Douglas Wilson looked sober, stern, and statesmanlike while delivering his sermon last Sunday to Idaho Governor Butch Otter and the State Legislature — who, of course, weren’t in attendance — wherein he repeated his insistence that Obamacare is a blight on the Constitution, a threat to human liberty, and an almost unparalleled abomination to a Holy God. He repeated his earlier call for resistance to the individual healthcare-coverage mandate the new law requires, issuing, in a sense, his own “individual mandate,” the irony of which seems to have eluded him — a battle cry for the believer to engage in revolt against the government,
Reasonable people, of course, must wonder how a presumably sane individual can link the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Affordable Care Act to every act of evil and unGodliness history has to offer, and it wouldn’t be uncalled-for to feel a measure of horror that the same guy would usurp the position of the Holy Spirit by telling his congregants how they must respond to a government mandate. But Wilson was clearly champing at the bit to let loose with Something Prophetic, something of Lasting Power and Significance, Something to Fight Evil. And because Wilson revels in the perceived similarities between him and fellow anti-government evilmonger Chuck Baldwin today and the “Black Regiment,” those Revolutionary War-era New England Protestant ministers who spent the week stirring up armed revolt and who then celebrated the Sabbath, resplendent in their black frockcoats, hiding behind the pulpit to defend the ensuing chaos, it seems appropriate to note that he wore a nice, blackish suit and tie.
Evidently, it’s important to get right the sartorial trappings of whatever lunatic fringe you choose to embrace, and Wilson nailed the look. The tie, especially, was impeccable.
The man wearing it? Not so much, and not by a long shot — about as close to “impeccable,” or even “decent,” as the eternal, impassable gulf between poor Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom and the evil, selfish rich man longing to bridge it with his piteous pleas for fairness and justice. In painting Obamacare, with its promise of providing unprecedented access to for-profit, insurer-provided healthcare for the poor, sick and marginalized, as a justice issue — one that plants him and his squarely in the role of victims — Wilson’s cries are equally piteous, as pointless as the rich man’s yelping and whining. Indeed, Wilson’s characterization of Obamacare as a threat to the free man’s liberty, family, and worship of God is so lugubriously painted and so histrionically presented that the sane person ought to conclude — would have no choice but to conclude — that they’re the impotent cries of a sad, silly little man and his slavishly devoted posse.
Yeah, you could just dismiss these as pointless, pathetic rants, with boredom from within and mockery from without as the only real consequences likely to develop. The guy, after all, is known as a pastor — a self-made doughy academic who started a Classically Christian K-12 school and college who says he’s devoted to the Lordship of Christ in every arena of his life. That claim is as substantial as a wad of cotton candy, based on the fruit demonstrated, but Wilson is enabled by the pitiful weakness and the astonishing credulity of the “responsible” people around them. They take comfort in believing that there’s no reason, given that resume, to believe anything bad could come from this . . . he’s a man of the cloth, right? A Bible teacher and the son of a pastor? He couldn’t really be dangerous, his words couldn’t really bring to fruition something ugly, if he’s a Christian pastor . . . but he IS dangerous, and his words, sinful regardless of their effect, could easily kick-start something violent, dangerous, and entirely unChristian.
Why? Not because of the people who listen and care and take action as much as because of those who hear, care little, and do even less to oppose him. And that makes the latter group every bit as dangerous as the former.