Douglas Wilson, Author at Christ Church

Letter to the Board of Pullman Regional Hospital

Douglas Wilson on July 3, 2017

To the board of Pullman Regional,

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the issue of trans-gender surgeries, and to the prospect that your hospital will soon begin offering them. While we are appalled that you are even considering this, we really do appreciate the fact that you are taking public comments beforehand, in contrast to the way Gritman Hospital decided to do it.

We believe that for you to begin offering such surgeries is misguided, unethical, and wrong, for the following reasons.

I want to begin by noting the complex tangles that will be ushered in if you do this thing, complexities that we are manifestly not prepared for. What such a surgery does is remove a perfectly healthy, functional organ, doing so in an irreversible way. This is being done on the basis of the expressed subjective desires of the patient, or perhaps the patient’s parents or guardians. Objective damage for the sake of a subjective desire. What happens when the later changes? Can the former change back?

Here are some questions we do not believe you are in a position to answer. If you have thought through these issues, we would appreciate seeing the policies you have drafted in anticipation of such issues arising.

At what age will a patient be eligible for this procedure at your hospital? If a 15-year-old comes to you, with the agreement of his parents and with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a medical professional, will you perform the procedure for him?
If parents from the Mideast, here for grad school at WSU, bring their daughter to you with a request for a clitectomy, will you perform this procedure? If you refuse because it is “genital mutilation,” how would you justify this refusal? How would that not be Pullman Regional passing judgment on one form of genital removal while endorsing another form of genital removal? Why is Pullman Regional in charge of other people’s subjective reasons? Why are you rejecting an elective surgery in one instance, and performing an elective surgery of a similar nature in another? Why is Pullman Regional endorsing the subjective reasoning of someone who is sexually confused while rejecting the subjective reasoning of a culture that is sexually repressed? If you are doing this for the sake of simple “pluralism,” then you will soon discover that pluralism around the globe—with regard to genital surgery— extends much farther than what you are currently considering.
Would you be willing to preserve boys’ voices for choral performances by this means? Would you be willing to supply the music department with castrati?

It is easy to retort with an indignant “of course not!” But why not? Over the years, different societies have valued different things over against the continued health of some people’s sexual organs. It seems bizarre to us that people are willing to maim women for their false ideal of feminine chastity. It seems bizarre to us that there was a time when choral music had such a high value that they were willing to sacrifice sex organs for the sake of purity of voice. And in just the same way, subsequent generations will stare at us in disbelief. So they made eunuchs because they wanted custodians for the harem. We want to cater a profound emotional, psychological, and spiritual confusion.

Will Pullman Regional perform other elective surgeries that remove other healthy organs or limbs on the basis of the subjective desire of the patient? If someone wants to “identify” as an amputee, will you accommodate them? If you are willing to remove healthy organs or limbs for some patients but not others, what standard are you using to discount one subjective preference while endorsing another? Like it or not, elective amputations are now a thing. Will you accommodate them when they arrive on the Palouse? If you will not, what will be your rationale for accommodating some and not others? What standard are you using?
Is Pullman Regional trained and staffed to deal with the possible medical complications that can arise from such surgeries?

Such procedures are now certainly legal, and so you can establish them in your hospital without fear of legal reprisal. But because nature has been defined and fixed by God, the science on this cannot be reversed, undone, or overturned by any of our courts. The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being. So you are in the process of establishing a misguided surgical procedure as a result of pressure from a cultural fad. This is not happening because of any medical or scientific breakthroughs in which we discovered that XX and XY chromosomes don’t govern what we thought they did. And when the fad has passed, when the frenzy is over, what will you say to those who ask if you can “put it back?”

So what this move does is bring a heated partisan conflict into a place that should be dedicated to healing and rest—a hospital is not a place into which we needed to expand our culture wars. I have had to deal with the practical effects of this kind of thing before. The medical establishment has discredited itself whenever it has embraced certain partisan projects, setting the science aside in order to do so. For example, when the medical establishment went along with the inexcusable taking of human life through abortion, this had the effect of turning many decent people away from the medical profession as a whole. As a pastor, I have often lamented the risks that some of my parishioners have taken through home-births, or using unqualified midwives. But what was it that caused them—ordinary, decent people—to lose faith in the medical establishment? Why would they risk using an untrained midwife? Well, at least incompetent midwives don’t kill babies on purpose, the way certain certified medical doctors have decided to do.

