Under mass house arrest

I have seen a few troubling comments online where Christian leaders are saying that the civil government doesn’t have the right to cancel meetings of the church. They certainly don’t have the the right to do that if their objection is that you are preaching the crown rights of King Jesus. In such a case, continue to meet. But if the fire chief told all the good Christians to get out now because the roof of the sanctuary was on fire, this is something he has the right and obligation to do…Following the mandates of the civil authority on quarantines and the closing of public meetings and such during a time of epidemic is not one of them.

So to be clear, if the governor of Idaho shuts down all public meetings because of COVID-19, churches included, then Christ Church would comply. Even if it happened to be the wrong decision, or a decision with which I differed, we would still happily comply. This is one of things that is well within their realm of jurisdiction. It is their call to make. This is their job.

In ancient Israel, the authorities had the right to tear down someone’s house if it was afflicted with the creeping crud (Lev. 14:33-53). They had the right to make someone with a contagious disease into a permanent exile, having to live outside the camp (Lev. 13:45-46. This kind of thing, however unfortunate, is not a violation of anybody’s rights.

In historic Presbyterian polity (all rise!), the civil magistrate had no authority in sacred things (in sacris), but he had definite authority surrounding sacred things (circa sacra). Put simply, the magistrate has no right to tell the church what to preach, how to pray, how to administer the sacraments, who to discipline, etc. That is not their assigned task. They need to stay in their lane.

But when it comes to questions of public safety (which is exactly what this is), preachers need to stay in their lane. It would be different if we were talking about a monastery with a bunch of recluse hermit monks, and the magistrate told them they couldn’t gather in their own chapel for prayers. That would be none of the magistrate’s business. But if great herds of Baptists head out to the Golden Corral after services, and they do this during the time of an epidemic, the magistrate has full authority and obligation to tell all of them “not so fast.” This is circa sacra…There are so many areas where the church should be resisting statism, it would be shame to waste our powder on any issue where the state is acting well within its rights.

https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/contagion-cooties-and-covid-19.html

Several problems with Wilson's analysis:

i) This isn't primarily a question of Christians standing up for their rights, as if we're only asserting our rights because we have them. Rights for the sake of rights. Rather, this is about religious rights in the service of the religious good. 

ii) There's a point of tension in Wilson's position. If he thinks this is a public safety issue, then why wait for the authorities to shut down church meetings? If it justifies social distancing and quarantines, churches should do their part by taking the initiative. If it's analogous to a building on fire, you self-evacuate the building; you don't just sit there waiting to be ordered to leave. 

iii) A problem with his example is that if you find yourself in a burning building, the risk assessment is clearcut. The cost/benefit analysis is clearcut. Everything to lose and nothing to gain by staying there. But the pandemic is far more ambiguous. The projections are uncertain. The solutions are uncertain. There are severe tradeoffs.

iv) His analysis is too compartmentalized. It's not as if the state shutting down church meetings is just a public safety issue rather than a religious issue. Take the Governor of California's list of "authorized necessary activities." That demotes public worship to a nonessential activity which requires civil authorization. Is that a principle that Christians should concede? Or is that the state co-opting our lane? 

v) There are some parallels between involuntary commitment and quarantine measures during a pandemic. The problem is the slide from unambiguous cases to ambiguous cases. Symptomatic carriers through asymptomatic carriers to the uninfected. Do you round up everybody indiscriminately and throw them into quarantine because some of them might be infected? 

It's like involuntary commitment of someone who might be dangerous to himself or others because there's a family history of mental illness, even though he himself hasn't manifested any signs of mental illness–yet. But if you wait, it might be too late. So it's safer to lock him up just in case, for the common good, even if he never suffers from mental illness. 

We're not quite at that point, and testing may help to sort things out, although we can't test 300 million Americans, and even if we could, some of them might become infected a week after they passed the test. But if politicians become desperate, don't count out preemptive measures like 28 Weeks Later. Governors have already put whole populations under mass house arrest. 

vi) Is this just a public health and safety issue? That's so this-worldly and lacking in a Godward outlook. Why do they go to church at all, even during normal times? Wilson acts like it's balancing one natural event against another natural event. Does he think the fellowship of God's people in corporate worship has no supernatural dimension that offsets what happens in the world? 

I don't mean "supernatural" in a sensational signs-and-wonders sense, but just that God blesses faithful corporate worship. Does Wilson think churchgoers are just pew warmers? Does it makes a difference, other than at the level of social psychology and emotional uplift? If the ban goes on for months, with electronic worship as the alternative, will many parishioners return if and when the ban is lifted? And why should they?  

