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>> This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into
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it. All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today. His name is Doug
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Wilson. So he is a conservative, reformed evangelical theologian and pastor at Christ
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Church in Moscow, Idaho. He's written a bunch of different books. And so really the, the,
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I guess scaffolding for today's conversation is his latest book called mere Christendom,
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but he's also written future men reforming marriage rules for reformers when the man
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comes around and a bunch more. And future men is actually listed on our 100 books every
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modern Christian man should read list that's on our website. So if you have not gotten
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that list yet, just go to undaunted.life/booklist. But in our conversation today, again, we used
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mere Christendom for our discussion scaffolding for today. I did ask him, you know, how do
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you become a theologian and a pastor? But we talked about what is mere Christianity or
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sorry, not mere Christianity. Here I am going all CS Lewis, mere Christendom. What is that?
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And why name the book that way? Why, why kind of take that on? But really we dig into why
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secularism has not worked in modern society specifically in the United States. And beyond
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that why it's just flat out wicked. What a lot of people have done in the secular world
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is to make you believe that their worldview doesn't have religious assumptions that is
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actually religiously neutral. So we talk about how that's really ridiculous. We also spend
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time talking about what Christian leaders and Christian pastors have done to kind of
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aid in this, especially during the COVID lockdowns and the BLM riots and just some of the things
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that were done, kind of this Ted Turk, you know, Ted Turk, Ted talk churches, these at
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the movies approaches to everything and how basically that doesn't lead to a deep level
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of gospel understanding and deep theology. And then we talked about the difference between
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a theocracy and a theonomy. But one of the big things we talked about today is Christian
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nationalism, because everybody's using Christian nationalism, they're either using it as a
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cudgel by which to, you know, punish patriotic American Christians. And other people are
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using it as a badge of honor, even though they don't exactly know what it means. And
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it turns out to be more nationalist than it does Christian. We talk about civil disobedience
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and how that kind of works in light of Romans 13 and how people were using Romans 13 really
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inappropriately during the COVID lockdowns and things like that, how it is actually a
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good thing to submit to God. And that would allow you to resist tyrants. We talk about
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modern Christian pastors and kind of how they build sermons and how modern worship music
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and kind of that squishy worship music that's not very Psalms like doesn't really lead
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to deep theology doesn't serve people well. But we also get into, you know, how men and
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women are treated differently by pastors and how it really doesn't set men or women up
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very well. And then at the very end, I asked him about all the controversies he's been in
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and he's been in a lot. He stepped in it a lot out of all of those, which was the one
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that was like the funniest to him, the one that he just thought was so hilarious that
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he was in the middle of. So I really liked his answer to that as well. I really enjoyed
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my time overall with Doug Wilson. So without further ado, let's get into it. Doug Wilson,
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welcome to undaunted life, a man's podcast.
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Good, good to be with you. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, I've been wanting to have you
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on for a while now. You've been a very highly requested guest for the show. So we're glad
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we were able to take that out. But for people that are not familiar with you, we're going
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to find the nice soft place to land. You are a theologian and a pastor. So I'm assuming
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when you were four years old, you know, playing out in the woods that that's not what you were
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thinking you would end up being. So what's the short version of the story of becoming
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a pastor at theologian. Yeah, the short version is that I was planning on being in ministry,
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but it would be literature ministry like my father was running Christian bookstores in
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college towns. That's what I thought I was going to do. So after the Navy, I was going
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to go into the University of Idaho. And a small church plant had started up. I would
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I play the guitar. So it was a Jesus people type of thing. And I played the guitar. So
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I was the song leader. And about a year and a half into it, the man who was doing the preaching
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announced everybody that he had gotten a job in another town. And he was going to be gone
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by the next Sunday. And good luck, everybody. And I was upfront with the guitar. So so
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that's so I preach the next Sunday. And it was a fledgling church just less than two years
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old and had about 30 people in it. And so I just began preaching. But I hadn't we labored
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hard to get someone else to come and take the take the pastor, but couldn't find anybody.
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And the church started church started growing. And that's what happened.
