face of it, it’s pretty hard to argue with that exegesis!). He also did not believe in saving money for a “rainy day”. Do you think this is simply a particular approach that some Christians are personally called to through a leading of the Holy Spirit?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for responding to the letters I have written to you in the past. I’m blessed every week by your ministry.

CD

I am reading the man of sin article and I’m quite confused. I remember elsewhere you basically stated that the antichrist was already fulfilled and so was the beast. Is this not the antichrist? Couldn’t this have been an idea that Paul had rather than a prophesy? Maybe Nero in 70AD?

Jason

Thank you for the way you share Biblical wisdom combined with life experience, applied to our time and presented in an engaging way!

In several of the “Dear Darla” and “Dear Dawson” posts you have mentioned something about the girl asking her father before going on a date with a guy. Is the assumption here that the girl still lives with her parents? How should the relationship be between a father and an unmarried adult son or daughter who has moved out?

Ruben

I have a bibliographic question on one of those Sweater Vest Dialogues, The Trinity & The Patriarchy. At approximately 31:30 you speak about an observation of Augustine that the Son as the Word of God is not a passive recipient to the Father’s call to save His elect, as it is portrayed in Paradise Lost. Rather, when the Father speaks, His speaking is the Word. Where in Augustine do you draw that from? The best I can find is that you may be paraphrasing sections of De Trinitate or his commentary on John 5:19. Also, do you have a preferred edition or translation of De Trinitate? I’ve decided it’s time to really sink my teeth into it.

Thank you for providing what are the equivalent of seminary lectures basically for free.

John

Do you think there is any substantial difference between the woke church of the 2020’s and the emergent church movement of the 2000’s (where did they all go, by the way?), or are they pretty much the same thing at the root?

Mallory

Hello! I’ve been aware of your work for years (‘Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning’ had an enormous impact on my life), but I do not explicitly recall reading much of your theological writing until a few weeks ago.

I do not expect you to reply to this letter; I address it to the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of your blog simply because I can see that you do faithfully read and respond to those who write to you. I am writing to you because I am deeply concerned.

Brother Doug—and I take the liberty of addressing you that way because you proclaim yourself to be a Christian. I follow C.S. Lewis’ notion that in this life, rather than presuming to know the states of men’s souls, we should assume that those who call themselves Christians do in fact mean that they believe Jesus is Lord. Brother Doug, I am troubled for your soul. I am troubled because, in all your years of pastoring and writing (in which it should not be contentious to acknowledge that you have occasionally made mistakes, however well-intentioned), you do not seem on any occasion to have actually practiced repentance.

I do not say this lightly: I have spent many, many hours trawling through your prolific writings. I have not only been through your ‘Controversy Library’ with its attendant links, but also through the blogs and articles and interviews of many with whom you have been in dialogue with over the years. You have occasionally expressed a public willingness or desire to apologize for being misunderstood—which is of course sometimes a case of people failing to understand you—when it comes to questions of race, slavery, or what has been called ‘Federal Vision’ theology. You have expressed regrets for carelessness over some of your publication controversies. But, my brother, as best I can tell, you have never indicated that you have experienced real remorse for anything greater than failing to do due diligence in your editing work, or for contending somewhat belligerently during the height of the FV controversy.

I am not your judge and do not know you personally: of course the fact that I cannot find much evidence of repentance at any point in your life is not the same as saying that it does not exist. Nevertheless, I was even more troubled when I began searching your prolific online writings for any teaching about repentance.

Brother Doug, it is not there. You preach about the need for national repentance—all very well and good; you are not wrong. Americans as a group have many sins, many of them ongoing, for which we must repent and turn to God for forgiveness and correction. But repentance that is exclusively corporate (or would you say, covenantal?) is no repentance at all. Corporate repentance is a result of personal repentance, as we see for example in Daniel 9: it is not a replacement for it.

You acknowledge every so often that repentance is an aspect of the process of church discipline governed by Matthew 18—good!—but my brother, I have yet to hear a sermon of yours in which you exhort the congregation to repentance, or refer to any experience that you yourself have of repentance. (It is of course likely that you do that, somewhere, and that I have just missed it.)

My brother, you speak in tongues of men and angels, but I cannot tell whether you love your brothers and sisters in Christ. You speak of Christ, but I cannot tell whether you love him. I commend to you the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians—so often quoted at weddings, and yet written primarily as a rebuke to a church that was failing to live out the good news in many ways.

