One must avoid becoming a pipeline of other people’s thoughts, but when it comes to Doug Wilson, at times I can’t resist. Sometimes I don’t even understand what he’s saying, but even then there are always a few paragraphs that ring true. Like these:

“If American Christians succeeded in having the Apostles Creed put into our Constitution, we would not then have a new nation in the new Christendom. We would have something like England, a teetery relic nation from the old Christendom. England is a Christian nation on paper. We cannot fix our problems on paper, or with paper. What we need is fire.

And we cannot have fire without preachers of the gospel who know what they are about. We need preachers who have experienced the new birth themselves, and who know what the Bible teaches about the necessity of it. And we need preachers who have experienced the anointing of the Holy Spirit on their pulpit declarations, who know what real power is. Further, we need more than one of them. Two or three thousand should do it.”

From: A Decorated Altar is Still a Cold One

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“Is there a place in your preaching for such strong language? . . . In brief, in Scripture such language is designed to elicit from the hearer or reader an emotional reaction — laughter, revulsion, terror, etc. — which corresponds to the spiritual nature of the thing being described.

Such language is used for its shock value. God does not want us to intellectualize sin . . . In the contemporary world, however, a different idea rules. ‘Nice’ is better than holy. ‘Comfortable’ is better than dedicated and devoted. Churches have become places for ‘support’ and flattery, not truth.

To be shocked at church is virtually the unpardonable sin.”

- (Wagner, Tongues Aflame, p. 315)

(HT: Doug Wilson)

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After watching Collision, I suspected that I might have found a new hero in Douglas Wilson, and indeed I have. Solid, opinionated, clever, and  intelligent, Wilson’s online writings are the ones I least frequently skip.

For example, here are 7 tips he recently offered other writers about reading. I’m sure that he would agree with me though that there is a danger of “Intellectual Obesity.”

Below are the highlights. Stroll on over to Blog & Mablog to read more.

1. The first thing is that writers should in fact be voracious readers.
We live in a narcisstic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having written, without the antecedent labor of actually writing, or the antecedent labor before that of having read anything.

2. Read widely.
Reading shapes your voice, and if you want a wide, experienced voice, you have to get out more.

3. Read like a reader, and not like someone cramming for a test.
If you try to wring every book out like it was a washcloth full of information, all you will do is slow yourself down to a useless pace. Go for total tonnage, and read like someone who will forget most of it.

4. Read like a lover of books, and not like someone who wants to be seen as knowledgable, or well-read, or scholarly.
Read because you want to, not because you need to. Actually, you need to as well, but you need to want to. You also need to want to need to, but I am rapidly getting out of my depth.

5. Pace yourself in your reading.
A little bit every day really adds up. If you only read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do.

6. As a general pattern, read quality, and go slumming occasionally to remind yourself why quality matters, and what quality is.

7. Read boring books on writing mechanics.
Read grammars, dictionaries, writers’ memoirs, books of proverbs, books of cliches, books on how to write dialogue, books on how not to write dialogue (“I dropped my toothpaste!” he said crestfallenly.), and books about finding good agents and how to blow away the readers of query letters. Writing is a vocation, and there is a body of professional literature out there — which is uneven in quality, just like every other kind of book. Read a lot of it anyway.

(Yes, Kevin Abell, this is aimed at you)

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Remember the old Proctor & Gamble boycott of the 1990′s? Supposedly, the President of P&G gave financial support to the Church of Satan, so we had to boycott any shampoo, deodorant, and mouthwash made by the company.  It all seemed reasonable at the time, and it was PRINTED… ON PAPER – so it HAD to be true. (You can see a copy of the letter here).

Well it wasn’t and, unfortunately, people still fall for similar hoaxes, now usually via the internet (see example here).

Boycotting products based on hearsay was our version of remaining separate from the world. Doug Wilson recently delivered these thoughtful ideas on the subject.

“The idea of separation is a biblical idea. Come out from among them and be ye holy (2 Cor. 6:17). But in order to do this it is necessary actually to separate on biblical principle and in a biblical way. We need to learn how God’s intends for His people to be distinct. Too often Christians separate from the world in ways that are just one part of the world separating from another part of the world, with Christians tagging along behind for the sake of relevance, but in the name of holiness.”

Wilson asks some deeper questions about guilt by association such as:

May I live in those portions of North America that were stolen from the Indians?

May I drive on highways that go over property that were seized unjustly by eminent domain?

May I buy an automobile when the carburetor was manufactured by slave labor in mainland China?

How about the carburetor and the distributor cap?