I say this from the standpoint of faith rather than experience. It's not that I consciously experience the supernatural when I attend church. And I don't expect to since I think the supernatural usually operates at a subliminal level in public worship. My point is that if Christianity is true, then certain kinds of supernatural blessings are conditional on communal Christian experience. 

To tatt or not to tatt?

Doug Wilson recently did a post condemning tattoos: 

https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/7-reasons-not-tattoo.html

For the record, I don't have any tattoos, so I don't have a vested interest in this dispute.

I will skip his first objection because I've dealt with that in the past:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/08/christian-tatts.html

I wish to hone in on four of his objections:

The tattoo removal business is a multi-million dollar industry, and growing. Most of their clients are in their 30’s and 40’s. How confident are you that you will not be in that number a decade from now?

Certainly there are people who impulsively get a tattoo, only to regret it later on. Of course, that can be a problem with impulsive behavior generally. 

If, on the other hand, you get a Christian tattoo, why would you wish to remove it at a later date–unless you became an apostate? 

All the energy in the tattoo industry is coming from the world. This is a thing, it is a fad, it is a fashion, and it is all these things because of what the world is doing. If no unbeliever in the last hundred years had ever gotten a tattoo, you can be assured that it wouldn’t be such a thing among us. 

i) That's a hasty generalization. There are Christians who get Christian tattoos. Is the world getting Christian tattoos? Even if it did, that might be a promising development. 

People get tattoos for worldly motives…except when they don't get tattoos for worldly motives. It's true…except when it's false. A useless generalization because it's so unreliable. 

ii) In addition, God uses preexisting customs like circumcision, communal meals, and sacred ablutions, as covenant signs. These didn't originate in Judaism or Christianity. Does that make circumcision, baptism, and communion worldly?

Given the proliferation of tattoos in the general culture, we need to be careful not to prejudge people by tattoos. Not to form our first impression of people by tattoos–even inappropriate tattoos. In terms of Christian outreach, we should avoid making hasty, superficial prejudgments. It's automatic to judge people by their appearance. While that's not always wrong, it's something we need to be much more guarded about.

And last, one of my fundamental concerns has to do with the relationship of tattoos to ours baptisms. The fundamental external mark of a Christian is baptism, and it is striking that this is a mark that dries invisibly.

By that logic, it would be wrong to wear a T-shirt with a Christian message or Bible verse. 

I saved his worst objection for last. 

The chances are excellent to outstanding that if you are a Christian contemplating a tattoo this would also mean that you are a Christian contemplating distressing your parents. When factoring this element in, don’t allow yourself to argue to yourself that a tattoo “doesn’t necessarily dishonor them.” The Bible doesn’t tell you to not necessarily dishonor them. It says to honor them. It says to listen to their wisdom. “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, And forsake not the law of thy mother” (Prov. 1:8). 

I don’t believe that any human authority is absolute, but parental authority and wisdom is certainly significant. In deciding to get a tattoo, are you granting your parents’ reluctance and distress the weight and significance that you should? And how do you know?

That objection is bizarre on so many levels:

i) It begs the question. If getting a tattoo breaks the fifth commandment, then, by definition, tattoos are forbidden. Yet Wilson assumes the very thing he needs to prove. He offers no exegetical evidence that getting a tattoo dishonors your parents. Instead, he takes that for granted, then uses that loaded definition as a prohibition against tattoos. But that's getting the cart before the horse.

ii) He equates dishonoring your parents with making them experience reluctance or distress. Again, though, he offers no exegetical justification for supposing that's how Scripture defines dishonoring your parents. By that logic, if a child converts from Mormonism or Roman Catholicism to evangelicalism, he violated the fifth commandment. Imagine how distressed his parents will be by his repudiation of their Mormon or Catholic faith. 

iii) He equates honoring your parents with submission to parental authority, yet he says nothing to restrict that to underage children or minors living at home. I agree that honoring your parents is a lifelong obligation. But it hardly follows that obeying your parents is a lifelong obligation. Does he think grown children living on their own have a standing duty to submit to their parents? What about married children? What about married children with their own kids? Does he think grown children have a duty to seek parental approval or permission for all their decisions? Perhaps that's part of his patriarchal philosophy. 

iv) It's presumptuous of him to suppose that parents generally will be distressed by a child (what age?) getting a tattoo. What about kids who get tattoos because their parents have tattoos? 

v) Even with respect to minors living at home, given all the dangerous or depraved things that minors can be involved with these days, if getting a tattoo or Mohawk represents the limits of their teenage rebellion, parents should be grateful.

vi) Not only are there commands to kids, but commands to parents: "Don't exasperate your kids" (Eph 6:4; Col 3:21). Prudent parents draw the line on things that really matter. 