I love many of the things that I can see your love for: the works of Lewis and Tolkien and Sayers, philosophy of education, the singing of the Psalms. Whatever my other concerns about your spiritual welfare, I appreciate whole-heartedly your commitment to carrying on the worship of God last year. My prayer is that I will see you before God’s throne in the new heavens and the new earth, standing next to our shared intellectual heroes, singing together—

Holy, holy, holy LORD, God of power and might: heaven and earth are full of your glory!

With sincerity,

EEF

I have been working through my sample ballot here in North Carolina, looking for candidates who uphold Biblical values and true justice. An issue has come to my attention about something called Raise the Age, which would raise the age of being prosecuted as an adult from 16 to 18. I desire to face every issue in the light of Biblical law, but am at a loss of how to approach this. What do you think about this bill? Do you know of any laws or principles laid out in Scripture that can help me wrestle through this issue?

Thanks,

Levi

For context’s sake, I have been a ravenous consumer of all things Canon Press since just before the beginning of the great reset. My wife, on the other hand, has never heard of you or Canon Press. Some of your work and the work of Canon Press have largely influenced my marriage and my self-identity (Fidelity; It’s Good to Be a Man). Over the past few years, I’ve striven to put the godly, biblical principles of manhood and husbandhood (not a father yet, D.V.) into practice. My wife is a faithful believer and was instrumental in my conversion out of atheism. Though fallen like us all, she is a faithful wife who strives to live a life as a woman and wife as described in the Scriptures. We’ve been married for 4 years and have had our ups and our downs (mostly ups, thankfully).

My question is more of an appeal for advice. My wife has no interest in watching “Eve in Exile.” I believe this lack of desire is more rooted in cynicism than rebellion, but either way, I think that just as “Fidelity” and “It’s Good to Be a Man” helped me tremendously, “Eve in Exile” will help her. She often comments on feeling “lost” in modern femininity and torn about how she should go about being a Christian woman in the 21st century. What would be your advice on helping her consume “Eve in Exile?” Should I persuade her, watch it with her, tell her she needs to, or just put it on while she’s on the couch and hope that she doesn’t run off?

Many thanks,

FA

My question is a simple one, but one I think important, and one that weighs heavily on my heart. When it comes to making establishing dominion, we as men are called to lead and make decisions. Those decisions should be backed by Scripture and the courage of our convictions, and should always strive to do that which is right.

However, what does one do when they do not know what the right thing to do is? How may I decide which Church I am to join, or whether I should attempt to pursue my ex-girlfriend once again, when my convictions on either are not concrete?

The heart is deceitful above all things, and the mind clouded by doubt. How am I as a man to do that which is right when Scripture does not address the specific circumstance? Please let me know.

Sincerely,

Kyle

This excellent video by CGP Grey convinced me that jury nullification was a viable option if I ever served on a jury and did not agree with the law. CGP Grey presents an interesting quandary, though. He says that lawyers will get around this by asking questions such as: “Do you have any beliefs that might prevent you from making a decision based strictly on the law?” If you say yes, you will never make it on the jury. If you say no, then you have perjured yourself, which is a crime. If you decide to say no to the question and then try to convince you fellow jurors about your plan it may also get you in trouble. If you were ever in a position where you might want to nullify the law, how would you handle this?

David

Just a question regarding your post on “The Rights of Juries.” I am not convinced by the argument that juries sit in judgment on the law itself. What about woke jurors? or Muslim jurors? such people are likely to disagree with many laws (perhaps even, in a sense, all laws made by our Christian, white, patriarchal society). Should such people also sit in judgment on the law itself?

Surely the only hope we have of juries not descending into anarchy is for it to be made clear that a juror’s job is not to judge the law, but simply to determine whether the defendant is guilty of breaking the law for which they are charged? Surely a court is not the place to argue about the validity of a law, but only to deem whether it has been broken or not?

Richard

Littlejohn, MacArthur, and the Binding of Conscience: My church required masks to be worn from June 2020 to July 2021. I brought up my concerns to my church leaders just recently about whether they had the authority to implement such a mandate and whether they believed it to be binding. Their question to me was “Did we violate your conscience when you decided yourself to wear the mask?” I’m having a difficult time answering that. I do have a conscience to not wear a mask in worship for various reasons 1) I don’t want to participate in the deceit of COVID hysteria nor propagate the idea that masks work to the extend that it does 2) I believe a mask requirement is a legalistic requirement for the ekklesia and 3) I believe that worship/fellowship is hindered by wearing one. When I wore one, however, I chose to do so with other principles at play: 1) submission/obedience to the leaders 2) not causing a ruckus in worship and 3) not wanting to leave the church for this reason. I do not know whether I myself was sinning against God from June to July but I do believe that there was a binding of conscience as they disregarded how I felt about the wearing of masks. Can you help address and categorize my decision to submit to them? Was it a sinful compromise?

