The insufficiency of Sunday-only worship and schooling

In his "State of the Church 2014" sermon, Douglas Wilson said "If you have sermonettes, you will have Christianettes." That is, if all you are getting is a 20 minute sermon a week, 20+ minutes of worship, you aren't really becoming a Christian. You're becoming a "Christianette."

In the same sermon, he praised his church for being people who strive to be bible people -- a congregation that knows their bible. It's pleasing to a pastor when a pastor can dig deeper into the scriptures, Wilson said, rather than going over the elementary parts of the faith all over again.

It's a great point.

Back in 2010, Gary Demar noted something similar. He noted that humanists are happy that many Christians are only spending just a little bit of time in church and more time in secular public schools.

He starts off the article like this:

Many Christians claim a form of factual neutrality where some subjects (e.g., science, medicine, technology, geography, politics, mathematics) can be taught without any regard to religious presuppositions since “facts speak for themselves.” This is most evident in education where a self-conscious sacred-secular divide is maintained and supported by Christians. Ninety percent of Christian parents send their children to government schools. Since these parents believe that math is math and history is history, the religious stuff can be made up at church. But one hour of Sunday school and an hour at Youth Meeting each week and maybe a mission trip in the summer can’t make up for five days a week, six hours each day, 10 months of the year, 12+ years of a government-developed curriculum that is humanistic to the core.

He then quotes a humanist publication from the 1930s to drive home the point. Demar writes:

The humanists understand the importance of education in creating worldview shifts and control, so why don’t Christians? Charles Francis Potter, who founded the First Humanist Society of New York in 1929 and signed the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933, made no secret of the purpose of the American public schools:

Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching.

Read the rest of Demar's article here. 

Douglas Wilson on Shaming children: "I think it's appalling"

"I think it's appalling." Douglas Wilson on comments parents shaming their children on social media and in general. He also says that parents shouldn't rely on the comments of the child's peers to discipline them.

Video: Douglas Wilson on the New Heavens and the new Earth

This is something to think on.

Sermon: Three Chains #4: Deliverance (Romans 8:1-6)

The difference between sinners and educated proud saints is that the former realizes that they have a problem (they are separated from God) and the latter grades on a curve ("Oh, I'm better than most people."

Very insightful sermon.

Video Sermon: Three Chains #2: Guilt (Romans 3:19)

The solution to false guilt is to repent of the false standard that has been set up in the place of the law of God. The solution to false guilt is real guilt and real repentance. ~Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson on Free Markets

"Free markets are the economic expression of the apostolic teaching that we are to serve one another in love." ~Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson: "nobody blasphemes like an evangelical can"

So Douglas Wilson said in a throwback review of William Young's The Shack.

Douglas Wilson invites Stephen Fry to a Debate

Via Blog and MaBlog:

Stephen Fry has posed some questions that I believe have some straight-forward answers. I would like to hereby extend a cordial invitation to meet together with him in order to debate them in greater detail. I believe that we could put together an event that put the spotlight on these questions, along with our respective answers.

Fry recently blasted the God of the Bible in an interview.

Sermon Notes: Functional Atheism -- not atheism proper -- is what Psalm 53 is all about

The sermon's text Psalm 53:1-6 (NRSV).

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
 They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts;
 there is no one who does good.

God looks down from heaven on humankind
 to see if there are any who are wise,
 who seek after God.

They have all fallen away, they are all alike perverse;
 there is no one who does good,
 no, not one.

Have they no knowledge, those evildoers,
 who eat up my people as they eat bread,
 and do not call upon God?

There they shall be in great terror,
 in terror such as has not been.
 For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly; they will be put to shame, for God has rejected them.

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
 When God restores the fortunes of his people,
 Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

• This text is not about atheism proper i.e. what Richard Dawkins spends time thinking about and what Christian apologists think about refuting; rather, it is about functional atheism.
• Functional atheism says "omniscience [God] does not see sin."
• Every sin presupposes a functional atheism.
• Paul quotes Psalm 53 in his indictment of the whole human race. Paul's point was that Jews and Gentiles are estranged from God.
• "Not the village atheist, and not the village priest" does good (Psalm 53:1).
• Functional atheists end up hating the people of God (Psalm 53:4). 
• "Atheists devour ex-atheists," that is, atheists in the functional sense, which would include atheists proper.
• Atheists proper are very tiny in proportion to functional atheists.
• Living in sin is living with functional atheism.
• Sins happens in the presence of God.
• Sin is always personal with God.
• The atheist -- the unrepentant sinner -- would kill God if he could. The incarnation, when God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, made that possible.
• This [our murder of him] revealed our nature, and it revealed God's loving nature.
• "Salvation Grace is shaped like God." 
• Yes, there should be a difference in the lives of believers and non-believers, functional atheists and functional believers, but the difference is in knowing what God is like.
• We should confess our sins because we messed up our relationship God -- not because we messed up our slate of good deeds that we wanted to perfectly present to God on the Day of Judgment.

Douglas Wilson on False Teachers

False teachers do not knock on your door with a brief case full of literature, and say, “Hello, I am here from the devil, and I have come to lead you into eternal torments.” That kind of stuff never makes it into the brochures.

The Mind of A Free Man | Douglas Wilson 

Douglas Wilson on "Apologetics and the Heart"

Good reasons, good defenses come from good hearts. If I am only prepared intellectually, I am not prepared intellectually. ~Douglas Wilson

If a man won't obey God in how he treats his wife, then why would he obey God in how he thinks? Rebellion tolerated anywhere will spread everywhere. ~Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson's essay "Apologetics and the Heart" is the kind of essay that you should already know the conclusion to but you read it anyway for the edification -- and to see how the author reasons (or exegetes) to the conclusion.

Read it here.

Comment if you have problems with the link.

Douglas Wilson on Secularism and the Cult of American Exceptionalism

In "The Machete of Curiousity" the Proprietor metes out his views of Christian Government (Mere Christendom), and eludicates his views of Radical Islam, Secularism, and American Exceptionalism.

The paragraphs on Islam are agreeable, especially when he recognizes that Islam is forceful mainly because it recognizes itself as vehicle for administering and enforcing truth claims, whereas Christians have bought into the myth of religious neutrality. The "Separation of Church and State" crowd will definitely be on defense with this one.

Oh, and the current theo-political pulpit that American exceptionalists preach from are completely recognized as such ("quasi-sacramental" "blasphemous and silly").

My favorite passage from this post is excerpted below:

Secularism refers to the idea, popular for the last few centuries, that it is in fact possible for nations to be religiously neutral. This impressive trick is managed by having everyone pretend that secularism does not bring with it its very own set of ultimate commitments. But it does bring them, and so secularism has presented us with its very own salvation narrative, in which story the Enlightened One arose to deliver us all from that sectarian strife and violence. The horse and rider were thrown into the sea, and this is why you can't put that Christmas tree up in the county courthouse.

American exceptionalism is the idea that America is a more of a creed than a nation. This kind of American exceptionalism makes a certain kind of civic religion possible, a quasi-sacramental approach which all consistent Christians reject as, in equal turns, blasphemous and silly. American exceptionalism in this sense is currently the high church form of secularism.

Looks like Douglas wants nothing less than the fall of the high church of humanism.