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Okay, so that was almost like your your Cincinnati's your George Washington moment. You were the
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reluctant leader of everything that was happening there. So that's very, very interesting. Well,
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I don't want to waste a whole lot of time today because I want to really dig into your
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latest book, which is this book, it's fantastic. It's called mere Christendom. And so it's your
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latest work, you bring up really a bunch of different important and interesting topics,
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which could be an entire interview or an entire other book. But we're going to use this as
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our guide for the interview today. So to the audience, if you hate hearing me read out loud,
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you're going to especially hate this episode because I'm going to read a bunch of your quotes
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back to you to get a little bit more context. And I'll start with this one. But if I want
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deliverance, we must call upon him. That's capital H him. We must name him. Everyone who
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calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The framework for doing this is what I am
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calling mere Christendom and hence this book. So just generically 30,000 foot view, why did
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you write this book? What chord are you trying to strike with it? And then if you could define
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mere Christendom for us. Sure. What I'm trying to communicate to Christians is that the secular
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experiment has failed. The idea that we can govern ourselves without reference to the
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transcendental reality that is God is a pipe dream. So after World War II, when the classical
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liberals, meaning secular liberals said, well, we can have a decent orderly society without
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reference to God. We don't have to name Jesus. We don't we don't have to be explicitly Christian
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to have all the values that we hold dear as Americans. I would say, okay, how's it going?
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Look, look, look around. We're chopping babies up into pieces. We have drag queens twerking
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for little kids. We have same sex, mirage authorized by the highest court in the land.
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So apparently it is not possible for Americans to govern themselves without reference to
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transcendental truth. We're screwing it up. And so what I'm what I want to press upon Christians
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is that we have to return to Christ. The alternative is stark. It's Christ or chaos. Okay. And we're
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currently in the midst of chaos. Now, mere Christendom is sort of a zoom out take on
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Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism, which was addressed by Stephen Wolf's book and
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other other folks, is simply talking about one country. So for example, Zambia is ostensibly a
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Christian nation for it's formerly a Christian nation. Great Britain is a Christian nation is
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church of England. So you can have one church. You can have one nation that is formally Christian.
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But what happens when you zoom out and you have multiple nations that are naming the name of Christ.
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That's Christendom. So that's that's kind of what we're what we're moving towards.
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That's what we that's the goal that I would like to move towards. So think Christian nationalism
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one nation at a time. But let's say in the medieval period, when you had all of Europe was Christian,
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but you had different nations. Those nations collectively were Christendom.
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Individually, those nations are tribes where Christian tribes are Christian nations.
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Okay. So we're we're going to dig way more into Christian nationalism here in a second,
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because that's kind of a buzz buzz term that a lot of people use. And they use it as some people
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use it as a cudgel. Some people use it as a badge of honor. I think they're all using it
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improperly. But I'm going to go back to something that you said, I'm already blowing up on my own
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interview, but you talked about classical liberalism. I feel like a lot of conservatives
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Doug have been almost romanced by this idea of, Oh, this guy's just a classical liberal. And it's
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like, Oh, that's okay. Like, yes, it's not like a blue haired, you know, nose ringed leftist,
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but they're just a classical liberal. And we're thinking of that in terms of being it positive.
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But you have several quotes in your book about the Darwinian society that we live in. We're the
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highest civic, I think the way you said it is the highest civic value has to be survival.
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And you don't just say secularism is bad or unfortunate. You say that it's wicked. So I feel
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like classical liberalism and the wickedness of secularism is all tied in together. No.
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Right. Yes. So I want to make a careful distinction. However, I have no problem at all
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with free markets, let's say, I think, I think free markets are Christian construct. But I believe
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that we have to admit that they're a Christian construct. I don't want an invisible hand.
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Unless it's the hand of the Lord Jesus, I don't want to turn everything over to an invisible hand
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who's going to govern things who knows how or why. I believe that if you have if someone proposes
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a Christian classical liberal order, I'm okay. But if someone wants a secular enlightenment
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classical liberal order, I think there's death in the pot.
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This is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. Okay, fair enough. I appreciate that distinction.
10:53
To take the point even a little bit further, Doug, we'll read this short quote and I think
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this will lead us into a further discussion. But here's the quote. One of the central tactics
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of our regnant secularism is to pretend that their foundational assumptions are religiously neutral
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and that we need not look at them. So something that I feel like has been a bit of a groundswell
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over the last several years is people realizing that leftism, communism, socialism, whatever ism,
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Black Lives Matterism, whatever, these are not religiously neutral. They have their saints,
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they have their sacred texts, they have their catechisms, they have all of those things.
