Rules for Reformers

by Douglas Wilson

6. A godly satirist should study the qualitative difference between satire and scurrility. This is a matter of timbre and tone. No mechanical rules can be set down for it, but it is a very important distinction to make (Heb. 5:14). It is the shrillness or “screech” test. The ability to tell the difference between ri...

A godly satirist should have long experience in letting love cover a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8). He should not be the kind of man who consistently gets bad service in restaurants. One

of his chief characteristics in his day-to-day living should be his patience (Gal. 5:22). Road rage should be an alien temptation for him.

A godly satirist should be courageous. Lawful satire is leveled at targets that know how to defend themselves, and that will defend themselves. As King Lune of Archenland put it, “Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please.” Lawful satire is a challenge to engage; nothing is more unbecoming than to act surprised wh...

A godly satirist should be a man who knows how to humble himself in order to seek forgiveness from others for sins he has committed (Jas. 5:16). If he is too proud to humble himself when he has sinned, then he is too proud for this calling. 13. A godly satirist should not be an angry man. His demeanor should generally be jolly, not angry. Man’s anger does not advance God’s righteousness (Jas. 1:20). Anger, even when it is righteous (Eph. 4:26), is like manna and goes bad overnight (Eph. 4:27). Occasions of anger are appropriate (as Chr...

godly satirist must love to sing all the Psalms that God has given us (Eph. 5:19). Nothing serves like the psalms if the goal is to nurture and restore a vertebrate church. In these days of the invertebrate church, the satirist is thought to be the pestilent fellow, and he is the one who has to be put out in order to restore peace.

A godly satirist should hate what is evil. The fear of God is not only the beginning of knowledge, but it is also defined as the hatred of evil. “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8:14, KJV).

godly satirist should love what is good (Titus 2:14). He should be motivated by a love that seeks to defend what is noble and right, or weak and defenseless, and not be motivated by a bitterness that seeks to bite and tear (Gal. 5:13–15).

This is what I mean by having thick skin and a tender heart. Hint: this “caring” response must not be measured and evaluated by the state-certified Curators of the Perpetual Grievance. They figured out (a long time ago) how to use the tender consciences of Christians against them. It is time that we got wise to that game. The fact that God knows our many faults (Ps. 130:3) does not mean that they have a right to bring charges against us (Ps. 31:13). David had many faults, and he was often attacked with them—but he was not attacked for them.

God’s law is given to provide a proper shape for our repentance.

The only blood that does not return with compounded guilt is the blood of Jesus. His blood comes to us for cleansing, and not for condemnation. His blood does not return with guilt, and it is the only way that all the other guilt can be prevented from returning to us. An old gospel song points the only way to our salvation—“nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Nothing.

John Bunyan spent a number of years in jail, and it was not for preaching the gospel, as is commonly supposed. He was there for preaching the gospel without a license.

Certain truths lie right on the surface of the Bible, and this is why true Christians generally do well in times of overt persecution. When they are commanded to bow down to an idol, they know that Daniel’s three friends refused to do so (Dan. 3:16). When they are commanded to stop spreading the gospel, they know that this was the point where the apostles refused to cooperate (Acts 5:29).

Where Christians don’t do as well is when times are relatively peaceful, and they are asked to do something that seems relatively minor, but which surrenders the jurisdictional principle.

They were trying to trap Jesus with a question of tax policy, and Jesus answered by pointing to two different kinds of coin. One coin had the image of Caesar on it, and it was therefore lawful in principle to give that back to Caesar.

The answer is that we are coin from God’s mint. We are created in the image of God, and are therefore forbidden to render ourselves to Caesar.

So the issue is never the amount. The issue is what it means. And because we live in a culture that formally denies that we are created in God’s image, we ought to be having many more clashes than we are. This is why the theory of evolution is such a big issue—the theory of evolution is a jurisdictional claim that the devil is making. If we were not created in the image of God, then this means that we have no jurisdictional appeal beyond Caesar. If there is no God above Caesar, then Caesar is God. If there is a God in Heaven, and He has placed His image on us, then this absolutely requires the biblical concept of limited government.

We like to flatter ourselves in our discontent, saying that the spirit of rebellion rises up within us because of all the things that are wrong. But the reality is the other way—things go wrong because rebellion has risen up within us.

