Brace Yourself for Tuesday Letters

There is a group claiming that Doug teaches that a minister/elder must be married. Can you clarify Doug’s position on this? Thank you!

Christopher

he’s right, as we are surrounded by Bolsheviks, you knew what they were doing all along and have shielded them. I’m sorry I ever listened to any of your talks, you lied to us this entire time, you protected the enemies of the church and just told the sheep to sit down and shut up as the wolves surrounded us) Replying to @douglaswils
I was undecided on what your deal was until this moment; whether you were being intentionally subversive or simply being deceived. Your continued insistence upon your error, in opposition to reality and the Scripture, has forced me to assume that you are indeed acting subversively.
“What if everything we believe they are doing is true? So what? Love your enemies by letting them take control of your nation while they openly blaspheme Christ and introduce ever form of debauchery known to man. Let them destroy your children and future posterity by remaining silent to their evil (because muh post-war liberal consensus)! Your family doesn’t matter. Your posterity doesn’t matter. Your church doesn’t matter. Your neighbor doesn’t matter. Only your enemy matters and must be “loved!” That’s some rightly ordered affection if I ever saw it!”
This is what I hear you saying. Utterly shameful. Either you don’t know what time it is or you are intentionally carrying water for the rulers of this present darkness who have all the nations of the former Christian West in a violent death grip. The time for a good will entertaining of this sort of tired, absurd shilling of the post-war artifice is long past. If you can’t move beyond that, and begin identifying the true antecedent (antichrist) factors behind the decline of the West, you are no longer relevant. Repent.

John

I know you’ve had Yoram Hazony on your Man Rampant show and that you’ve interacted with his book on Nationalism in your blogs and on the Plodcast. However, I don’t think I’ve read or heard you interact with his latest book, “Conservatism: A Rediscovery.” I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Hazony last year at a conference and discussing his ideas, and I’ve read his Conservatism book. I found it to be very good, but I’m still processing it to figure out what I agree and disagree with. An alternative title for his book might be “The Jewish Case for Christian Nationalism.” However, another alternative title (for at least some of the chapters) might be “How the Puritans were Just as Bad as the Enlightenment Liberals.” Read it and you may see what I’m getting at.
In any event, this is my formal request for you to read and interact with that book at length. I’d like to see a compare-and-contrast of his Burkean empiricist conservatism with (what I perceive to be) your Scottish Realist conservatism informed by the kind of Puritanism of which Hazony appears to be skeptical. A brief assessment of this book on your Plodcast book review segment would be nice, but a more extensive review on your blog (similar to one you did for Patrick Deneen’s book on Liberalism) would be preferable.
I’ll give you some time to read, digest, and review the Hazony Conservatism book before I make my next request for your in-depth interaction with the new “Virtuous Liberty” book of which Andrew Sandlin is the editor. Just a heads up that this request is forthcoming. Maybe you can get ahead of me.
In Christ,

Joe

The Cultish Podcast recently went through an informative series on Hinduism. In one of those episodes, this was brought up. For a while it seemed like sending a child to a government school was kind of a gamble. Well, there’s no gamble about it. In NY, they say, “Send us your kids, and they’ll be pagan first thing in the morning . . . every morning.” The “un” in unavoidable is not a strong enough prefix.
Peace,

Charles

In reply to your mail:
“Peter, yes. The fact that all sins are equally sin does not mean that they are all equally sinful. Homosexual corruption really is a deeper form of sin. But the debate [with Jared Moore] we had concerned whether or not there is any distance between these sinful corruptions (which only justification can deal with) and ‘a sin,’ which needs to be repented and confessed.”
I get that there’s a hierarchy to sin (Jesus talks of the camel and gnat). I also understood the following from the debate: the main point was about distinguishing between inherent sinfulness (original sin) from the act of committing a sin (or sowing to the flesh), and that it is important to distinguish between the two in order to avoid being dragged into a prison of despair; and the moment at which sinfulness becomes a sin is when we indulge, or give consent to the desires of our flesh; and that moment of decision should approximately be no longer than one second; any more than that would tend toward committing a sin.
Now desire can be either lawful or unlawful (context matters also; you gave the analogy of a man desiring a married woman versus him desiring her after she became a widow). God’s law determines which is which. Unlawful desire can further be divided into natural and unnatural. Again, God’s law determines which is which.
But what I was trying to ask with my previous question (isn’t the “unfit mind” evidence of a deeper level of depravity), which I framed incorrectly, was isn’t unnatural desire evidence of unbelief? How can a person have unnatural desires which spring from an unfit mind which is evidence of God’s wrath, be regenerate? I’m saying he can’t. If you have homosexual desires, you’re not born again.
Am I thinking through this correctly?

