Recommend-a-blog (19)

Douglas Wilson meets Rachel Held Evans

Douglas Wilson. Ah, Douglas Wilson.

Yes, THAT Douglas Wilson: the one quoted in the notorious Gospel Coalition blog post about men, women, sex and authority, the same post that got Rachel Held Evans mightily agitated and for which its writer, Jared Wilson (no relation, so far as I know), was compelled to eventually apologize (though Jared’s dutiful groveling is now well and truly buried, probably by TGC, and I haven’t got the patience to seek out and link to the inevitable archived version; feel free to concoct your own conspiracy theories).

Doug Wilson remained gleefully unrepentant.

I doubt I’ll ever unequivocally agree with much of what Mr. Wilson writes. After all, he’s self-confessed “evangelical, postmill, Calvinist, Reformed, and Presbyterian” (of which designations I find myself in sympathy with exactly one).

And yet … and yet … I find Mr. Wilson’s Blog & Mablog: Theology That Bites Back one of the most mesmerizing Christian reads on the Internet.

That’s the thing about Christians. Doug Wilson loves the word of God, I suspect, much the way I love it. It oozes out of everything he writes, even when he doesn’t set out to make a big deal of it. If the Bible says it, he believes it (though he may interpret it differently than I would). If I find him enigmatic, perplexing and sometimes downright frustrating, we are in complete agreement as to our ultimate Authority. And he has a tendency (one that appeals to me) to be wordy, well-read, clever, funny and spiritual all at the same time. Further, he’s a Young Earth guy, and there are few enough of us out there that I am disinclined to start shooting at the straggling remnant.

Wilson also has a way of putting things that is, from time to time, exactly right.

Take, for instance, the mass murders two weeks ago in Orlando, Florida. Every Christian blog I came across milked them for pageviews. It’s what we do now, apparently. Nobody left it alone. I’m not even leaving it alone (though hopefully we’re far enough down the road by the time this is published that it won’t look quite as cheap and sensational as it otherwise might). It’s an event — perhaps even a watershed of some sort — and it’s expected that Christians will have something to say about it.

Douglas Wilson was no exception, but what he said was fairly exceptional:

“Some people look at the fact that these unfortunate people died while in pursuit of a sinful lifestyle. That is quite true — they did. But do you think they are the only ones deserving of judgment? After this story dies down, America will calmly resume the slaughter of babies by the tens of thousands, and the abortion carnage is only the capstone of any number of abominations. You think those 49 should have repented? Show them how easy it is. When that story disappears from the front pages, we will all return to our presidential campaign, with two of the most corrupt public figures in living memory vying for your vote. Don’t forget to vote, everybody! Your choices are between two different kinds of supporters of the Planned Parenthood meat merchants.”

Since when does Muslims vs. Gays 1.0 become the story of abortion or a reason to deplore the current political landscape? Only in Doug Wilson-land. And yet, there’s a perspective here that appeals to me: Wilson rightly points out that Muslims shooting at homosexuals is only a brief respite in the real, ongoing hostilities:

“The fundamental war here is on the remnants of our Christian civilization, and it would be good if Christians could eventually come to grips with that fact. Homosexual activists and jihadis do hate one another, and they know it. Sometimes that hatred breaks out, as it did here. But taking the averages, they both hate the vestiges of Christian culture more than they hate one another. They are not allies, but they are co-belligerents, and their shared task is to deal with the Christianity first.”

Love him or strongly dislike him (“hate” is not an approved Christian reaction to fellow believers), Wilson is worth reading regularly if only to say, “That makes no sense!” and move on to more interesting things.