Adam did not rebel against God because he was tired of living in a slum. No, his children live in slums because he grew tired of living in Paradise.

Radicals want to mess with the categories. They operate with an intellectual dishonesty that is truly fundamental. How can you tell? It really is simple—they call good things evil, and call evil things good (Is. 5:20). The distinction between men and women is a good thing, and so they blur it with metrosexuality. Worldliness is a true evil, and so they pursue it in the name of cultural engagement.

surrender. What we must pursue is cultural engagement, not cultural surrender parading itself as engagement. In order to keep our bearings, and in order to keep our heads, we have to reject every attempt to get us to compromise our fundamental allegiance to Scripture as God’s infallible Word to us. It all comes back to this. Yea, hath God said is always a strategic move so that we may jump in there with here’s what I think.

The radical thinks that human sexuality is up for grabs. The reformer knows what God’s intention from the beginning was. The radical has no understanding whatever of basic economics. The reformer knows that envy distorts economic understanding, and is the only thing that really does. The radical believes that he has a vision that justifies all his social tinkering. The reformer

knows that he cannot possibly understand anything so complicated as the simplest human economy, whic...

So we should be in the market for young Christian men and women who are willing to be trained in genuine cultural engagement. They won’t be embarrassed by old-fashioned virtues, like hard work and discipline. They will respect authority and defy the authorities. They won’t get fired from jobs because of laziness, and they will get fired from them because of something they said about homosexuality. They won’t resent money and success, and they won’t be dazzled by money and success. They will laugh at the hipsters, and they will laugh at themselves laughing at the hipsters. They will loathe the enticements of corrupt entertainment, and they will love a true story. They would rather die than become one of the cool kids. They will be cool.

The stated purpose of such laws is to keep devastating weapons out of the hands of criminals. The real purpose of the law is to grow the power of the idol-state, and to shrink the power of those capable of resisting it. This sleight of hand matters because what genuine Christian wants criminals to have devastating weapons? And what genuine Christian wants a bigger and more powerful idol-state? There are two different questions on the table, and so it matters which one is the real one.

In sum, the eternal power and Godhead is known from the things that are made, and the knowledge that arises from this is knowledge that brings moral culpability with it. For the knowledge was not just that God was there somewhere, but that He was worthy of worship and honor. Worship and honor were required by the knowledge that natural revelation brought. This they refused to do, in defiance of this light from natural revelation, and this light from natural revelation can certainly be called a natural law. It has all the ingredients–a lawgiver, a standard, a subject, and moral responsibility. Nothing is missing.

For reasons I have urged over the course of years, I really don’t like using the name “covenant of works.” It just confuses things, and one of the things it confuses is the crucial need for a “covenant of works.” I much prefer to use “covenant of creation,” or a name the Westminster Confession uses elsewhere, “covenant of life.”

The reply is that the covenant of creation is the only possible basis for natural law, which he does recognize (perhaps in spite of himself). He cannot account for this natural law within the framework of his worldview, but it is there nonetheless. For example, the late Christopher Hitchens did not use the language of natural law, but he sure appealed to it all the time.

The reason “monocovenantalism” doesn’t work is because the parties are different.

unbelief. The Church is suffering a crisis of faith concerning the government of the world, as evidenced by our chariness in handling natural law. Why don’t we believe in natural law? Because of cowardice.

God. Natural law is not inconsistent in any way with special revelation, and natural law rightly understood is not embarrassed in any way by the specific revelation found in Scripture. You shall not suffer a witch to live, objects falling down at 9.8 meters per second squared, and nature itself teaching us that long hair is a woman’s glory are all expressions of the same personal and divine will.

Theocracy, not mere ecclesiocracy. Theocracy, not sheer bibliocracy. Mere Christendom. When we confess Jesus as Lord, we have to take care to listen to everything He ever said, anywhere He might have said it. As it happens, He has told us a great deal through natural law, all of it consistent with everything He tells us in His Scriptures. All of Christ for all the world.

Without some light from God, we cannot even know we are in the dark, although lots of our modern johnnies pretend to know that, so that they may begin work on their bulging forehead workarounds.

Truth is resisted, obstructed, lied about, persecuted, and then when all that damage is done, the opponents of the truth glibly declare that the truth must not be all that true—look at all the damage! Father and son are set against one another (Luke 12:53), and so this cannot be from God. Christianity is the proximate cause of all these heresies—should this not make us think? Well, yes it should, but it should make us think in a straight line.

