Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Chick-fil-A and the Attack of the Tyrannatots 

Culture and Politics – The Bible, Culture, and Race
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 29 July 2012

The outlines of the latest Free Speech Clown Car Review are pretty familiar by now. Dan Cathy, the COO of Chick-fil-A, was asked his opinion on homosexual marriage, and he, being a good Christian man, said he was agin it. This should not have been an astonishment, for it has pretty much been the mainstream position of Western civilization from Moses down to the Obama of about three months ago. But a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, as the fellow said, and so who cares anymore? That man with all the chicken has clearly DEVIATED, and he must be CORRECTED.

Now boycotts are things that folks like to do from time to time, and we do not like to deny them their little amusements. But boycotts are harder to pull off than they look — conservatives face-planted with their boycott of Disney, and the homobifiers now are unlikely to establish in the minds of the general populace any necessary connection between “gay oppression” and the eating of chicken sandwiches.

This being the case, enter gummint coercion.

Studies in I Samuel

Mercy Stands Taller

Book of Samuel
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, September 18, 2011

INTRODUCTION:
David seeks to get away from Saul, but he cannot get away from his anointing. He can evade Saul, but he cannot evade the fact that a new Israel is going to start to form around him. David goes into the wilderness and finds a throne. Saul goes to his throne and finds a wilderness.

THE TEXT:
“Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest: and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone, and no man with thee? . . .” (1 Sam. 21:1-15).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:
David continues on the run, and he comes to Nob, a priestly city (v. 1). The tabernacle had apparently been moved there after the destruction of Shiloh. They didn’t have the ark there, but they still put out the showbread. The showbread was also called the bread of the Presence—but the Presence wasn’t there anymore. A lot of things were dislocated. Ahimelech was concerned because David did not have the kind of entourage he should have had, and so David told him he was on a secret mission (v. 2).
David asks for five loaves of bread (v. 3). Ahimelech says he has no common bread, but that David can have the showbread if his young men have kept themselves from women—meaning they were dedicated to holy war (v. 4). David replies in the affirmative (v. 5), and so the priest gives him the showbread (v. 6). But Doeg the Edomite was there (v. 7). David then asks for weapons (v. 8), and so the priest gives him the sword of Goliath (v. 9). And so David then fled to Gath, where Achish was king (v. 10). But the servants of Achish recognized him, and repeated the words of the song that the women of Israel had sung, back at the beginning of all the trouble (v. 11). David was starting to hate that song. And so David came to be afraid of Achish (v. 12), and so pretended to be insane (v. 13). And Achish was fooled (v. 14), and delivers one of the great lines of Scripture (v. 15).

SOME BACKGROUND:
Ahimelech was the great-grandson of Eli, and the brother of Ahijah—the man who came into the priestly service of Saul after the departure of Samuel (1 Sam. 14:3). Jesus identifies this episode as happening in the “days” of Abiathar (Mark 2:26), the son of Ahimelech, who joined up with David later, and who served as high priest for David. Each one of these five loaves contained about three and a half pounds of flour (Lev. 24:5-9). David already had a group of men around him, but they were apparently a pretty rag tag bunch, which is what caused Ahimelech to wonder about the absence of a more regular detail. In an odd move, David receives the sword of Goliath and promptly flees to the city of Goliath.

ETHICAL FUSSINESS:
David uses deception twice in this chapter. Once was to mislead Ahimelech, giving him the protection of plausible deniability (which didn’t work), and the other instance was when he pretended to be mad in order to get away from Achish (which did work). We have previously seen that deception is an essential part of warfare, and pious evangelicals who object to this are slicing it way too fine. An example would be the (otherwise commendable) ESV Study Bible, which says of this place, “Though David normally acted as an upright man, the Bible does not hesitate to record honestly his instances of wrongdoing.” But what sense does this make? Do we want to say that it is not a sin to blow somebody up with a tank just so long as you never camouflage it? In this instance, David is using deceit as a way of avoiding direct conflict with Saul, and God bless him.

If you were standing at a crossroads, and a screaming woman ran by, and then about five minutes later, a lunatic with furious eyes and an axe ran up, demanding to know “which way she went,” I trust that all of you here would lie like a Christian. And none of this changes the fact that the lake of fire is reserved for liars (Rev. 21:8), that the ninth commandments prohibits the corruption of the courts (Ex. 20:16), and that we are commanded not to lie to one another because we have put off the old man (Col. 3:9). Kids, if your mom asks if you made your bed, and you reply that you did (even though you did not), you cannot fix it by appealing to the Hebrew midwives, or to the faithful deception that Rahab used. You should get swats a couple times—once for the lie, and the other time for the faulty hermeneutic.

THE SHOWBREAD:
Jesus refers to this incident, and He does so in a way that exonerates David (Matt. 12:1-8). The law of God, the Lord teaches, is not built out of two by fours. It is a case law system, the same kind of thing as our common law system, which means that the principles of justice must be understood, and they cannot be understood unless we are free men in Christ. Legalists are not qualified to be judges. Judges need to understand and love the law. This means that we must be the kind of men who understand that God wants mercy, and not sacrifice. Not one jot or tittle will pass from the law until all is fulfilled, but this does not turn the Lord of mercy into a cross-eyed i-dotter.

The law made allowances within it, as can be seen by the priests who had to work in the Temple on the Sabbath. Ahimelech had to replace the twelve loaves every Sabbath, which meant that every Sabbath he had to bake bread. What Ahimelech could bake, David could eat—because of two principles. The first is the presence of one who is greater than the Temple. Which is greater, the bread of the Presence or the Presence itself? The second is the authority of mercy. Mercy does not negate authority; mercy has authority.