Free speech apocalypse

http://andynaselli.com/doug-wilsons-new-film-the-free-speech-apocalypse

Talent's temptations

I'd like to make one last observation on the Wilson affair. I'm using this occasion to make a larger point. 

From what I've read, Wilson acts as if he's the victim, he's the one who was wronged in this whole dispute. 

In my observation, most pastors are pretty ordinary people. They aren't especially gifted. They don't have any great knack for what they do. And I don't say that as a criticism or putdown.

Because most pastors don't have a deep well of natural talent to dip into, they can't rely on their personal facility in the way a truly gifted person can. To be a good shepherd, the average pastor must rely one things which aren't based on his special endowments, because he never had all that to draw upon. Instead, he must simply be studious, faithful, prayerful conscientious, know his parishioners, visit the sick, &c. Plodding, mundane things that anyone dutiful person can do. 

However, Doug Wilson is a big talent. Talented people rely on their outsized abilities. And there's nothing wrong with that. Make the most of it. Put it to good use.

However, talented people are prone to a danger that average people are not: pride. Egotism. 

Because they have talent, because they rely on their natural talent, it is easy for a gifted person to be self-centered. And this is reinforced by the fact that charisma is a drawing card. People come to hear and see you. They read you for style as much as substance. You have starpower. You become the sun of that solar system. 

It's easier for a talented person to see himself in his work, because he did put more of himself into his own work. He's less dependent on the work of others. He has a personal flair for doing things. He plunges the big dipper into the well of his own overflowing talent. 

Hence, gifted people, including–or especially–gifted Christians, must make an extra effort to guard against vainglory.

Maybe God can forgive you, but I can't!

i) Doug Wilson is in a pickle over the way he handled the case of two pedophiles at church. Peter Leithart is also implicated in the mess. I'm not going to discuss all twists and turns of that controversy.  

I'll just use it to illustrate a general point: I think some Christians are confused or conflicted about how to deal with cases like this. After all, there's a sense in which Christianity is a religion of second chances. We believe in redemption. Forgiveness. So what about that?

ii) There's a sense in which God is in a position to forgive people we can't. For one thing, God knows who is truly contrite, and who is faking it. We don't. 

iii) Which brings me to a related point: even if I'm prepared to forgive you, that doesn't mean I'm prepared to trust you. Forgiveness is about the past–trust is about the future. Those aren't interchangeable concepts. 

Take a comparison: suppose I'm a pastor. We need to hire a new church treasurer. We advertise the job and get several applicants. One has an impressive resume. MBA from a top college. Experience as a CPA and investment banker. If anything, he's overqualified. Yet there's an odd gap in his resume.

I, in agreement with the church board, have criminal background checks performed on all job applicants. Turns out, this applicant was convicted of embezzlement. 

As a result, we don't hire him. Instead, we hire another applicant without the Park Avenue resume, but who has a squeaky clean reputation.

The applicant who was turned down phones me a few days later wondering why he didn't get the job. I explain. He complains that that's unchristian. He tells me that he committed embezzlement before he was saved. He converted in prison. Now he's turned over a new leaf.

Well, I wish him all the best. I hope that's true. But, honestly, it's a self-serving claim. I have no independent evidence to confirm his claim. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it would be foolhardy to do so. I have no reason to believe he's trustworthy, while I do have reason to believe he may not be trustworthy.

Moreover, it's not even a case of trusting him with my own money. As a pastor, I have a fiduciary responsibility for the money which parishioners contribute. 

In addition, the fact that he wants to go right back to the same kind of work that got him into trouble in the first place is suspicious. At best, that exposes him to temptation, at his weakest. At worst, that indicates a lack of sincerity. If I said I was a recovering gambler, would I apply for a job at a casino? 

iv) From what I've read, pedophilia has high rates of recidivism, although that's complicated by the fact that there's now a movement to mainstream pedophilia, so the evidence will be suppressed. It's just asking for trouble to give someone like that a second bite at the apple. 

I'll make two other points:

v) From what I've read, Wilson defends his conduct in part by appealing to the fact that the judge approved of the marriage. But given Wilson's disdain for the moral wisdom of public officials, he can hardly take cover in the opinion of the judge. At best, that just means there's blame to go around. It doesn't get him off the hook. It merely means additional people are at fault. 

vi) He also speaks as if pedophilia is a psychological condition to be treated by counseling. That's sadly similar to the Church of Rome, which has viewed predatory priests as a psychotherapeutic issue.

