Rules for Reformers

by Douglas Wilson

We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road—very likely the wrong road. But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape. —CHESTERTON, Orthodoxy

Reformers must remember always that religion shapes culture, and culture trumps politics.

The reformation of the church must occur so that there is a reformation of our subculture, and then our subculture will affect the larger polis. Expecting our faith to affect the larger polis when it has not yet changed the average shelf at the local Christian book store is expecting something that is not going to happen.

In Principles of War, these principles are applied to thinking strategically about evangelism. Here our concern is the task of cultural reformation, which is of course related to evangelism, but not identical with it.

Jesus tells us that we are “to frolic” when this happens. We are able to do this, Jesus teaches, because we know the outcome of the story.

A decisive point is a place that is significant enough to matter to the enemy if you successfully take it, and insignificant enough to actually take. This means that the selected target is both strategic and feasible.

Thinking nationally, in our culture wars, New York City is strategic, but not feasible. Moose Breath, Idaho is feasible, but not strategic. We could take Moose Breath for Jesus in about three weeks, but when we had, it wouldn’t matter all that much. The reason our ministries are located here in the Palouse is that there are two major universities located in these two small towns, eight miles apart. Pullman, Washington is the home of Washington State, and Moscow is the home of the University of Idaho. The small towns make it feasible, and the universities make them strategic.

The example given above concerning New York City was not meant to discourage Christians from ministering there. Of course, many of us should be there. But when we are there, we should know that within a place like New York, there are numerous decisive points within the city. With a nation before us, one of the decisive points we have selected is the small town with the big university.

We don’t have infinite resources at our disposal—we do serve an infinite God, but He loves to supply our needs on a day-to-day basis. That keeps us trusting Him.

After all, does not the Shorter Catechism tell us what the chief end of man is? Yes, it does, and it does so correctly. That is the ultimate objective, and it should be considered as such. But it is not enough to acknowledge this in a perfunctory way that affirms the ultimate objective while failing to work toward that ultimate objective by means of intelligently ascertained subordinate objectives. Such subordinate objectives should better be identified as nested within an ascending hierarchy of objectives.

the issue is never the issue. The real issue is power, as measured by them in gasoline and matches.

The only reason we fight those who want to preserve the house just the way it currently droops is because we want to preserve it in restored glory.

God’s deliverances often are given to us in bursts. When David was first establishing himself as the king over a united Israel, his first victory against the Philistines was at Baal-perazim, Lord of the Outburst. After the battle, David said that the Lord broke forth on the Philistines like the breaching of water. Right after this in both Chronicles and 2 Samuel (e.g., 1 Chron. 13:11), the time of this victory is followed by “the breach of Uzza,” or Perez-Uzza. This breach was a judgment, but also a mercy. Although Uzza died, the people of Israel were taught to receive back the ark of the covenant in reverence (carried by Levites, as the law required), and not hauled on a cart, the way the Philistines did it.

unlikely places!

A unique charictaristic of the cuture and of a holy text

This is what David did when Saul fell into his hands in the cave. He failed to take the offensive, and because of it God blessed him. In failing to take one kind of offensive, he took the offensive on another level entirely.

We think we have won, for example, if we successfully prevent them from establishing homosexual marriage in our state. But that, while a good thing, is not victory at all. You haven’t won the war simply because your city makes it another day without collapsing because of the siege. Offensive Takeaway Point: We should look for a way to stop responding to initiatives of the adversary and start behaving in such a way that they have to figure out how to respond to us. Take the initiative.

But David captured the city anyway (v. 7). This was done by climbing up a steep water tunnel (which archaeologists have found and identified). And

Concentration is when you take twenty of your men, and drive at their line at a point where they have stationed just three men. That’s concentration.

Paul concentrated on the key city of Ephesus for several years in his teaching in the hall of Tyrannus, and all of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

Paul too was focused on cities and their strategic value. He was always talking of his wish to visit his brothers in some city and to visit Spain for specific purposes.

The Reformer John Calvin concentrated his efforts in the (relatively) unimportant city of Geneva, and the fact that the city was “taken” permitted hosts of refugees from other places to concentrate there, and from there to influence the continent of Europe. Preachers, books, general mayhem, and trouble were all exported from that place.

If you gather numerous Christians in one place, and you don’t do anything, then what you are doing is creating a ghetto. We can gather in Wheaton, or Colorado Springs, or Grand Rapids, (or Moscow), but this is not sufficient. The principle of concentration is not the same thing as gregariousness, or proving the adage about birds of feather.

If we are gathering in order to concentrate, then more will be happening than what happens in the coffee and donuts time after church.

The kingsom of God is mlre than a matter of food and drink. We are called to specific tasks, yss to fellowship and do deaconly things but we are also called to preach, to fight.