This is a similar issue. You cannot start taking money in order to do irreparable damage to perfectly healthy organs and not have normal people conclude that you have no idea what it is that doctors ought to be doing. Here some troubled people are coming to you, and you are willing to take their money to perform an irreversible procedure that will not do what they are hoping it will do. Instead of helping them—which doctors are required by oath to do—you will be taking advantage of their confusions in order to make money off of them.

In addition, you are not just removing healthy organs. You are (in effect) removing healthy medical professionals who will want nothing to do with this sort of corruption and compromise. A hospital has to work as a unified team, with a clear mission set before that team. Once you start taking in mammon payments in order to harm clients (let us no longer call them patients), you will discover that a number of your doctors, nurses, and support staff still have a functioning conscience. And because discipline is an inescapable concept (it is not whether you discipline, but rather which group you discipline), you will find that what you have done is make your hospital an inhospitable place for compassionate and talented believers—men and women who are still dedicated to the arts of healing, not maiming. And when you lose them, the quality of care that your hospital can offer will go down.

It will surely be said at some point that we are offering this perspective because we are conservative Christians who believe the Bible, but that you are a secular hospital in a pluralistic town, and that you are not obligated to follow the Scriptures. But the Scriptures are simply God’s directions for living in the world that He made. The world was created by Him to run in particular ways, and Scripture says that He cannot be mocked—a man reaps what he sows. Groups of men—such as hospitals—do the same.

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson,
Minister, Christ Church
Moscow

Grace & Peace: Revelation 64

Douglas Wilson on June 27, 2017

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

“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them” (Rev. 9:1–6).

So the fifth angel sounds, and the first of three woes is declared. In order to understand this well, we have to review some of our history.

The Jewish War lasted for three and a half years. This was prophetically declared by John the apostle just a few chapters later. The Temple is measured, and it is declared that the Gentiles will trample the holy city for 42 months (Rev. 11:2). And the same figure is given in the next verse, under a different form. 42 months of 30 days each amounts to 1260 days. In this passage, we are given the tormenting figure of 5 months, which I would link to the final months of the siege of Jerusalem (April through August, A.D. 70). This was the time during which the Jewish defenders of the city turned on each other in a terrible frenzy, and which Josephus records in his annals (Wars 5.1.5, 5.10.5, 6.3.4-5). Why is this relevant?

A star falls from heaven, and because a personal pronoun is used we know that it is a personage. He opens the Abyss, and smoke comes out of it, blocking the sun and choking the air. Out of that smoke a horde of locusts come, only with power to sting like scorpions. I take these to be demons because of the Lord’s instruction elsewhere. In the exorcism of Legion, the demons beg not to be sent to the Abyss, same word (Luke 8:31). And the Lord says something quite striking when He tells us what happens when a demon is cast out of a man.

“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation” (Matt. 12:43–45).

Jesus had spent three years casting demons out of the House of Israel. Israel was the house that was found empty, swept, and garnished. All the demons that had been cast out—and there had been a multitude—went and gathered up a host of more demons, like a plague of locusts with a sting, and they poured back into that wicked generation. The Jewish defenders of Jerusalem in the final months were demon-possessed, hell bent on destruction. As we shall see in the next verses, they had a king over them, with the Hebrew name of Abaddon and the Greek name of Apollyon. It does not matter because the name means the same thing, which is Destruction.

The demons pent up in the Abyss are beyond frustrated because their nature is to destroy, and they dwell in a place where everything is already destroyed. They cannot wreck because they live in a wrecked place.

When released, they do not hurt the grass, and they cannot touch those who were sealed in chapter 7. Those they torment long for death, but death still eludes them.

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 63

Douglas Wilson on June 6, 2017

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

“And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!” (Rev. 8:13).

Just as the first four seals were set off from the last three (by the device of having the first four as the four horsemen), so also the seven trumpets are divided into four followed by three. The first four appear to be warning judgments, with the last three, each one called a woe, being the culmination or fulfillment of that judgment.

Given the context of judgment falling upon the city of Jerusalem, it is best to take the first woe as the internal strife among the Jewish rebels, the second as the besieging of the city by the Romans, and the third as the fiery overthrow of the city.

But before the woes come, the woes are announced beforehand, which is the point of this text. The King James and New King James tell us that the messenger was an angel. But there is some variation in the manuscripts—the ESV and the NASB state that an eagle is the one making the announcement. Interestingly, the Vulgate has aquila at this place—an eagle.