Peter

Not really apropos of anything . . . certainly our military industrial complex should be trimmed back quite a bit, but even if it was a more appropriate size, I think there would be a significant number of positions that I think women could still serve in quite biblically. Obviously they shouldn’t be on the battlefield, but it’s also quite hard to find a hard line in this day and age of what/where the battlefield actually is. What’s the way to actually figure out where the line is for women in the military?

Ian

I am writing w/appreciative regards for your video post awhile back “you are the man & you are responsible.” I have 2 sons, older of 14 yrs, that my wife & I are raising by God’s grace. A recent local happening clearly illustrated the failure of some local fellow gen X parents to order their lives by biblical accountability, and in conversing about it with our boys, that post came to my mind. I shared it with my older son this evening, and wanted to thank you for the treasure of biblical wisdom that so many of your posts contain. Keep boldly & graciously leading the gospel fight in your sector, general—there are junior officers in other sectors learning great battle strategies & conduct from you. Soli deo Gloria.

Mitchell

I was wondering what your take on Progressive Covenantalism is. I find it attractive as it seems like a very straight forward way of understanding how the covenants connect in Scripture. I know you don’t agree with PC, but do you have any thoughts? Any cautions? Anything you admire about the system?

SBS

Regarding all the anti-Jewish sentiment: when a complaint against the Jews could be boiled down to “damn those Klever, Konniving Kikes for all their Klever, Konniving Kike-iness”—I agree, that’s envy. However, I suggest that much of the seething, frothing hate you’re seeing is not envy but scapegoating.
Self-pitying blacks scapegoat whites all the time, but it’s not Whitey’s fault that Deondre is a felon with three baby mamas and can’t read or string together three intelligible sentences.
Similarly, it’s not Moishe’s fault that white, presumably Christian sons and daughters are easy pickings—as both consumers and hirelings—for Jewish and Gentile pornographers.
With both Deondre and our sons and daughters, most of the blame is properly laid close to home.

Daniel

Subject: Prenuptual Agreements
Dear Doug, I am shortly to remarry having been abandoned by my former wife (who subsequently divorced me). UK law now makes provision for no-fault divorce. I have learnt at considerable cost to myself and my children that contrary to scriptural principles (and historical precedent) an unfaithful spouse can carry away children, estate, all. The state now handsomely rewards infidelity. Once, an unfaithful spouse would have been heavily penalised.
I once viewed prenuptual legal contracts as something to protect the rich against gold-diggers. I’m increasingly considering whether they have a role in buttressing marriage vows and protecting against secular court decisions. Marriage vows are given no weight in the family court. Those fortunate enough to be living in communities of believers in which there is meaningful church discipline and in which family displeasure has clout have those additional protections: an unfaithful and unrepentant spouse will have to count the cost of some heavy censures. I don’t have such protections. So, having finally weathered the last storm, should I seek to undergird the ship by adding contract to covenant—something the secular court might recognise should the need ever arise?

Daniel

Re. From Absolutely Nothing
That’s a lovely meditation on creation but notice that it doesn’t start quite from nothing. It starts “before . . .” It starts in time in other words. Time seems to exist already, so to speak. Which is natural because it’s impossible to conceive of God’s being apart from time though we know logically that he is. Note the spatial metaphor in that “apart from time.” We can’t even think about our inability to think about it without assuming time and space. What we can say is that God creates everything that is not himself from nothing. Just as there is no morality above God there is also no other context or environment that contains him (spatial metaphors again) because there is nothing but God and stuff he makes. He fills time and space without being contained by them. He is his own context. He is absolute and fundamental.
It would be closer to the truth to say that God creates all history at once or that this is moment of creation than to go with our natural assumption that he inhabits time and space like a native, as if they were more fundamental than him. Even these formulations assume time with their “at once” and “this is the moment”. God truly is incomprehensible. We know him truly but as through a glass darkly. Our knowledge is fragmentary and distorted. Thank God he actually lives inside us knowing and loving himself perfectly.
Blessings!

Rob

Why do you prefer the Apostles’ Creed instead of the Nicene Creed for the sake of catholicity in documents like the Constitution? Isn’t the Nicene Creed the more catholic and ecumenical, since it was established by ecumenical councils?