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I guess it's not as ubiquitous as I would like it to be that thought process,
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but it talked to me a little bit more about how we're supposed to pretend that this
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regular old secularism is not religious. Yeah, basically on this over the last few years,
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the liberals have really helped us out by not only they've transformed themselves from
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sort of pretend let's pretend to be neutral and calm and collected and you religious types are
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the crazy ones. When you look at how they deify George Floyd in the Floyd riots,
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well, that's Saint worship. I wouldn't be surprised to see them leaving baskets of fruit and lighted
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candles in front of the portraits of George Floyd. Then the climate change hysteria, it's a cult
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like thing and given how unsupported it is by the science, it's frankly a cargo cult.
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It's just like a religious frenzy and I don't know how to account for the behavior of multiple
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grownups in the COVID panic, COVID lockdown. All of this amounts to a religious hysteria,
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not only religious, but religious hysterics. That has sort of displayed to Christians
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the religious nature of what they've been selling us for the previous decades. The mask came off.
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Yeah, I would certainly say that it's it's funny you even use the term grownups and I had to hold
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back a chuckle because it's like you see these people acting out in the ways that they do.
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Like it's not even just about etiquette because right. Yeah, is it is it showing high etiquette
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to scream at somebody while they're having dinner? No, of course not. But it's childish behavior
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that comes from a worldview that is devoid of any type of judgment and any type of standards.
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But you know, we don't want to get too far off into that. I teeted up just a second and go, but
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let's talk more about Christian nationalism. So sure, because people mis-define it so much,
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I know you've already kind of defined it already. Let's define it again, but talk about how it's
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used. So I talked about how leftists will use Christian nationalism as, okay, if you don't
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support the BLM rises and if you don't write, and if you don't wear a mask, then you're a Christian
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nationalist somehow. Or if you're basically just a proud American that also goes to church,
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you're a Christian nationalist and that's bad. But then on the other side, you have Christians that
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and conservatives that want to wear that badge proudly, but I guess they're going a little bit
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farther overboard to the nationalism side and forgetting the Christian part. But you know,
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it's used as a cudgel against patriotic Americans and it's used as a cudgel against just normal
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people. So let's have a deeper discussion about Christian nationalism.
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Sure. I'm not wanting to try a novel experiment of making America Christian. What I want to do
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is make America Christian again. Okay. Right. So this is not uncharted territory. We've done this
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before. So America was founded by Christians at the Constitutional Convention out of the 55 men
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there, 50 of them were Orthodox Christians at the when the Bill of Rights was ratified out of the
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13 colonies. Nine of the 13 had official relationships with Christian denominations.
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Connecticut, for example, didn't and up up some of them up to an including official establishment
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of a denomination. The congregational church in Connecticut, for example,
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remained tax supported the official church of Connecticut down to the 1930s, excuse me, 1830s.
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And what that means, so what that means is now I want to be careful here because I'm not a fan of
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established denominations at the federal level or the state level. I don't think it's a good idea,
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but it's not an unconstitutional idea. Right. Because because the people who ratified the
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Constitution were doing it right in the, you know, they were, that's what they were pursuing. Up till
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in 1892, there was a court case that went to the Supreme Court, exquisitely named Holy Trinity
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versus the United States. And that was because there was a lawsuit that involved a church named
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Holy Trinity. And the thing that's interesting, there was a skirmish about whether this church
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could call a British minister, a foreign national to be their minister. And there was a court case
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surrounding that. And the Supreme Court handled that in a common sense way. But then while they
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were at it, the Supreme Court said, while we're on the subject, let's remind everybody that the
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United States is a Christian nation. Okay, this is the majority opinion of a Supreme Court decision.
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1892. Now, I was born in 1953. Okay, that that was just a mere 60 plus years before I was born.
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And if you flipped it over, basically, what was us speaking now in 2023, we are farther away,
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you and I are speaking farther away from the day I was born, then that court decision was from the
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day I was born. Okay, it was the point is it wasn't that long ago. Now, what I want to do when I say
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that I want us to affirm Christian nationalism and return to this, the left freaks out and says,
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you want to do a handmaid's tail, you know, you want women wearing scary, scary red dresses and
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being relegated to breeding, breeding only and, you know, you've got that kind of hysterics. And
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no, we weren't living in a in a totalitarian hellhole in 1895, three years after that decision. It was
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just it was an ordinary kind of thing. Now, what I mean by it is I want the government of the United
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States to recognize the truth of the Apostles Creed. That's what we're both down to. I want our
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set I want our government to acknowledge formally publicly that Jesus rose from the dead. And that
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this has ramifications for the foundation of our law. All right, so the American the Anglo-American
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common law tradition is a Christian tradition and has been Christian going back to the time of King
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Alfred. And I think we simply should recognize that and lean into our heritage. That's what I'm
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talking about, leaning into our heritage. I'm not talking I'm not talking as though America
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is a pagan nation that has never seen any Christians and that we we 10 Christians just got off the
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boat. And we're trying to persuade you all to become a Christian nation. We we have Christianity
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embedded in our in our customs, our morays, our history, you know, all I want to do is go back to
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that. The last generation from well from the time of Earl Warren down has been disastrous.