If we take it as an angel, we see that the last three trumpets are grim enough to require their own introduction. If the messenger is an eagle, we should remember that eagles are carrion birds, and in the toppling of Jerusalem, a million Jews were going to die. This is a common image in the Old Testament (Dt. 28:49; Jer. 4:13; Lam 4:19; Hos. 8:1; Hab. 1:8; Matt. 24:28). The image here is the swiftness of the eagle, but the reference from Habakkuk shows that the eagles fly fast in their hunger. “They shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.” And the covenant judgment of being devoured by the birds of the air is also common (Dt. 28:26; Prov. 30:17; Rev. 19:17-18).

In either case, the messenger is telling the inhabitants of the land to brace themselves.

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 62

Douglas Wilson on May 31, 2017

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

“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise” (Rev. 8:12).

The fourth trumpet is blown, and the visitation comes upon the sun, moon, and stars. The judgment is partial, not total, but it is nonetheless striking. The question raised by the image is this: is the sun, for example, partially eclipsed, with a third of it covered? Or is the light from the entire sun diminished by a third, as could happen with thick air pollution? I take this as symbolic, not literal, but the nature of the picture affects the understanding of what is being pictured. I take this as an indication of political upheaval in and around the time of the Jewish War—during which the Roman emperors Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius all died, and not peacefully in bed either. And yet, Rome continued.

Throughout the Old Testament, the language of a collapsing or failing solar system is the language that indicates judgment upon a nation or city. Consider the following (Is. 13:9-11, 19; 24:19-23; 34:4-5; Ezek. 32:7-8, 11-12; Joel 2:10, 28-32; Acts 2:16;21). The sun, moon and stars are representation of earthly rulers, and what is happening to them in the heavenly vision is what is actually going to happen to their counterparts on earth. In this case, the indication is of a partial judgment.

It is at least worth mentioning that later in the book, the dragon (who is the devil) dragged down a third of the stars with his tail (Rev. 12:4).

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 61

Douglas Wilson on May 24, 2017

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

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter” (Rev. 8:10–11).

The seven trumpets are harbingers of a coming judgment upon a wicked and unbelieving city. In the Old Testament, the Canaanite city of Jericho was solemnly sealed in her destruction by seven trumpets blasting. What this indicates is a strong reversal theme in Revelation. Here Jerusalem is in the place of Jericho, the chosen people have now taken the place of the pagan Canaanites. The plagues that rain down on Israel in this book are reminiscent of the plagues that wiped out Egypt—and in Rev. 11:8, this is a reversal that is made explicit—Jerusalem is identified with both Sodom and Egypt. These are the two great places in the Old Testament best known for the judgment that fell upon them from Heaven. What is that place now? It is Jerusalem.

The same thing is found in our passage itself. When Moses brought the children of Israel away from the Red Sea (Ex. 15:22), they came to a place called Marah. It was called that because the water was bitter. The Lord showed Moses a tree there, which he threw into the bitter water in order to make it sweet (Ex. 15:23-25). In this passage, the reversal is plainly shown—the waters are sweet, and God throws a great star, burning like a torch (reminiscent of the tree in Exodus), into the water in such a way as to make them bitter. Why is this significant? Because wormwood means bitter, and because of the warning that was given to them at Marah, with Egypt of recent memory still smoldering.

“And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Ex. 15:26).

If they kept his commandments, they would not be visited with the diseases that had afflicted the Egyptians. They would not take the place of Egypt. But unfortunately they did not keep God’s commandments, and now He was making Marah bitter again. So keep in mind, once again, that this judgment is aimed straight at Israel.

The name of the star is Wormwood, which means bitterness, and the falling star turns the water to wormwood, which still means bitterness. Because of it, men die—either because the water is poisoned, or because they refuse to drink it because it is so bad. And that is what every form of disobedience and idolatry always produces (Dt. 29:18). When they follow after the Baalim, God gives them wormwood to drink (Jer. 9:14-15). Because the prophets are profane, God will feed them with wormwood (Jer. 23:15). This was a signal mark of God’s fierce judgements (Lam. 3:15, 19). And in one instance, it was the sin—turning judgment into wormwood—that invites the further judgment from God (Amos 5:6). This was precisely the great sin on the part of the Sanhedrin—that of condemning the Lord Jesus to a cross of wood, where He would be offered vinegar mixed with gall. What was this but the crime of turning justice into wormwood? This is what invited the cataclysmic destruction of 70 A.D.

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