John

I recently planted a church a little over a year ago, and things have been going quite well (difficult, to be sure, but enjoyable). One of the things that has stood out to me lately is re-discovering what most/all of the CREC camp (and others) teach with requiring baptism before partaking of the Lord’s Supper. We, like Christ Church, allow for both Protestant views of baptism: paedo- and credo-. This, in relation to communion, brought up a couple important questions that I am not sure how to answer and am processing through. The first is whether credobaptist brothers who were baptized as infants (we have a former Presby and a former UMC brother) should be re-baptized as adults (which goes against what us paedobaptists hold), or if they should acknowledge their baptism as infants as a legitimate baptism (which goes against their credobaptist conviction). Obviously if we held strictly to one view or the other, we wouldn’t have this problem; however, this has raised an interesting point that I hadn’t fully fleshed out yet.
Wisdom and advice is greatly appreciated. Hope that the scenario was painted well.

Matthew

I watched your response video to the Stephen Colbert civil war clip and it has me intrigued and wanting to find out more about what the Civil War was really about. I had believed it was about slavery and encountered many people on the right who shared the same view so I never questioned it. What are some books you’d recommend to learn more about this? I did some searches on your book reviews and came across ‘The Real Lincoln’ by Thomas J. Dilorenzo that I intend on picking up soon, but any other recommendations would be much appreciated. And thanks for making that video by the way.

Tony

I am a mom of high school and middle school aged children. I was wondering if you could recommend a book or resources about “semantics” and how language influences the way we see the world? We enjoyed your book “The Amazing Dr. Ransom’s Bestiary of Adorable Fallacies”, so I thought you might have some suggestions for this area! Thanks for your time!

Molly

I recently saw/heard you say somewhere that if someone wanted to be well-read they should start with what you called the “25 canonical books” of history, of which you only mentioned two; the Institutes by Calvin and Augustine’s Confessions.
Would you be willing to write out the full list of 25 books?
Thank you!
In Christ,

Isaac

I’m coaching Christian high school debate, and I’d like to teach my students about theonomy. I’d like to assign them a not-too-long book to read about theonomy, to help them understand the topic, and also to provide them with effective quotes from Christians that they can use to back up their arguments in the round. Can you recommend one? For example, when we debated journalistic objectivity, I had them read Olasky’s Central Ideas in the Development of American Journalism: A Narrative History.

Robyn

On Dopamine Politics:
I agree it’s a good phrase. I also concur with your balance beam analysis, though it seems more like a tight rope at times, on a bicycle, with a stiff wind blowing across the chasm and a squirrel running up my leg. How the squirrel got there I’ll never know. It probably wonders the same thing. The Christian life has always been a matter of balance. Drink wine but don’t be a drunkard. Feast but don’t be gluttonous. Fast but don’t advertise your Lenten abstinence. Pray in public worship but not to the acclaim of men. Preach but not for ratings. Hate what is evil but love the evildoer. Obey the law but not when it contradicts God. Use a hammer to pound nails, not screws. Or skulls.
In all these things, there is a good and rightful use, and in all these things there is a point in which it becomes abuse. Rejoice but don’t gloat. Cheer when your team wins, not because the other team loses. Eat whatever you want but not what causes your brother to stumble. Work to provide for the family but not to replace them. Print copious volumes of books to evangelize and instruct the brethren but not to enrich your coffers. Be a Jonathan Edwards and not a Joel Osteen.
I could go on, but I guess the best way to summarize is this . . .
You can put your mug on your blog, and sell your mug on your blog, but you can’t sell your mug on your mug on your blog.