C.S. Lewis once said there were two basic approaches to democracy. One is idolatrous, and

the other reflects a more biblical view of man. The first is the assumption that every last man’s opinion is so valuable that we should do our level best to get his input before we do anything. This is the idolatrous option.

We need people who understand the difference between bigger numbers and smaller numbers. We don’t need nuance in race relations. We need to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. We don’t need wise men who manage an endless series of nation-building wars. We need our wars to be purposive, rare, and short. We don’t need a candidate who wins the grudging respect of the professional left. We need a candidate who has an uncanny ability to set them all off as barking mad. In sum, this means we need a candidate who is embarrassing to the conservative establishment.

A real reformer is not a member of a faction. Men have always tended to divide into opposing factions, whether it is Crips and Bloods or Guelphs and Ghibellines. But factional differences (while very real) don’t go down to the deep foundations. An ancient city is debating whether to defend the city with a powerful navy, or with an entrenched army. The conflict between the factions arguing for both options can be very real, but everyone’s goal is to defend the city.

Notice what the psalmist says here: Children are a heritage, a reward. But then the first metaphor is jarring, and perhaps not what we were expecting. Instead of saying that they are like a row of stuffed bunnies in a well-decorated crib, he says that children from the Lord are like a fistful of arrows. Children are arrows for the fist, and even more arrows for the quiver. For what occasion? Target practice? Costume parties?

When you look at children, do you see potential victims or potential heroes? The eye of faith sees both. We should seek to nurture and train children through the defenseless stage, knowing that on the other side of that endangered state is what we are truly after—a dangerous state.

Now fighting for your children and grandchildren is a noble enterprise. It is what we are called to do. When such fighting is necessary, as in a fallen world it constantly is, it is something we are called to do for the sake of others, and this includes our children.

So a short-sighted man who throws himself into ministry, neglecting his family in order to do so, is not just demonstrating for us that he doesn’t understand his wife and kids. He is demonstrating for us the fact that he doesn’t understand the nature of true ministry. “One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)” (1 Tim. 3:4–5).

If a man’s children don’t care what he believes about the Bible, then why should we? This is a line of argument that Paul endorses. If his children have walked away from what he says is important about the Bible, but we are still hanging on to his every word, the chances are good that we have adopted a false and unbiblical set of weights and measures, and are hanging on to the wrong words, or to good words for the wrong reasons.

Jesus said that we were to evaluate teachers by the kind of fruit they produced. And what better place to check than their garden at home? A man who is wrong about children will find it difficult to be right about anything else.

The key battle in our culture wars is the reestablishment of worship that is pleasing to God. Our worship of Him must be weighty and substantive—but many churches have tried to turn their worship services into some kind of very light ministry meringue. Our worship services should renew our covenant with God in a solemn, joyful, and dignified way. We are commanded to worship Him with reverence and godly awe (Heb. 12:28–29). Why don’t we? Why do we refuse to do this? Our refusal is costing us far more than we think. Henry Van Til once noted that culture is religion externalized. Cultus (worship) lies at the heart of every culture. And the reason our culture has forgotten God is because our worship services did that first.

When it comes to the question of education, I have argued for years as a pastor that a Christian education for Christian kids is mandated by Scripture (Eph. 6:1–4).

A Christian education is one which acknowledges the lordship of Christ in every subject studied, and which teaches the relations of each subject in a way that is consistent with Scripture. Each subject is taught as part of an integrated whole, with Scripture at the center.

There is no way to be involved in the work of cultural reformation without addressing the question of justice. But when you do, it will not be long before someone of your acquaintance is talking about “social justice,” which ought to strike you the way the phrase “bone cancer” does, or “economic justice,” which is just advanced bone cancer. Of course, there is such a thing as true social justice, and real economic justice, but they are poles apart from what is usually meant by those phrases.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God lasts forever. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20). We go because He told us to. We declare what we were told to declare. We live the way we were told to live. Stated at this level, of course, every professing Christian agrees. But the Spirit is in the details, and I have three in mind.

First, for us this must mean a grounded and foundational faith in the penal, substitutionary death of Christ on the cross for sin. If our work is not based on an evangel with actual good news in it, then it will all come to nothing. Second, our work of missions must be Reformed and Kuyperian.