Wilson is a man who's done a lot of good. It's a pity to see him show such poor pastoral judgment. And that's aggravated by his refusal to accept legitimate criticism. 

Parsing manhood and womanhood

There's been a cold war going on between Doug Wilson and the Mortification of Spin over the nature of complementarianism. Denny Burk is another participant in this debate. The flashpoint of the debate was an answer that John Piper gave to a question about policewomen. 

Todd Pruitt made the mistake of using Doug Wilson as a bad example. I generally like Pruitt. He's usually a good culture warrior. He stays informed. But he's no match for Wilson's wit and rhetorical prowess. That exchange went badly for Pruitt.

A better match-up is between Wilson and Trueman, both of whom are witty and rhetorically nimble. But that's not the level at which we need to conduct the debate. This isn't a test of literary panache. There are very serious issues at stake, which require serious analysis. Not just clever repartee. 

One of the tragedies of the slavery/segregation debate is that the right people were wrong and the wrong people were right. By that I mean many of the more orthodox spokesmen were on the wrong side of the issue while many of the less orthodox people were on the right side of the issue.

Problem is, when the most orthodox people are derelict in addressing a social issue, they allow that issue to be defined, by default, by the wrong people. By people with the wrong frame of reference. They will fill the vacuum, and they will misdefine the issue. 

Trueman, for one, suffers from intellectual impatience on this issue. He doesn't want to be bothered with it, beyond a very sketchy position on marriage and church office. But that effectively delegates to secular social engineers all the detailed answered when it comes to society at large. If conservative Christians don't make the intellectual effort, then masculinity and femininity will be defined by feminism, the manosphere, transgender movement, &c. The secular extremists, at various ends of the secular spectrum, will dominate the debate. Extremists (e.g. feminism, transgenderism) and reactionaries (e.g. manosphere). 

In fairness, Trueman is right to be critical of an approach that makes men and women painfully self-conscious about when they are doing, constantly second-guessing their actions, "Is this the manly thing to do?" It's not about making a long list of rules, of do's and don't's. 

Men and women have many overlapping physical and psychological abilities. The question is where the distinctives come into play.

But complementarians of the MOS variety can't successfully oppose the excesses of the patriarchy movement if they are too intellectually negligent to present a concrete alternative. It's incoherent to say "Don't do that!" unless you can say "Do this instead." You can't beat something with nothing. 

Now that may not be Trueman's skill set. But if so, he should recognize his own limitations rather than making his limitations the yardstick.  

However, the approach of Trueman trivializes the issue, as if Christians don't need to give serious consideration to the sociopolitical implications of gender essentialism. Let's block out some of the issues:

i) In defining manhood and womanhood, what's the frame of reference? In complementarianism, manhood and womanhood are to some degree mutually defining. Men have some distinctive masculine virtues, women have some distinctive feminine virtues, and these were meant to supplement each other. Without the moderating influence of each sex, a nature virtue, carried to an extreme, becomes a vice.

By contrast, it's my impression that feminism tries to define womanhood autonomously, without reference to men. The very concept of womanhood is independent of the other sex. 

That's a very different approach, with very different consequences. And, of course, you have vicious internecine wars within feminism regarding the true definition of womanhood.

ii) Another issue is what Robert Bork dubs "coercive equality." This involves the twin notions that women can do whatever men do (or vice versa) and, what is more, women should be doing it at the same rate as men. If not, then this must be due to sexism and discrimination. 

It's not enough to have equality of opportunity, you must have equality of outcome. And if disparity remains despite equality of opportunity, then we must even that out by any means necessary. Demoting qualified men. Promoting unqualified women. Lowering standards. Having quotas. 

iii) Apropos (ii), suppose more men have a natural aptitude, or take a natural interest, in math and science, than women. But, of course, you have exceptions on both sides of the equation. Women who are good at math and science, men who are bad at math and science.

One policy is to give people the freedom to pursue what they are good at, pursue what they find interesting or personally self-fulfilling. 

But that won't satisfy the radical egalitarians. You have feminists who can't grant the possibility that if women are "underrepresented" in certain positions or majors, that's by choice. They refuse to honor the spontaneous preferences of women.  

iv) More controversial is whether some occupations are inherently more suitable for men than women, or vice versa, due to physical differences, psychological differences, or both. 