Andy

I have been married thirteen years to a hard-working and faithful man who provides for us well. We have four kids. My husband is not a man for whom gentleness and patience come easily. He can at times speak harshly and with irritability to the kids and I. A low-degree impatience with things like small delays or inconveniences is usually the norm. I’ve gotten fairly thick-skinned about this sort of thing, but my children—especially the older ones—struggle with hurt and frustration about it.
He’s been most prone to impatience and criticism with our older son (7). The latest development is our boys starting competitive wrestling, a sport my husband loved as a kid and was very competitive in. Our older son is talented and hard-working and has had a great deal of success, but if anything this seems to have increased the criticism level from my husband, who coaches the boys at home and at tournaments. Now even the narrowest defeats (he’s only lost three matches out of twenty-one this season) result in the kid being hauled into an alcove by the arm and berated roundly for “giving up” or “not listening” or “not using your head”. This inevitably results in an emotional kid, which results in more berating for “crying and being a p*ssy*.
I’m not trying to cast my husband in a poor light, but our son is discouraged, I am discouraged, and I don’t know how to handle the situation which is downstream fruit of a lot of similar upstream situations through the years. They’re finally coming to a head, because now our son has started to ask me why his dad behaves this way, and told me how angry it makes him and how he loves wrestling but hates tournaments because he’s so nervous he’s going to lose and get treated this way by his dad.
My husband is not very receptive to hearing my concerns about this—comments about the dangers of “mama’s boys” abound. I don’t want to undermine his efforts in raising tough, tenacious sons and have worked to back up my husband’s standards for the boys. They’re not tender or wilting, they play hard and wrestle hard and bounce back from inevitable crashes and pile-ups, they are pellet guns and skinned rabbits and forts and swords and cap guns sorts of boys. My husband is doing a good job in giving them those sorts of tools needed to become men.
On the other hand, we have a kid who’s a nervous wreck, who slinks and sidles and mumbles around his dad and avoids being in the same room with him (resulting in even more irritation—“why does he act so sad all the time?!). My attempts at suggesting more affection, more one-on-one time, more patience, more encouragement, are usually met with derision and some variation of “He doesn’t need that, he needs me to be even harder on him.”
In general I feel very stuck, very troubled, and very unsure what to do. I know I am supposed to do what is good and not be afraid of anything that is frightening, but I admit I am not sure what is good in this situation, and I also admit to being frightened. The stakes feel very high to me.
Is it ever appropriate to explain to a young child that a parent is behaving sinfully, that it shouldn’t happen and isn’t the kid’s fault, but that we are going to forgive and respect that parent regardless? Would I be causing more damage to my husband’s authority and our son’s regard for him by attempting this sort of thing?
Any wisdom you might be able to offer would be a tremendous blessing, thank you.

J

I’ve read your views on separation/divorce in your letter On a Woman Deciding to Leave Her Husband where the marriage lacks the necessary 2 or 3 witnesses (or digital or written evidence) to establish ongoing oppression as fact. I even sent this article to both husband and wife, friends of ours for about 15 years who are going through a divorce after 41 years. The wife has proceeded to file for divorce and has already sought a contempt of court over something quite trivial (it was denied). The husband has shown and expressed willingness to do what it takes to save the marriage, even years of counseling. He has admitted two serious sins from 39 and 25 years ago. He had already confessed those before the separation and thought he had been forgiven. They attend different independent churches with very similar, even identical theology. The churches share resources for developing Biblical counselors. The estranged wife is a biblical counselor at one of the churches and has a Masters from Westminster in Biblical Counseling. My husband and I know that only God knows what really went on in that marriage and that time may tell more, but maybe not. The husband has maintained friendship with us but the wife hasn’t. She said I offended her but won’t say how. I’m basically taking what refuge I can in 1Cor 7:10,11 and in the principles of your article. These verses obviously don’t give any permission for excommunication, and they are silent on whether such a woman could function in ministry. The estranged wife (now my estranged friend) is still active in the counseling ministry of a church I don’t attend but share counseling resources with. I know the pastor of that church believes that the man is an abuser. But he hasn’t been presented with any more evidence that we know of than we and their adult sons (39-42 years old) have been. I do believe that my friend would be very quick to find abuse in most women’s stories (she has consumed books and teaching about trauma was a childhood victim of abuse). I don’t plan to recommend her as a counselor to anyone. But I plan on biting my tongue when I hear others do. If someone asks me my thoughts point blank for good reason, I will share briefly what I know and don’t know. Does this sound like my only and/or best option? Her pastor knows quite well that my husband and I believe there was serious pastoral abuse of the counseling process in the church where they previously attended and where the sh- – hit the fan. But the current pastor “believes” the one elder from the previous church even though the plurality of elders there did not find grounds for church discipline for the husband. (And they do practice church discipline). I have tried to arrange a conversation with the wife about my offenses against her but she hasn’t responded.
This situation could create a lot more damage in the churches she and we attend. Besides prayer and telling what we think our pastors and theirs need to know I don’t think we can do much more. Do you have any other recommendations for me and my husband or books to read on subjects related? Thanks.

Anne

Doug, what’s the difference between being enslaved to sin as an unbeliever, and a believer who struggles with a besetting sin?

