Showing results by author "Douglas Wilson" in All Categories

This noble collection of verse on subjects great and small provides a window into how a Christian writer views the world: There is beauty, there is sorrow, but underneath it all beats the music of the heavens—and it is in the music of the heavens that we all will find our end.

Tom Collins, mild-mannered president of a dwindling southern Bible college, becomes a target when a drunk prankster swaps his campus's American flag with the Christian one, and Dr. Tom refuses to "fix" the situation. Big media, exuberant students, petty enemies, and pretty secretaries all play a part in this happy-go-lucky satire for the 21st century.

The Gospel should teach us to say "my life for yours." Our desire should be to have this love transform everything we do, room by room. This book works its way through every part of the house, examining each part in light of Scripture. The claims of God are always total, and this should be evident on the doorposts and in a sink full of dishes. Self-centeredness destroys in monotonously similar ways. Giving up life for another produces a harvest of kindness and mercy. Household questions should always begin with, "Is this my life for yours?"

Police shootings and protests have filled the news in recent years, leaving us with no illusions that America is free of racial problems. Skin and Blood invites us to look honestly at both White sins and Black sins…and to look hopefully at the red blood of Jesus, which is their only cure.

Wordsmithy is for writers of every sort, whether experienced veterans, still just hoping, or somewhere in between. Through a series of out-of-the-ordinary lessons, each with its own takeaway points and recommended readings, Douglas Wilson provides indispensable guidance, showing how to develop the writer's craft and the kind of life from which good writing comes.

Doug provides a primer to help understand and respond to the infinitely elastic sexuality demanded by nihilistic evolutionary postmodernism. Once you deny God and reality, sexual identity is free to be defined however we want. These and other issues are addressed in this short series of punchy pamphlets. These bite-size guides—digestible in a sitting or two—are great introductions to cultural hot topics.

Music is far more central to our lives than we perhaps assume. We come into contact with music all the time—sometimes explicitly as in worship, and sometimes implicitly as with the background music in restaurants that you scarcely notice, and other times explicitly (but still thoughtlessly), as with the music that many have loaded on their iPhone.

Doug discusses the seven deadly sins (a list first formulated in the 16th century) as only an experienced pastor of decades can, with pithy analysis of the temptation and the antidote from the Word of God.

Postmodernism has infiltrated the academy, including the Evangelical academy. Christians must not be intimidated or bullied when they are told they need to be less tied to dry things like "propositions" and "abstractions". But truth is truth. As Chesterton said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

America's first poet, Anne Bradstreet, wrote poems regularly for her family's private enjoyment. But in 1647, unbeknownst to Anne, her brother-in-law set sail for England with a manuscript of her poetry. Upon his return, he presented her book to her: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. Anne was thoroughly embarrassed but also pleased. Subsequent generations have valued her gifts as a poet as well, and her poetry remains in print to this day.

Modern evangelicals have gained money, power, and influence, and it has been like giving whiskey to a two-year-old. The need of the hour is theological, not political. The arena is the pulpit and the table, not the legislative chamber. Before we are equipped to proclaim His lordship to the inhabitants of all the earth, we must live as though we believed it in the Church.

2020 has been a year like no other. Thankfully, there was a No Quarter November to match. When he writes, Douglas Wilson usually offers qualifications for the statements that tend to ruffle feathers, and anticipates objections with nuance and balance. In this collection of NQN 2020 essays, Douglas Wilson addresses the election mayhem, women's ministries, the enneagram, the "gift of singleness", and much more.

Many Evangelical leaders will say the truth, but surround it with bubble wrap and a thousand qualifications. But every year in November, Douglas Wilson eschews his usual nuance, qualifications, and disclaimers to tell the truth about the craziness of our world. The problem with qualifications is not that they are untrue, but that we do not recognize how bad our condition actually is. Evangelicalism has been drifting steadily leftward and policing the sins to the right. The problem is not the policing: the problem is the hypocrisy and one-sidedness.

It’s two decades in the future, and a Christian college student named Ace Hartwick has just destroyed his neighbor’s so-called “wife”—actually a sexbot named Sally—in a trash compactor. Soon, Ace will be on trial for murder. Unfortunately for Ace, everyone despises his kind of “radical” Christianity, and, in the fragile America of the future, all the juries are fixed.

Many Christian parents oppose our godless American culture, but how many of us are willing to put our money where our mouth is? In this spicy but short book, Douglas Wilson calls for Christian parents to remove their kids from public schools. Beginning with the commands in Scripture for parents to raise up their children in the “fear and admonition of the Lord”, he shows that parents cannot and should not send their children to be catechized by unbelieving teachers and peers.

This November 2019, pastor Douglas Wilson hoisted the Jolly Roger for the second year running and ceased making the qualifications he usually makes. In this collection, he takes aim not just at liberals eager to destroy the world, but at the conservative Evangelicals who are letting them take over the church without a fight. Doug takes a hammer to Revoice, global warming, woke Thanksgivings, and many other idols.

Longtime pastor Douglas Wilson takes a hammer to some of our very favorite graven images, and (surprise, surprise) we've set up display cases for most of them in our churches: liturgy, tradition, systematics, infant baptism, and that crafty old Baal doctrine. Alongside a critique of philosophical assumptions about human nature, dualism, and grace, Wilson stresses the unavoidable and absolute necessity of individual hearts being born again. He concludes by laying out the case for the church.

Many conservatives are ready to give up fighting against the legalization of marijuana. “Hasn’t the war on drugs been a failure?” they ask. Libertarians turn this surrender into a virtue: “People should be free to do what they want, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.” But as Christians, we must be ready to swim against the tide, even when it’s no longer cool. Liberty for potheads means tyranny for everyone, including the smokers enslaved by the drug.

We live in a time when marital fidelity is under assault. Driven by the forces of relativism, our society assaults sexual fidelity on numerous fronts. The push for homosexual marriages, for example, come at the end of the fall into perversion, not the beginning. Faithless husbands began the fall long ago, and our culture, with all its washed-out self-help books, fails to address the real problem - sin.

Evangellyfish is a ruthless, grimly amused, and above all, honest look at one of the darkest corners in the western world. Douglas Wilson, a pastor of more than 30 years, paints a vivid and painful picture of evangelical boomchurch leadership...in bed. Chad Lester's kingdom is found in the Midwest. When Lester is (falsely) accused of molesting a young male counselee, his universe begins to crumble. He is a sexual predator, yes. But strictly straight. Detectives, reporters, assistant pastors, and old lovers and pay-offs all come out to play.