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I think that it's it's hard to argue against that, especially if you look at the founding
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creeds and documents of our great universities and how they are, you know, struck through with
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scripture and their their point was trying to create disciples and everything else from there.
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What what comes from a conversation like the one you and I just had in your answer there is people
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are worried about theocracy, theonomy, even though they don't know what these words mean. But let's
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talk a little bit about that. You know, what is theocracy versus a theonomy? Do you support one
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over the other? Should we be fighting for one over the other? And how does that work within kind
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of the confines of Christian nationalism? Okay, great. One of the first things I want to point
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out in this discussion is that everybody advocates for theocracy. Everybody wants a
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theocracy. The only difference between the different positions is which God they want to be the God
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of the system. Right. So I would say theocracy is an inescapable concept. It's not weather,
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but which it's not whether you're going to have a theocracy. It's which Theo is going to be the
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Theo of your theocracy. In Saudi Arabia, it's Allah. In in contemporary pagan America,
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it's Deimos, the people democracy. But so the the theos, which is simply the Greek word for God,
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the theos of the system is the point past which there is no appeal. When you when you get to Allah
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in Saudi Arabia, there's you can't say, can I talk to anybody else up there? You've you've
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you've come to the end of your line of appeals. When in a in a pagan system, a secular humanistic
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system, when you get to the highest legislature or the highest court that you're at the you've
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exhausted your appeal, the Christian, your line of appeals, the Christian wants to say that a
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Christian with an open Bible can stand before all men on lawless thrones, like Shadrach, Meshach,
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and Abednego did Nebuchadnezzar. And they said, our God can deliver us, but be it known, O King,
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even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow down to your statue. And they were appealing
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past Nebuchadnezzar. And that that is a foundational tenant of Christian political theory is that
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Caesar is not God. A foundational tenant of the Lord's teaching is that we are to render to Caesar
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the things that are Caesar's and to God, the things that are gods. Well, Jesus is holding the coin
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when he says that. And how do you tell what belongs to Caesar? Well, if he manages to get his picture
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on it, it's is it's lawful to give it to him. Well, Jesus also says, render to God, the things that
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are gods. Well, how do I tell what God what's God's? Well, what has his image on it? Well, we do.
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All right. Therefore, Christian Christians are forbidden to render their bodies and souls
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to Caesar. We must render ourselves, our families, our children, to God and to God alone.
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Okay, now what's happening in this secular utopian hellhole is that the secularists are laying claim
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to absolutely everything. We own you. They're saying we we own you. We can tell you to inject
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stuff into your body, whether you want it or not, we can bundle you bundle your head up in a face
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diaper. We can lock you down for a couple years. You are you are so many chess pieces that we can
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move around the board at will. And and the tragedy is a lot Christian pastors went along with that,
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rendering to Caesar, rendering to Caesar that which was God's.
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So I love that that actually leads to a further discussion about civil disobedience because when
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you talk about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that was civil disobedience against, you know,
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the rulers of the time that they were living. And we're in this post COVID world. Now I say post
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COVID there's there's all these things in the headlines about hey, they might bring masks back
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and hospitals and and airplanes and all that and they can kiss my Irish, but if they want to do that,
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I can tell them that much. But during that time, I know 2020 seems like forever go Doug. But during
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that time, Christians who did not want to go along with the mandates didn't want to shut down their
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churches didn't want to demand that their congregants get to get the jab, you know, everybody through
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Romans 13 at them. So Romans 13, you're not doing this or you're not being loving of your neighbor.