Do not confuse this. Mercy is not what happens when your standards fall apart. Laziness in discipline is not mercy. Mercy is what happens when your standards are outranked. Mercy stands taller than justice.

>Alcohol, Tobacco, and Legalism

>Beware the Spiritual Evils of Prohibition

It is clear that the nanny-staters amongst us are busily involved in a reasonably long term campaign to outlaw tobacco use in New Zealand completely. We expect they will be successful. Then we will go through a couple of decades of the consequences of nannying prohibition, and we will find, much to the disappointment and chagrin of the nannyers, that the law of unintended consequences has not been prorogued and that the social evils that burst forth in the era of Prohibition in the United States will have equally burst forth upon New Zealanders a century later. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Christian folk are likely to get caught up in this sort of thing. Below is timely reminder from Justin Taylor, Don Carson, and John Piper explaining why Christians should have nothing to do with any attempts to prohibit the use of alcohol or tobacco by means of legislative fiat or ecclesiastical edicts. For there is another law which has not been prorogued: a generation that is stricter than the Bible, will be followed by a generation which rejects the authority of the Bible outright.

Alcohol, Liberty, and Legalism

An interesting discussion took place in the comments to yesterday’s post on the Guinness Brewing Company. It seems that some think brewing beer is either an illegitimate vocation, and immoral activity, or unwise as a witness for Christ.

It’s not possible in one post to address all concerns. I’d just say, for my own part, that I do not advocate alcohol consumption and I don’t particularly like the taste of alcohol. Further, I find it slightly annoying when those who enjoy adult beverages talk about it a lot. (Sort of like the younger pastors who tend to work into conversation how much they enjoy a good cigar, or the occasional pipe. Good for you, bro!)

But the fact of the matter is that though alcohol can be abused, and is often abused, it is still part of God’s good creation—and Jesus partook of it enough that some falsely accused him of being a drunkard (Matt. 11:19 and parallels), and in fact he created “good wine” at a wedding celebration (John 2:1-6).

One of the reasons I think it’s worth returning to the issue is not because I care about alcohol per se, but rather because this issue is a good test case for hemeneutics, application, and ethics.

Again, with no attempt to be comprehensive, here are a few things that have been helpful to me throughout the years:

A Latin phrase to keep in mind:

abusus usum non tollit (“Abuse does not take away proper use”)

Ryan Kelly explains why Romans 14 has less application to this issue than most people think. Here’s the conclusion:

What we should conclude from all of this is that it is the abuse of a thing that is sin, not its use. Sin is that which violates God’s biblical commandments, not the additions and inventions we make. No man can bind the conscience of another. As Sola Scriptura Christians, our minds, wills, and hearts are directed by God’s revealed will in the Scriptures alone. On issues not forbidden or condemned by Scripture, we cannot invent a morality, or, worse, impose those inventions on others. We cannot be holier than Jesus, can we?

And this from D.A. Carson:

Paul refuses to circumcise Titus, even when it was demanded by many in the Jerusalem crowd, not because it didn’t matter to them, but because it mattered so much that if he acquiesced, he would have been giving the impression that faith in Jesus is not enough for salvation: one has to become a Jew first, before one can become a Christian. That would jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Jesus.

To create a contemporary analogy: If I’m called to preach the gospel among a lot of people who are cultural teetotallers, I’ll give up alcohol for the sake of the gospel. But if they start saying, “You cannot be a Christian and drink alcohol,” I’ll reply, “Pass the port” or “I’ll think I’ll have a glass of Beaujolais with my meal.” http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=158134922X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrPaul is flexible and therefore prepared to circumcise Timothy when the exclusive sufficiency of Christ is not at stake and when a little cultural accommodation will advance the gospel; he is rigidly inflexible and therefore refuses to circumcise Titus when people are saying that Gentiles must be circumcised and become Jews to accept the Jewish Messiah. The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, p. 145.

And here is John Piper, a teetotaller and an advocate of teetotalling, putting his young pastoral ministry on the line at Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1982 in order to argue against a provision requiring teetotalling for church membership

I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves.

And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism.

If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind, I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement. Satan is so sly. “He disguises himself as an angel of light,” the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 11:14. He keeps his deadliest diseases most sanitary. He clothes his captains in religious garments and houses his weapons in temples. O don’t you want to see his plots uncovered? . . .

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn’t look like one.

Alcoholism makes men fail; legalism helps them succeed in the world.

Alcoholism makes men depend on the bottle; legalism makes them self-sufficient, depending on no one.

Alcoholism destroys moral resolve; legalism gives it strength.

Alcoholics don’t feel welcome in church; legalists love to hear their morality extolled in church.

Therefore, what we need in this church is not front-end regulations to try to keep ourselves pure. We need to preach and pray and believe that “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither teetotalism nor social drinking, neither legalism nor alcoholism is of any avail with God, but only a new creation (a new heart)” (Galatians 6:15; 5:6).

The enemy is sending against us every day the Sherman tank of the flesh with its cannons of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. If we try to defend ourselves or our church with peashooter regulations, we will be defeated, even in our apparent success. The only defense is to “be rooted and built up in Christ and established in faith” (Colossians 2:6); “Strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11); “holding fast to the head from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together, . . . grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19). From God! From God! And not from ourselves.