I don’t like to write when I’m angry, and so I don’t generally. I’ve found that while Godly anger may motivate me to write, the anger that comes out often doesn’t look terribly Godly. That disconnect — feeling Godly anger and yet writing that reveals more of the flesh than the soul — is enough to make me wait until the anger feels more like a steady rain than a raging thunderstorm.
But there’s an element of timeliness when it comes to blog writing, and sometimes things can’t wait. This isn’t a free pass to write recklessly; it is a preamble that announces extra effort put forth to trim the flesh from what I write.
Doug Wilson has recently begun a dialogue with another theologian regarding Wilson’s execrable defense of Antebellum slavery, which he elaborates on in the mid-nineties “Southern Slavery As It Was,” now out of print, and fine-tuned — to no less ill effect — in Canon Press’ “Black and Tan,” released a few years later. I’m glad that accusations of racism trouble Wilson enough that he’s dealing, and dealing respectfully, with a critic who takes him to task for defending on Biblical terms the owning of kidnapped human beings, solely on the basis of race, in the American South. It’s important to note here that part-and-parcel of Wilson’s apologetic is his condemnation of the Christian abolitionists who worked to eliminate the slave trade and slave economy of the South, as well as his assertion that the Civil War had little to do with slavery and much to do with Northern aggression against the Godly Anglo-Celt slaveholders. Part-and-parcel of my profound dismay regarding Wilson’s take on slavery is that it’s historically stupid, Biblically indefensible, and evangelistically disastrous. Just so you know.
But like the playground bully who falls off the jungle gym and bellows to the laughing crowd that he absolutely meant to do that, Wilson today, on Blog and Mablog, gives us an idea of why he would wade into print regarding the topic of slavery. It turns out that his spectacularly clumsy belly-flop into the deep waters of poisonous hermeneutics and jaw-droppingly insensitive practical application was DESIGNED to be hermeneutically poisonous and jaw-droppingly insensitive — so that if God prospered his ministry, it would clearly be God’s work, not a result of Wilson’s “marketability” or the ease with which he could be “shrink-wrapped and packaged” by a crass culture of evangelical marketing. After all, if the bitchslap of defending slavery poisoned the hearts out of non-believers and broke the hearts of believers, then clearly the success of his ministry in Moscow and beyond would be not about Doug and all about God. He planned to be seen as an ass and a racist so that his ministry would prosper not because of, but in spite of, his odious beliefs and actions.
Here’s what he says:
“I remember telling Nancy once early on that I wanted to change the world. I did, and still do. But I didn’t want to make a difference by shinning up the designated ambition pole. And so I pulled a stinker. I believed it was necessary for me to become genuinely unmarketable. I did it by maintaining something that was (as I knew at the time) the historigraphic equivalent of blacking out a couple of my front teeth. If the altar ever burned, it would be a wet altar that burned.” (Blog and Mablog, March 18, 2013)
In other words, he meant to do that.
Unfortunately, the rot he injected into the witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ didn’t just reflect poorly on himself. How I wish that had been the case — the Gospel of Doug Wilson is of no interest to me, and while I prayed then and pray now that that Gospel someday comports with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t much affect how people view Jesus Christ if a mixed-up guy in North Idaho says something dumb about slavery.
But the mixed-up guy in North Idaho who said something dumb about slavery was a Christian pastor who based his views on the Bible — and who’s the kingpin of a ministry empire that extends far beyond his K-12 school, seminary, denominational headquarters, classical Christian college, two congregations and publishing house in Moscow. His fall off the jungle gym of Biblical sanity occurred in front of a huge audience multiplied by the objective amorality of the printing press and the Internet, and when people outside of the tightly-knit, protective cluster of CREC churches discovered it, the resulting damage to the Gospel was catastrophic. That Gospel speaks of Christ, not Wilson, but the foul stench he blew into it lingers on the message, not the messenger.
Wilson’s ability to self-aggrandize even when claiming debasement is stunning. He would have us believe that in defending the indefensible, he was gladly being a fool for Christ. He wasn’t. Those who are fools for Christ are truth-speakers who suffer the contempt of an unbelieving, heart-hardened world. Their faith brings God glory; they decrease that Christ may increase.
Those who are simply behaving foolishly, and who then suffer contempt because of it, don’t get to, almost twenty years later, insist that their obnoxiousness was for the glory of God. The level of reckless stupidity Wilson displayed increased his presence, even in rank disdain, not his Lord’s. It harmed the message of Christ Jesus; its defense harms it to this day. The only glory God received from Southern Slavery As It Was came from those Christians who stood against Wilson. I’m privileged that I got to be one of them.