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And you know, the new variant is you don't love your neighbor variant and in all those types of
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things. But my favorite quote from your Christendom is this quote here. There is a vast difference
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between the dutiful Christian citizen and the craven Christian who cites passages out of context
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in order to justify a continuation of his cowardice. I absolutely love that. And one of the things
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that you use that quote to set up is an argument about how resistance to tyrants actually is submission
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to God. So let's talk a little bit about civil disobedience, because I know there are a lot of
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Christians that aren't natural fighters, like they don't want to get into arguments. They don't want
24:40
to have debates with people. They they're just like, look, if you want me to put a mask on before I go
24:45
into Target, fine. I need to I need to get eggs and bread for my family. But at some point there's
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got to be a line where every Christian is like, no, we're not passing this. Yes, that's that's
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absolutely correct. And I would if we just go to Romans 13, it says, I think three times in that
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passage, that the civil authorities are God's deacon, God's servant, I think he used the Akanos
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twice, I think, and then another word for servant another time. So the the civil magistrate, it says,
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is God's servant, God's slave. Okay. And that slave that servant is appointed to reward the righteous
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and punish the wrongdoer. Okay. So the the servant of God, which is the civil magistrate, has God's
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marching orders, and God's marching orders to the civil magistrate have been published so that
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everybody can see what they are. Okay, we all we all know what the civil magistrate is supposed
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to be doing. Now we have gotten to this in this clown world of ours, we've gotten to the point
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where the civil magistrate is punishing the righteous and rewarding the wrongdoer. They've in Isaiah
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520, it says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute light for darkness
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and darkness for light, sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet. So what what's happened is they've
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inverted all moral categories. So for example, in California, when the magistrate shut down churches
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as being nonessential services, but kept open pot shops, strip clubs, and abortion clinics,
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I would say to a Christian pastor who dutifully shut down, I would say, can you not see what they're
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doing? Can't can't you see that this servant, that the Lord the master of the house left this
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servant in charge? And can't you see that he's drunk? Can't you see that he's trying to burn the
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house down? Can't you see that he's beating the fellow servants? So when the fact that people just
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refused to see that refused to see that the the magistrate had slipped the chain and was off doing
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crazy things that Paul, the Apostle Paul did not envision. All right. Now some people say that,
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well, Romans was written when Nero was emperor and so he was Nero as a bad dude. Well, the first five
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years of Nero's reign were really decent, comparatively speaking, because Seneca, the Seneca, the stoic
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philosopher, was an advisor, was involved in the government. After Seneca lost his position of
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control and influence, Nero went around the bend. But when Romans was when Romans was written,
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the Roman Empire was still a force for stability, rewarding the righteous, punishing the wrong
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doer. If you if you did bad things, they would deal with you. And Paul is talking in that context.
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So if you here's one other thing that's important to note, when when you want to understand what Peter
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means, when he says we're to sipping to kings and all those in authority, and what Paul means when
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we should recognize that the existing authorities are established by God, let's look at their behavior.
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Okay, the Apostle Paul escaped from King Oritas at Damascus by being lowered,
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lowered from the city wall on a basket. What would we call that? We would call that evading arrest.
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We would call that running a roadblock. So Paul evades arrest when Peter is locked up in jail
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by Herod, and the angel springs him, he walks out into the street, and then he goes to John Mark's
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house, checks in with him, and then disappears into the night. Okay, so the men who wrote the men
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who wrote those words were not hypocrites. They were apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That means that the absolute craven do whatever they say has to be a distortion.
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And I feel like the pastors in this country and in all these western countries, they weren't being
29:28
stalwarts against the tyranny of what the government was trying to do. And I think it was
29:35
go along to get along. It was a lot of pragmatic approach as opposed to a biblical approach.
29:39
There's another quote from your Christian Christian Christian, that says this.
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I think I've said mere Christianity on accident a couple of times and you didn't
29:45
correct me, but it's mere Christian. What are we to say of those Christian leaders who are
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masculine enough to want to be in leadership, but not biblically masculine enough to accept
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the assigned sacrifices that go with it? Now, to be fair, you were talking about something
30:01
something else in terms of how men are set up and called into into the pulpit for different
30:06
reasons. Some people want to be into to look cool and to have power and influence. But I feel like
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that relates to what you were just talking about, Doug, which is you had so many people in the
30:15
congregations that are looking to their pastors. And we'll talk more about certain types of
30:19
churches here in a minute, in a minute. But they were looking to their pastors for some level of
30:24
direction. And the direction wasn't just in the spiritual realm, it was to how to act in a civil
30:29
society. Like, do we need to be pushing back against this? Is it sinful for me to come to church,
30:35
knowing that there are elderly people here that are more susceptible to this particular, you know,
30:40
sickness than I am. And I just felt like there were so many squishy cowards that were found out
30:46
during COVID, because it's like, look, you're not willing to fight the government on something
30:50
like this. And then you start thinking about it's like, yeah, you're not fighting against the
30:54
murder and slaughter of babies either. And so it's like, yeah, it kind of makes sense that you're
30:57
going to be squishing on just about everything. Caesar will tell you whatever he wants to tell you,
31:00
and you'll just bend over and take it. At least that's what it seems like.
