Douglas Wilson, Author at Christ Church

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 15:15

Douglas Wilson on December 15, 2020

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

All the days of the afflicted are evil: But he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.
Proverbs 15:15

Scripture does teach us that different things, both good and bad, happen to men and women, whether they are good or bad. These things have to do with our external circumstances, and to a certain extent our emotional responses to these events are like a thermometer. They reflect what is going on. Job knew when he had received bad news, and he responded accordingly.

But there is another sense in which we carry our own emotional weather around with us. In other words, we are not just thermometers, but also thermostats.

If someone is afflicted, all his days are evil. He is a thermometer. But there is another man who has a merry heart, and he is a thermostat. His attitude is such that everything is wonderful. He has a continual feast because he brings his food with him. He always packs a lunch.

These two circumstances are placed in tension by Solomon. He is not saying that “positive thinking” overcomes everything, but he most certainly is saying that an optimistic outlook, a merry heart, overcomes a lot. And when a person under affliction wakes up to another day of pain, or another week of struggle, he needs to endure what God has assigned to him.

But at the same time, he must take care not to forget the second half of the verse. He must not let a stretch of affliction train him into thinking that how you think of your circumstances doesn’t make any difference at all. A set of bad afflictions is really bad, but not quite as bad as a set of bad afflictions along with a negative attitude. In other words, no situation is so bad but that you can’t make it worse.

And a merry heart is a wonderful companion for most circumstances.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 28:20

Douglas Wilson on December 8, 2020

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

A faithful man shall abound with blessings: But he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.
Proverbs 28:20

Let us think about getting from point A to point B. In this case, point A is a condition of fewer blessings and point B is abounding with them. The contrast in the proverb is between the faithful man and the man who makes haste to be rich.

It says that the faithful man shall abound with blessings, which would include wealth. The man who will fail in his innocence is the man who wants to abound with blessings also, but he is in a hurry to get them. In other words, he drives over the speed limit, cut corners, takes short cuts, and all the rest of it.

The implication here is that God wants faithful men to be blessed, but He wants the blessings to accumulate slowly. This faithfulness is demonstrated over a period of time, and during that time the faithful man is given many opportunities to wait and be patient.

When a man has his eyes on the “results,” meaning that he wants to get rich quickly, he is in effect asking the devil to tempt him.

When God blesses a man, He does it incrementally. He puts one layer on, and then he lets it cure. Then He applies the second layer, and He lets that one cure as well. When we are patient with God’s processes, we are being blessed with the wisdom that comes over time, and which can come in no other way.

God’s secret path to wealth is therefore something like “work hard for forty years, tithe, invest, save, and work some more.” But the impatient heart of the carnal man wants the windfall, wants it now. When it fails to appear on schedule, when it doesn’t appear “now,” and an opportunity arises to shade things a bit, the pressure is on. A man like that shall not be innocent.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 28:5

Douglas Wilson on December 1, 2020

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

Evil men understand not judgment: But they that seek the Lord understand all things (KJV).
Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely (ESV).
Proverbs 28:5

One time our family was visiting my grandmother, who lived in a small town in Nebraska. It was there that I saw a bumpersticker that summed up a lot of truth. It said, “you don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it.” If I could modify this saying just a little bit, and adapt it for our generation I would say that “we don’t see much justice in our time, but what we hear makes up for it.” We are a generation of justice jugheads, and yet people are talking about it all the time. Especially something they call social justice.

Not only is there a disparity between what we see and what we hear, there is also a connection between what we see and what we hear. Put another way, we talk about justice the way a diseased man talks about health, the way an impoverished man talks about money, the way an obese man talks about nutrition.

But those who seek justice do not understand justice. Those who seek the Lord understand it. Evil men talk a lot about justice, but the rancor in their voice tells you it is the voice of envy and accusation. When they refer to justice, they are talking about what someone else has, and the simple fact that he has it is the source of the grievance. They demand justice, using that word without even blushing, but according to Scripture that evil envy in their heart dictates that they are making their assessments in a pitch black courtroom. Evil men love to talk about justice—for that is how they enslave people—but they do not have any earthly idea of what the word means. Those who love the Lord, having sought Him, do understand it. This is why the evil men call them oppressors.

An Argument from Gratitude

Douglas Wilson on November 25, 2020

This article was originally published in the November 2001 edition of Tabletalk Magazine, Vol. 25, No. 11.

Students of apologetics are familiar with some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God: the teleological argument from design, the cosmological argument from first cause, and so on. I would like to suggest another one. I do not really know what to call it, but the argument is directed against one of the principal points of rebellion that the non-believer has established for himself. The apostle Paul tells us that man apart from Christ refuses to do two basic things: He refuses to honor God as God and he refuses to give Him thanks (Rom. 1:21). Consequently, it seems that in our crusade against this twin-towered citadel of unbelief, we should aim our artillery at these towers.

An argument from gratitude works on two levels. On the first, the structure of the argument is simple enough, and is similar in form to some of the other arguments. I have been given innumerable blessings. Finding myself in possession of them, I have an ethical responsibility to say “Thank you.” But to whom? If I am the end product of atoms careening through a mindless universe, there is no one to whom I may show my gratitude, and yet my ethical need to be grateful is genuine. Therefore, there is a God, and I thank Him for the green hills I saw yesterday.

But the second level of the argument is where the real authority is. This argument requires more than simple references to gratitude. The one presenting the argument must himself be overflowing with gratitude, and standing in the overflow. This powerfully presents that living attitude that Paul tells us the unbeliever is doing his utmost to avoid — true thanksgiving. Thus, the argument has not only a logical structure but an aroma. For the one being drawn to faith in God, that aroma is the smell of life. For those who want to continue in hatred of God, it is the aroma of death.

When we consider the heavens and the earth beneath our feet, it should astound us that we are not more grateful than we are. Consider the lowly acorn. Think for a moment how an oak tree grows and where it gets the carbon to make the tree. Honestly, the acorn is an ingenious device to make an oak tree out of air. Who thought of this, and where can we thank Him?

When we see that God has decided to give us another day of life, we should be filled with thanksgiving. When it becomes apparent that the food on the table is still there after we open our eyes from saying grace, we should close them again to thank Him again. And not only do we get nourishment from food, but God added the wonderful blessing of taste. All food could have the consistency and taste of cold porridge, but God has given us, among other things, barbecue sauce, citrus, blackened chicken, onions, sweet corn, red wine, cheeseburgers with bacon, and countless other sensation wonders. Christians routinely thank God for the food, but we need to remember to thank Him for the taste.

When we hold up our hands to look at them, we should be appropriately astonished at the engineering that went into them. What would it take for our scientists to make an artificial hand that could grow callouses when needed for playing the guitar? And just like the acorn making an oak out of air, God created a system whereby my adult hands were made, over the course of my boyhood, out of peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and milk. And the engineering genius is not limited to one part of the body — consider the liver, the ankle, and a pair of eyes with the eyebrows thrown in. And lovemaking! What’s with that?

Language is another thing. Here I am, at a keyboard in Idaho, typing words into a processing device made (the authorities tell me) out of an interesting combination of beach sand, 1s, and 0s. This typing will soon be sent (via wires and optical cables) to the good folks at Ligonier Ministries in Florida. They will have it printed in Ohio and you will receive your magazine in the mail, and when you read that word magazine I just wrote, you will think about the same thing I was thinking about when I wrote it. Who was the one who thought of all this? It wasn’t me. Shouldn’t we thank somebody?

Then there is music (along with the rest of the universe, but I don’t much space left). Music is as wonderfully varied as our food is — jazz, blues, psalms, and chants. You see, if you stretch a string really tight and pluck it, it vibrates these two little bones in my head, and I hear things. When I hold a musical instrument in my hands, whom should I thank?

It should be evident by now that if we do not know who He is, we must drop everything in order to find out. Every 10 minutes that go by without proper thanksgiving leave us increasingly guilty — rude, churlish, and impudent. And when we do find out how to approach Him through worship, this leaves us needing to thank Him for our salvation.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 15:22

Douglas Wilson on November 24, 2020

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: But in the multitude of counsellors they are established.
Proverbs 15:22

The first thing to do with this proverb is to gather the wisdom that lies on the surface of it. We may then go on to discuss how the principle involved might be misapplied.

If a man has a head full of plans, and he doesn’t check with anybody about anything, he is probably going to encounter a number of rude surprises. “Without counsel purposes are disappointed.” In other words, if he had only checked with someone who had done this before, he might have found out about this important task, or that important prerequisite. The proverb is aimed at the industrious fellow who doesn’t believe that he needs to budget for the possibility that he might be wrong about something.

Over against this, we learn that a “multitude of counselors” is a good thing. The man with plans in this scenario sees that his plans are “established.” Two heads are better than one, and ten heads are better than two.

How might this principle be misapplied? A man with a watch knows what time it is, while a man with three watches is never sure. In other words, in order for the words of this multitude of counselors to do any good, it is necessary for their words to be weighed, or sifted, or evaluated, or compared. When you seek counsel from ten different men, it is highly unlikely that they will all say exactly the same thing. And that means, for example, that if you seek counsel from ten men, you will probably not do what eight of them suggest.

That does not make the seeking out of counselors an exercise in vanity. It is worthwhile to weigh what everyone says, and to consider their objections and concerns. There is wisdom to be found in all ten, and not just in the counsel of the two you heeded.

And in any case, it is far better to be talking with others about where you might be mistaken than to be trapped inside your own head, that place of continuous applause.