CB

I appreciated your article from March 4 where you described how the Overton Window has shifted, and you laid out some of the ways we should (or should not) police our own ranks. While watching the Allie Beth Stuckey/Founders kerfuffle unfold online, I found myself agreeing with your tweet thread that a cease-fire needs to be issued here. I see a lot of arrogance, self-righteousness, or a desire to ‘own’ people with tweets and posts, but it doesn’t seem like it’s changing hearts and minds. This seems like a brawl in the landing craft type of situation.
Anyway, my question is not so much about the wisdom of a Twitter war, but rather the wisdom of Founders platforming Allie at their conference. My observation of Grace Agenda has been that the women only present to women, not to mixed audiences. Your approach fits within my understanding of 1 Tim. and Titus 2, but I wondered if you have written on this in more detail. Is it always/sometimes/never wrong? It seems like a lot of the angst comes from applying these texts to our modern world where any woman can have a blog, twitter account, podcast, etc., which doesn’t mutually exclude them from being a homemaker or otherwise fulfilling her God-given role as wife and mother. And as a final note, I wanted to share this article from Christ Over All—I found myself pretty much in sync with Jonathan’s thinking as he argues from what is licit/illicit to wise/unwise. Curious for your thoughts, or maybe a future (or past) article that digs into this topic.

Tim

I have 3 primary issues with CN at this point, but am open to correction on any of them and I am hoping to get your perspective.
1) It seems to be a wax nose at this point in that there is no (other than rights are given by God, lol) consensus on what it actually is.
2) Based on CN as presented in the statement on CN, it seems as though the Constitution would be done away with, as they call for a federal formal adoption of Christianity, while trying to say that it would not pick a specific type. I think our founding fathers had the opportunity to do just that and chose not to. I am not so in love with the Constitution that I am never willing to see it go away, but I am not sure we are there yet.
3) Based on the statement on CN and the way they define a nation, I am not convinced the USA is in fact a nation. I’m not sure we meet the criteria for a shared culture and values, if we ever did.
Based on these 3 objections, I typically do not consider myself to be in the CN camp (other than the aforementioned rights come from God label) and appreciate your perspective.
God Bless!

Matt

This question is not addressed to any post in particular. This is instead a general question. Pastor Doug, do you think pastors should use internet memes when calling out the culture on social media? I understand that a picture is worth a thousand words, but memes tend to be quite silly. Personally, I believe there is a time and a place for them. But my fear is that when Christians use memes irresponsibly, sometimes it seems to be immature.
Thanks,

Brandon

Why everything is political now—Doug & friends or “Rallying in Sodom?” Dear Mr. Wilson, first our family wants to thank you for your faithful ministry that you are doing and brethren all over the world—like us here in Germany—are benefiting from it, by God’s grace.
We’ve been following your publications on and off for about 15 years, because our former pastor in our English-speaking church here in Munich used to quote you orally or in reprinting your works in pamphlets quite often.
About one and a half years ago we’ve subscribed to Canon+ after hearing about the service through Dr. James White’s Alpha and Omega ministries, which the Lord has used to get me through my theological studies here at the ultra-liberal university of Munich, LMU, where I graduated to become a teacher for English and Protestant Theology. The content of Canon+ has challenged and encouraged us vastly, but sadly the pastor of our new German-speaking church that we helped plant, was not amused about our preferences and actually disqualified me from being an elder, because he knew I listened to you and even recommended your book “How to Exasperate your Wife” to any Christian husband. So my wife, my three daughters and I have gone back to our old English-speaking church, that has a new pastor, who is getting to know us and vice versa.
This is just a little bit of background to understand the basis for my question about an aspect of your show, because in it you seemed to rally for Christians from all over America to get together and build solid Christian communities, which would be able to support themselves in case of “the Zeros flying overhead”.
Now my question is, what about people like us? Our church is so scattered and non-denominational—even though the elders would be mostly Reformed and Baptist—that I do not think it is even an option to get enough families interested in an idea like that.
So should we just stay here and wait until in the next black swan event the government is taking all of our freedoms away, because most of our German citizens are fully convinced that they’ve received these rights from father state in the first place—even though the introduction to our Grundgesetz (constitution) says differently.
Or should we put all of our livelihood at risk and move over to Moscow, Idaho to join y’all? On the one hand that wouldn’t be an issue since all of our family constantly speaks English and is steeped in a general American atmosphere, listening to podcasts like The Dividing Line, The Briefing, The Ramsey Show, and consuming shows on Answers TV, Daily Wire and of course Canon +. (I remember the day our youngest found out that we’re actually not American, nor live in the United States of America, after the girls started to learn the Star-Spangled Banner . . . )
On the other hand, how would I as a German state official—which most German teachers are—provide for my family, since it seems to me that I’ve never learned any useful skill, apart from my theological education both at university and in self-studies helped by my church, preparing for leading small group, Ligonier Connect, and of course reading books.
On top of that we’re amillennial Reformed Baptist (with sympathies towards postmillennialism) who are afraid that we would not really fit into Moscow’s community, even though my wife has listened and read nearly to all of the women’s material on Canon+.
Anyway, what would you suggest to a family like us?
Keep up the good fight knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
SDG

Thomas