31:03
Yeah. And Jesus, Jesus talks about this in the gospel of John, where he distinguishes shepherds
31:09
from hirelings. Okay, he says, when the when the threat arises, the hireling runs, a wolf appears,
31:18
and the hireling disappears into the tall grass, because he doesn't have he doesn't have a life
31:23
investment in the sheep. All right, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,
31:28
the good shepherd sets a model or a pattern for all under shepherds. All under shepherds
31:36
need to be standing in between their people and the threat. Okay, that's that's what has to that's
31:44
what has to happen. So those Canadian pastors who went to jail rather than shut down, that was
31:49
exactly what a pastor ought to do. He needs to be standing out in front. And if you don't if you
31:56
don't want that responsibility, then you shouldn't want the privilege of speaking to the people of
32:02
God upfront. If you want to be upfront of the church, giving your lecture, giving your sermon,
32:09
giving your talk, then you need to be out front when the when the pinch comes, you need to be out front
32:15
when the persecution is arriving. Otherwise, you're not qualified to be a pastor. And you need to
32:20
resign your pastor. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And one thing that I've done on my show
32:25
and I've encouraged people to do is look, if you feel this way about these topics, go set a meeting
32:32
with your pastor, sit down with them and say, look, I know that if you start talking about abortion
32:38
from the pulpit, that you're going to take some slings and arrows. I know if you start talking
32:41
about these, these new lockdowns and all that, that you're going to take a lot of slings and arrows.
32:46
But I will stand in front of those slings and arrows and I will provide you a little bit of cover.
32:50
And then you get 10 more of your buddies that all set meetings and go in there and tell him
32:54
the same thing to steal his nerves and to give him that level of resolve to know that, Hey, I'm
32:59
not just going to be doing something and be out there by myself. But then there was a pastor from
33:03
Canada, Jacob Reum, he was on the show and he talked about, yeah, I see your point, Kyle,
33:10
but he should be doing that for you. Like, that's not your job. Now I was doing it from like a
33:15
rah, rah, we got your back, like I'll stand in the phalanx with you kind of Spartan way. But as a
33:21
pastor, you should be stealing the nerves of the flock. Because guess what? I'm not going to have
33:26
to give an account to God someday for how I followed my pastor. He, however, is going to have to give
33:32
an account to God for how he has shepherded me in the rest of the flock. And so I, it leads to
33:38
another quote here. And then I'll just tee you up to talk more about it. Another quote from the book,
33:42
salvation for nations is religious, and it needs to be religiously thick. We cannot be saved by a
33:49
thin religion. We cannot be saved by a religion, the theological definitions of which will not stand
33:55
up under five minutes of questioning. Iteliolated. Iteliolated. That's a new word for me. Iteliolated.
34:01
You can say it. Iteliolated. There it is. Faithy words have no saving power. Why would they?
34:08
So what this leads me to think is these Ted talk churches, these, these mega churches, and not all
34:14
mega churches are bad. I've talked about several in the show that are enormous, but they're gospel
34:18
driven. They care about discipleship and they care about people and making real converts,
34:22
not just getting people to raise their hands at a rock concert. But there are these churches that
34:26
are a mile wide and an inch deep. Their theology is basically non-existent. They don't even have
34:31
church membership. If you didn't show up after being there every Sunday for 10 years, they wouldn't
34:36
even notice they do these at the movies series and they try to get these people in the door.
34:41
And then it has to be bred in circus for the rest of that person's life as a member of the church,
34:46
because, you know, how you attracted them in the door is how you're going to keep them, right?