John

Hi—I really enjoy your “Ask Doug” vids. Since you mentioned Gary North’s 75 Questions book, I thought it be a good idea for someone like Canon Press to do a reprint. This book has been out of print since 2000 (last printing was 1996) and you can no longer find it anywhere—blessings

Bob

Could the promise “to you and to your children” really be to covenant children when Peter didn’t even know that the men he was speaking to were believers yet?

Jonty

I attend a faithful and solid PCA church down here in East Texas, one that has contemplated leaving the denomination should the GA flake completely on upcoming issues. We have serious men in our session and diaconate, and not a few who are readers of many things originating from Canon Press. (Our pastor plugged “Reforming Marriage” last Sunday.) Overall, I am grateful and blessed by our church, with one exception. Our weekly Lord’s Supper is a 180° inversion of the glorious exhortations you present on Mablog. Whereas I am encouraged, uplifted, and edified by weekly reads of your blog on Mondays, the presentation down here on Sundays is more aptly described as dour, depressing, and rote.

With little variation, this is the template:

“This is the table of the Lord; it’s not the table of this church, so if you are a visitor in good standing with a Bible-believing church, meaning [insert long-winded definition here], then you are welcome. But there is a warning for all of us. You are not to partake if you are unrepentant [insert even longer, delineated definition with caveats and exclusions like a page from a legal document here], then you should let the elements pass, repent, and come back next week.”

Sadly, this non-exhortation is growing longer over time, and with it the weight of gloom. I pray it’s not just me doing a lot of internal griping. We have come a long ways over the past decade, when the Lord’s Supper was only weekly and filled with grape juice and Saltines.

So . . .I am hopeful that we will continue to grow in grace. Is there something I can or should say to our elders that would inject a little joy into the feast. It might have been Christ’s “last supper,” but it shouldn’t weekly feel like it’s MY last supper. I would love to discover that your weekly exhortations have been compiled into a 260-page book (that’s 52 x 5) and could be utilized in other churches like a Lord’s Supper devotional for pastors trying to work out how to rejoice in our salvation

Malachi

FYI: In March, Jon Fea, professor of American history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, wrote an article showing Grove City’s board chair, Edward D. Breen, has advocated for diversity, equity and inclusion as CEO of the chemicals company DuPont. “(I)s the Edward Breen who led the Grove City College Board’s condemnation of critical race theory the same guy working for racial justice at DuPont?” Fea asks. Another board member, David Forney, is pastor of a Charlottesville church and has offered a list of racial justice resources to his congregation on the church website, including TED Talks by Bryan Stevenson and the books “How To Be an Antiracist” and “Between the World and Me,” both of which the report characterized as promoting “pop-CRT.”

Melody

One of the letters to the editor asked if depression is a sin, and you had a good answer—but it’s also always worth reminding people that the vicious cycle of depression is one of focusing inward on why one is depressed, which is depressing to do. So beyond just trusting Christ over current circumstances, it is important to find a way to lift one’s eyes off oneself.

Ian

I am dismayed by how deep, wide, and smelly the whole slavery issue is in Ontario public education. My eldest daughters were educated in public schools (they now homeschool). All of my 19 grandkids are homeschooled.

When my eldest daughters speak of the history they learned, all they were TAUGHT about US history was slavery. Since my wife and I were born in the US, so we knew better. But here, the US is the place where slavery reigned, not where it was eradicated.

A fellow pastor here was surprised to learn the segregation, Jim Crowe, the KKK, and other nasties were all Democrat operations. He was sure it was the Republicans. I can tell by the looks I get that most don’t believe me on this; even more so when I tell them that the Democrat party is still racist and anti-Semitic.

But in spite of your efforts and others, the story line is that ya’ll are racist down there, and we’re so much better here. So I get lumped in with the best of you.

Thank you for Black and Tan, and for your work. You have enough listeners here that the Gospel Coalition Canada is worried about your influence.

In the Lamb,

Scott

I’ve appreciated your ministry and partially because of it, I am dangerously close to moving from credobaptist to paedobaptist. At least I’ll still be baptist. One text in particular is a problem that I can’t seem to get past and haven’t heard paedobaptists address. The text is Philippians 3:3 where Paul tells us who the circumcised people of God are, and all elements he enumerates are byproducts of the new birth. Could you please explain to me how you understand this text specifically related to children being part of the New Covenant community?