May I buy gasoline from a joint that has three racks of porn behind the counter?

May I buy books from a company that has a soft porn division?

May I buy mutual funds that include corporate farms and plantations in the portfolio?

Hmmm, we never seemed to get to those questions. Who had time? The President of the company that made the products that prevented us from smelling bad was supporting the CHURCH OF SATAN for goodness sake! How could we be worried stolen land and justice issues?

“The issue is not whether Christians are called to be salt and light,” Wilson says, “and it is not whether we are supposed to have a salutary influence in this world. Of course we are. The question is rather how this is to be done. The question concerns God’s mechanism for this. What does He tell us to do, and what does He tell us not to worry about?”

He sees two basic principles

1. When the Bible addresses the question of financial separation from those who do not honor God, it goes in exactly the opposite direction that our instincts tell us to.
2. Accusations of wrongdoing on the other side of the world are not the same thing as establishing the truth of the accusation from the mouths of two or three witnesses, with cross-examination and diligent inquiry that presupposes the innocence of the accused.

As usual, these are merely snippets, and in the case of the above two principles a bit of explanation is needed. You should take the time to read the entire thing here.

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I will quote here (at length) from Doug Wilson’s recent piece called “Humbling the Arts”, but you really should read the entire thing for yourself here.

Money quotes:

We have come to the point of high circularity where our culture defines art as anything done by an artist, and an artist as one who has the right and authority to produce art. The detritus of this approach can be viewed at a tax-funded gallery near you.
***
Once on a trip I was struck by a particularly beautiful bit of graphic design, and it was doing nothing but decorating a restaurant at an airport. Musing on this, it occurred to me that while contemporary painting is in a wretched state, the aesthetic value of contemporary graphic design is light years ahead of the advertising of a century ago. Compare Vermeer with Jackson Pollock and you get half the point. The other half can be seen in a comparison of an ad for shoes a century ago and an ad for shoes today. Taking one thing with another, mutatis mutandis, current advertisements are aesthetically far superior to anything being done back when serious painting was still worth displaying on the wall. I mentioned this to a friend who pointed out an obvious connection—

ads today are the work of a “guild.” Look at any striking ad and you are looking at the work of a team of twenty people. No tortured genius signs it. It was done for money, plain and simple. No misunderstood soul thought up the ad with the back of his hand pressed against his fevered brow. Intelligibility is prized since the company actually may want to sell their product while intelligence is also prized because the ad has to stand out. Creativity can and does flourish under such conditions. In a similar way, the best creative work being done in television is in the world of commercials.

***
We should want to learn how to serve others outside the guild by means of painting, poetry, music, short story writing, and all the rest of it. Of course there are obvious dangers in this—establishing a gallery in order for people to watch us try to be aesthetically humble has some obvious snares. But nevertheless, we really do not want to be monks of high art. Rather, we want to be puritans of all artisanship, high, middle and low.
***
Attempts to thrust ourselves forward will result in humiliation. He [Jesus] taught us that the first will be last, and the last first. The one who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Despite the clarity of this doctrine, Christians persist in wanting to become rich, recognized, feted, honored, awarded, and flattered. They imagine that the teaching of Christ would of course have to be obeyed by them in an invisible spiritual sense, deep in the recesses of their hearts.

They would have to make sure the success did not go to their heads. Like the self-deceived, would-be philanthropist who daydreams about winning the lottery and imagines how much good he could do with the tithe, so Christians have wanted into the big time—so that they could then make a mark for Jesus. Along this line, Christians want to be actors and screenwriters and novelists and producers and poets and directors and painters, and then what a grand testimony we shall all have! But it never seems to occur to anyone that perhaps Jesus meant what He said in a more earthy sense. No one wants to be that nameless servant of Christ who did some of the spectacular wood carving on the north side of a 12th century cathedral—the anonymous fellow with the same social status as the 12th century butcher. As the blues song has it, everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.
***
This [being "puritans of artisanship"] involves three basic tenets.

First, the incarnation and humiliation of Jesus Christ is the arch-typical pattern for all who would be artisans—death is always followed by resurrection, and all resurrections must be preceded by death. Modern art is fruitless precisely because it refuses to die to self—it is a form of art that is all about self, barbaric yawp and all.

Secondly, an artisan always works with his materials, not against them, and since all materials are created by God and declare His glory, it is most necessary for all the works of our hands also to declare His glory.

And third, the world is filled with glories that none of us has yet seen.

***

MK – Wilson is a splendid writer whom I am pleased to have discovered by way of Collision, a documentary film about his conversation tour  with Christopher Hitchens.

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