34:50
But I feel like that plays into what we're seeing here is you have these pastors that have a lot of
34:54
followers on Instagram and they've sold a lot of books. But at the end of the day, they're not
34:59
doing the pastoral duties. They're doing the influencer duties. They're more of like a business
35:05
guru than they are a pastor. What say you? I'd say that's absolutely correct. I saw a great meme
35:11
that was floating around. It's a pastor standing at a in front of a barista's counter. And he said
35:18
I'd like a light roast, please. And she says your your sermons are basically Ted talks with by
35:25
Ted talks with Bible verses. And so this superficial this superficial Christianity
35:35
mile wide inch deep. Well, let's put it this way. Jesus talks up at the end of the sermon on the
35:41
Mount. He talks about the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. It's
35:47
like a man who builds a house on the foundation of rock. A man who doesn't put them into practice
35:55
is building on sand. He's not building on the rock. Now, those two houses side by side can have the
36:02
same amount of curb appeal, right? And the one that's not built on a foundation can could have
36:10
even greater curb appeal. When you're driving by, it could have more flourishes and the lawns and
36:16
better shape and you know all that sort of thing. But the the difference between the houses is not
36:22
revealed until the storm comes. When the storm comes and and persecution breaks out and your
36:32
homeschool curriculum is now illegal, right? And nobody in your nobody in your house is vaccinated.
36:42
And let's say you're guilty of other bits of wrongthink. Okay. But let's say you managed to do this
36:50
while just being a typical evangelical, not you didn't belong to a die heart thing. And all of a
36:57
sudden the crisis hits and you you say I have to I have to find a church that can equip me
37:06
for this crisis for this hour. Are you going to seek out Joel Osteen's church at that time?
37:13
Are you are you going to are you going to go to a big box church that is closed anyway? Are you
37:20
going to what are you going to do? No, the chant what's happened is the churches like ours and other
37:27
churches around the country that stayed open that that spoke the word of God in a way that was relevant
37:34
to the current crisis. Those churches are exploding. Okay, what do we do with all the people here in
37:41
Moscow? We're at the tail end of a large refugee column. I it's it's hard to explain what's happened
37:50
in our community over the last couple three years. People chased here by their blue state governor,
37:57
people who are you know, it's people who were let down by their pastors and elders, people who,
38:04
you know, it's just a trail of woe. But we've been greatly blessed and it's and I feel like we're
38:12
sort of in the land of Goshen when the plagues are raining down on Egypt, right? Our country's
38:20
falling apart and in many ways we've never had it so good because people want strong leadership.
38:30
These are times of crisis and they want someone who is going to take arrows for them. They want
38:36
someone to tell them that this is what the Bible says you're to do and here here are the passages
38:42
and here's the exegesis. You don't just bluster and and give them a plan of action because you're
38:50
personally dogmatic. What you do is you show them from the word that this is what God wants you to
38:56
do. People need that. And one Doug, I cosign everything that you just said but it it even starts
39:05
before the pastor even goes up onto the pulpit or stage or whatever they called at that particular
39:10
facility. It has a lot to do with the worship set that sets people up to hear the words and you
39:17
talk about modern so-called worship music and still one of the the most listened to and downloaded
39:22
episodes of this podcast is episode where I talk about how contemporary Christian music is for
39:27
women and effeminate men. It's very thin. It's it's very vapid and you have a short quote from
39:33
mere Christiandom that says this, Christians need to stop filling their worship services with
39:38
sentimentalist treacle and to start worshiping biblically in a very dark world. And so in that
39:44
section, you talk about singing the Psalms and kind of, you know, there's the difference between
39:50
the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and that doesn't mean spiritual songs are bad. But if that's
39:55
all you sing, you're getting the repetition, you're getting the the emotional uplifting, right? You
40:01
you're emotionally manipulated by the chord changes and the the chorus for the 17th time and then the
40:05
bridge and then the bridge and then the chorus again. And then the the music and in the the lights
40:10
and the smoke machine. Yeah, it's very emotionally driven. But when you leave the concert, you're left
40:16
with nothing. It's it's what I call spiritual skittles. So you've eaten the skittles. They taste
40:20
amazing. And then you're immediately hungry again. But I feel like how we handle worship dug in
40:26
modernity is leading to pastors that it's kind of hard to go from a Hillsong concert set and then
40:32
go into somebody that is like a fire breathing dragon bringing the word of God. You know what I mean?