Jon

Classical Christian Education: what paradigm should be used to determine which non-Christian texts to be taught in a K-12 school? I’m aware of the concept of “plundering the Egyptians,” but are there places that aren’t worth searching for treasure due to the quagmire one must go through to find them? What about texts with graphic violence, sexuality, or language? I’m personally not a fan of canceling books, but how has the CCE tradition handled this historically?

Joel

He needs to make room for the way women are, and stop doing certain things.” That being said, is there a difference between “[making] rooming for the way women are” and a woman being the way she is and as a result she ends up sabotaging the relationship, whether ill-intended or not? I believe you said something analogous some time ago in commenting on the weaker brother . . .

IOW, when Peter instructs husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way, that doesn’t imply that because wives are the weaker vessel that she gets a pass on all the basic character and personality traits that the Bible speaks to, does it? Anger, gossiping, slander, forgiveness, love, etc . . . there is in fact a Biblical standard for each of these, and that standard is not adjusted for the wife being the weaker vessel, is it?

More practically, how does a husband deal with such issues that his weaker vessel might have as a result of “the way women are”, without violating Peter’s other commands to not treat wives harshly, especially when a loving concern for one’s wife in those areas is often automatically received as “harsh” no matter what the true motivations of the husband?

Guymon

I have been tracking you and your crew of men and women for some months now and have found all of it to be incredibly enlightening and affirming. Your challenging stances and rigid Biblical foundations for each of your posts and sermons make their practical advice hard to turn away from. In short, I praise God you are doing your work along with your wife, daughters, and associate pastors as vessels of righteousness. You in Moscow have been nothing short of an asset both to me and my church, this is because I rarely spend time not relating something I just heard on Cannon Press or Blog and Mablog to my friends and elders.

Now that the gushing is out of the way I would like to ask my question as it concerns medical procedures and medicine. I have heard some things regarded as modern-day witchcraft and sorcery. While some people posit more sweeping damnation across the medical field in terms of even hospital care and baby delivery, others say that pharmacology and opioid use represent a new wave of arcanum that we in the Church have not been wise to in some time, allowing the forces from on high to slip things past our gaze in the name of easier lives and deadened emotions which threaten our daily stability. And because many do not want to be tossed about like waves in the ocean, they resort instead to antidepressants and therapy, well-motivated or otherwise. All these thoughts pose an incredibly complex network of questions and I cannot seem to find a practical scriptural application that would provide me with an answer.

If there is something you can do to shed light on that area I and some of my brothers would be greatly appreciative.

Best,

Alex

I see that kids are members at Christ Church by household. Does this change when they become “adults” or married? If you have written about this of membership in general as it pertains to children elsewhere please direct me, thank you!

Ace

My husband and I have been discussing the moral and theological implications of embryo adoption, which before recently, we had not heard much about. After trying to find and read arguments from many sides, we have not been able to come across a Reformed evangelical perspective on the matter. Liberal/Evangellyfish views? Plenty. Catholic views? Yes. And certainly the arguments we have found in those camps have been thought provoking.

For instance, many Catholic theologians will say that women who adopt frozen embryos into their womb are, in a sense, being unfaithful or unchaste toward their husbands because they are becoming pregnant through technological means rather than through marital intercourse as God designed. My husband and I were thinking that this argument would apply in the case of using separate donated eggs and/or donated sperm to try to create a viable embryo, but perhaps would not apply to the scenario at hand where frozen embryos (which are already living humans, biblically) are being adopted into a family.

A second argument to the negative is that embryo adoption in some ways, indirectly supports the continuation of IVF, and also often utilizes the same facilities and medical providers that IVF procedures do. Does this outweigh the positives of saving the lives of many frozen embryos which would otherwise be used for stem cell research, frozen indefinitely, or simply thawed and left to die?

An example of an argument with a positive view toward embryo adoption would be that it, like traditional adoption, is a picture of our adoption into God’s family. It involves extending hospitality to a child, not only by bringing them into one’s covenant family, but also by giving an already conceived child hospitality in one’s womb.

Are there any other points of moral ambiguity that you believe need to be considered in the case of embryo adoption? Do you think it is biblically acceptable for Christians to adopt frozen embryos?

Thank you in advance for your time and wisdom.

In Christ,

Rachel

I think thank you us in order. Just read the article ” Minneapolis Burning “. Proceeding by reading additional recommended writings. Not sure I understand the technicalities . The Minneapolis article was a beacon of light.

Florence