Christians who believe in gender realism (as Christians should) will draw some lines in that regard, at least in principle. Stock examples include the coed military. 

v) Another example is official hostility towards stereotypical male behavior. From what I've read, the NEA imposes a feminist ideology on education. This results in persecuting boys for thinking and doing what comes naturally to boys. And, more subtly, this stigmatizes girls for thinking and doing what comes naturally to girls. 

vi) On a related note is the question of whether we should have coed team sports and coed contact sports. Likewise, games are typically competitive, which is a stereotypically masculine trait. Not surprisingly, educators who operate with a feminist ideology are opposed to competitive games. In its place they substitute the stereotypically feminine trait of cooperation. Conflict resolution. 

Should Christians op-out of that public policy debate? Retreat into the home and the church? 

vii) It is, moreover, naive to think radical egalitarians will allow Christians to privatize their faith. The social engineers will invade the home and the church. Dictate to parents how they are allowed to raise their kids. 

viii) Although the debate tends to focus on the role of women, what should be the priorities of a man? For instance, many men are very career-minded. How should that be prioritized in relation to their duties as a husband or father? 

ix) Another issue is whether feminism results in a permissive justice system. Consider CA Chief Justice Rose Bird's refusal to uphold capital punishment. Is that an isolated case? Or take jurors. Consider the Menendez trial:

All six women jurors in the Erik Menendez trial voted to acquit him of the murder of his father (all six males voted guilty of murder). A virtually identical breakdown by sex took place in the Lyle Menendez trial for the murder of their mother. The women all had compassion for the brothers despite their confessions to the shotgun murders of their parents. 

To say that the human race needs masculine and feminine characteristics is to state the obvious. But each sex comes with prices. Men can too easily lack compassion, reduce sex to animal behavior and become violent. And women’s emotionality, when unchecked, can wreak havoc on those closest to these women and on society as a whole — when emotions and compassion dominate in making public policy. 

http://www.dennisprager.com/the-feminization-of-society-judeo-christian-values-part-xxii/

A Duty to Interpose

https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/109658.html

Wilson’s Way: Calvin’s Solution

“There is a difference between contempt of court and seeing that the courts have become contemptible”.

We want a pagan society to respect our sentimental religiosity, and that is not going to happen any time soon.

The point here is not just private conscience. The right to liberty of conscience is at play with florists, bakers, and so on. But Kim Davis is not just keeping herself from sinning, she is preventing Rowan County from sinning. That is part of her job.

Every Christian elected official should be determining, within the scope of their duties, which lines they will not allow the state to cross. When they come to that line, they should refuse to cross it because “this is against the law of God.” They should do this as part of their official responsibilities. This is part of their job. It is one of the things they swear to do when they take office.

This is nothing less than Calvin’s doctrine of the lesser magistrates (Institutes 4.20.22-32), which I would urge upon all and sundry as relevant reading material. And as Calvin points out, after Daniel — a Babylonian official — disobeyed the king’s impious edict, he denied that he had wronged the king in any way (Dan. 6:22-23).

The ever-receding “hill to die on”

http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/in-which-i-paint-with-some-bright-yellows.html

Video sting operations

https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/a-brief-defense-of-righteous-video-sting-operations.html

Buy the refs

The first lie is that there has been a “sea change” in American public opinion, and that all this tumult around us is the result of that sea change. This is not even close to being true. This has been a power play to establish such a sea change; it is in no way the result of it.

Teams that bite, kick, gouge, and otherwise cheat, and which buy all the refs for a tidy little sum beforehand, are not teams that are confident of winning in the ordinary way. 

http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/like-cheap-cinder-block.html

Red Queen Rising

https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/red-queen-rising.html

Death as usual

Note in the first place that this doesn’t even solve the presenting problem. If Adam and Eve were the first emerging humans from a crowd of primates, what is the sense of telling them that if they violated whatever our replacement was for the Forbidden Tree, they would surely die? “Die?” they might say. “Everybody dies. My parents just died last year.” Why is it a threat to go through something that has been the way of the world for millions of years already? Why didn’t God threaten them with having to eat breakfast tomorrow, just like always? 

http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/7-reasons-why-biologos-is-a-threat-to-classical-christian-education.html

Excesses of the Wahoo Brethren

http://dougwils.com/the-church/excesses-of-the-wahoo-brethren.html

On Spiraling into Chaos

http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/on-spiraling-into-chaos.html

The rage of unbelief

"The Rage of Unbelief" by Robin Schumacher.

Gone to their reward

Doug Wilson on what an atheistic universe entails.

For Wilson's thoughts on Hitchens, see this post, which in addition refers back to his Christianity Today post.

BTW, it looks like his "Collision" debate with Hitchens is available on YouTube: The "Collision" documentary is available to watch on YouTube: