Douglas Wilson, Author at Christ Church

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 16:33

Douglas Wilson on December 22, 2020

Leave Nothing to Chance

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

The lot is cast into the lap; But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
Proverbs 16:33

Let us say that a man rolls a pair of dice, and it comes up snake eyes. We can say, on the strength of this proverb, that God foreordained that result. Before the worlds were fashioned, God had decided that the dice would land that way. God not only decided that soldiers were going to gamble for the Lord’s robe when He was crucified, He had also determined which soldier was going to take that robe away. Every detail of everything that happens in this world is determined by God. The hairs of our head are numbered (Matt. 10:30). A sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father (Luke 12:6-7).

So does this mean that we can infallibly determine the will of God for our lives by rolling dice on every decision? No, we cannot. If we were to roll the dice, we know that it was determined by God to come up as two threes. What we don’t know is the meaning that should be assigned to this, and we have no way of knowing. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). The meaning of the two threes could be your own assigned meaning, which was that you were supposed to apply to med school. But it might also mean that you were a fool, and God thought it was time to prove it to everybody.

So an employer who has a stack of applications and who settles on one by flipping coins in his office is an employer who deserves everything he gets. But if he has carefully winnowed the applications down to two, and they are both equally qualified, and he decides by flipping a coin, that is a different matter. That is how the disciples chose the replacement for Judas (Acts 1:23).

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.