The point is to make the concentration in our efforts as potent as it was in Ephesus or Geneva. And that means emphasizing and exporting the antithesis.

David was a giant-killer, and he comes into this story as a glorious type of Christ. Goliath was a giant, but he was also a serpent, a dragon. The Hebrew word for his armor means scales, which made him a gigantic reptile, like a dragon,

Keep your game plan to yourself, but not in a furtive, guilty way. An intelligent adversary should know that there are things you are up to that he knows nothing about.

Chestertonian Calvinism.

Feminists demand that women receive equal treatment with the men, and nobody is ever more surprised than feminists whenever it happens. Feminists don’t need to be told that they despise men. They generally know that, and even when they don’t, they have certainly heard it before. What they haven’t heard very much is how much they despise women.

having an optimistic eschatology).

We were co-belligerents with the Soviet Union, meaning that we were fighting the same foe for completely different reasons.

For example, an abortion clinic bomber is not an “extreme” member of our pro-life organization; he is actually doing the enemy’s work.

So when we ask whether or not to cooperate with this group or that one, the answer to the question should be settled by whether or not Christ is cooperating with them.

And always remember the crucial distinction between fellowship and leadership. We may cooperate with someone in worship, for example, without having to maintain that he is the next John Knox.

The apostle Paul had to deal with preachers of the gospel who were preaching for no other reason than to get Paul in trouble. The impurity of their motives did not prevent him from upholding the principle of cooperation (Phil. 1:15–18).

This is what happened in the Union victory at Gettysburg—failure to pursue lengthened the war by a couple of years.

Of course, if no one ever complains about you, you aren’t doing your job. But it does not follow from this that if people are complaining about you, you are doing it.

Make your adversary live up to his own rules.

17. Keep the pressure on, wherever you are on the line. Do not spend your time worrying about how you are going to put out the fires that the adversary sets. Wake up in the morning thinking about the fires you can set. Let them be the fire department.

When Nathan the prophet came to rebuke David for his sin with Bathsheba, he did it by trapping him. He told King David a false story about a man who had his sheep taken by a wealthy neighbor (2 Sam. 12:3–4). David was angry and pronounced judgment on the man, not knowing that he had been deceived into pronouncing judgment on himself. This was a good and godly deception. Nathan was not in a state of open war with David, but when he came to tell this “lie,” he was taking his life in his hands. David had already killed one man to keep this sin secret.

Consequently, Lila Rose taking hidden cameras into abortion clinics is the Lord’s work.

Here is the difference. Suppose a man heads up a Christian organization devoted to some aspect of our culture war—a pro-life organization, say. Suppose also that he committed adultery against his wife thirty years before, in the early years of his marriage. His wife knows about it, and they worked through all of that at the time. They have a good marriage now. If the diggers-of-dirt on the other side throw this at him at a press conference, he has a moral obligation before God to do nothing other than to own the truth. Lying about it “because we are in a culture war” is to exhibit a high level of confusion.

A second thing is this. The point of fighting is to win the peace. The Church Militant will not be bored in Heaven, sitting around with nothing to do. The Church Militant will have won through to Heaven, and will know what to do when it eventually gets there. In the words of the spiritual, “gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside.” In the words of Isaiah, we will study war no more—and this will be a blessing, not a grief.

You need cooks and drivers and mathematicians and technicians and mechanics and snipers and navigators, and to demand that everybody drop what they are doing to do what a strategist in the Pentagon is doing misconstrues the very nature of war. When the bugle blows indistinctly, nobody gets ready for battle. But when it blows distinctly, thousands move swiftly to do completely different things. It is important to remember that many of the things that are done may not look like fighting—as, for example, playing a bugle.

Grendel hated the glorious song of the scop that could be heard coming from Heorot. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Laughter is war.

A godly satirist should be well-educated, well-read in the kind of literature that he is seeking to contribute to. A good ear comes not only from practice, but also from listening long and thoughtfully to those who are gifted and have practiced the same art. The list would include individuals who are not worthy of imitation in every respect (e.g., Swift, Mencken) and it should include those who are genuine exemplars (e.g., Spurgeon, Chesterton).

Paul tells Timothy not to ordain a neophyte, what Tyndale translated as “young scholar” (1 Tim. 3:6).

A godly satirist needs to read widely in church history, particularly in ancient disputes. This will dislodge the very provincial notion that the current rules of academic etiquette are somehow binding on all generations of the Church.

good way to check ourselves is by looking at how Scripture was applied by other generations of the Church.

So returning to the top, we need to distinguish between those who demand apologies as a weapon, and those who want to see genuine reconciliation.

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. Another way of saying this is that Christians do better when the trap has sprung than they do in refusing to take the bait.