40:37
Yeah, absolutely. So the kind of music you're talking about, although I will say there's a decent
40:44
song here and there, but as a class as a class as a genre, we're talking about Jesus is my boyfriend
40:51
music or worse. Jesus is my girlfriend music. So the thing that's characteristic about the Psalms
41:00
and when churches learn to sing the Psalms, when you when you learn to sing the Psalms, one of the
41:05
things that you've run into almost right away is how many of the Psalms are praises to God, prayers
41:15
to God, praising God, but the Psalms contain enemies. Okay, if you if you look, if you look
41:24
through modern worship music, enemies are really hard to find. Right. Okay, if you go if you went
41:33
through a 19th century hymnal, enemies are hard to find. In the Psalms, enemies are everywhere.
41:40
There are enemies in Luther's a mighty fortress, though this world with devils filled and St.
41:47
Patrick's breastplate has enemies in it, but the Psalms is just the Psalms are chock full of enemies.
41:55
Well, our world, the world that we're living in is chock full of enemies also. And when you when
42:02
you start singing the Psalms, it puts iron in your blood. It gives you a vocabulary to know how to
42:09
pray to God about what where you are, because if you're just if you think the Christian life is
42:16
standing in a meadow admiring the sunrise, then you then you're and you sing that way and that
42:23
everything is like that. You're not going to be equipped when the orcs come over the wall.
42:28
I mean, absolutely not. And you're also not equipped to have a healthy fear of the Lord. That's
42:33
that's part of the thing as well. Like God's scary and he and he should be. That doesn't mean that
42:37
he's not accessible. But when we sing about Jesus and think about Jesus as this wispy haired,
42:43
soft feature Danish guy, we lose the fact that he was a Middle Eastern Jew, which scripture tells
42:48
us he was not an attractive person. Right. This was a rough 30 cent year old Jewish construction
42:54
worker. Like he was probably dirty and like in terms of, you know, where they were at the time,
42:59
he was constantly covered in dust and dirt. Like he wasn't this this image that we get from certain
43:04
people. And that kind of infuses our theology a little bit. It makes us think about Jesus in
43:09
this way. And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We think about Jesus is going around and
43:13
like carrying lambs and, you know, kissing people in the tips of their noses. But it's like,
43:17
do y'all know he's coming back with like a sword in his mouth and a tattoo on his leg
43:21
and like a robe dipped in blood. It's like this is this is not that cutesy wootsie little boyfriend.
43:26
And the problem for men, Doug, is we go in there. And that's why I try to appeal to a more masculine
43:32
audience that will walk in their alpha that they're very driven, they're very virile. And they walk
43:38
in and they see this set and they don't have the emotional wherewithal to realize the reason I
43:43
can't get into this is because it's homoerotic is because if we took out the name Jesus and inserted
43:48
the name Jimmy, then it's going to be, you know, like someone singing a dedication song to their
43:54
boyfriend. And so like, what is your, I guess what's your warning to these churches that aren't man
43:59
friendly? Because Doug, I've been asked for years now, how can I make my church's men's ministry
44:04
better and used to I would try to help them around the edges. But now I'm telling them,
44:08
don't even have a men's ministry, make your church man friendly. And then men's ministry will just run
44:14
throughout your entire congregation. The women will be more protected and more uplifted. The
44:20
children will be more discipled and catechized and things will get better as opposed to throwing,
44:25
you know, chili cook off once a year and calling it good. You know what I mean?
44:27
Yeah, absolutely. So the ministry to men and women both should be Sunday morning worship service,
44:36
the preaching of the Word of God. That's the main focus. Now here, there are different ways to
44:41
illustrate this. But I think the evangelical church has got a serious problem with this.
44:48
If you go to an average big box evangelical church on Father's Day, you can expect to see the men
44:58
kicked around the sanctuary. Okay, man, it's time to step up. It's my time for you to man up. I can't
45:05
believe that some of the some of the young ladies in here can't pray the Lord's prayer because
45:10
the words are Father stick on their throat. You know why they can't do that? Because the kind of
45:14
dad they had, you're that kind of dad, you have to stop being that kind of dad. Just try to imagine
45:19
doing that to the women on Mother's Day. Oh, it would be a bloodbath. It would be a total
45:26
bloodbath. The reason men are put off by worship is because we chase them away and we try to chase
45:36
them away with a stick. And if they if they come, if they're docile enough to be willing to come,
45:43
it's because someone got them on their meds or they're they're cowed by their wives and they just
45:50
want to sit in the back row and be left alone. And then they scoot out as they scoot out as soon as they
45:57
have an opportunity. We have we've made church the most male hostile environment and that
46:06
in the contemporary world that's saying something. All right. Sure. But the the church pioneered it
46:13
before corporate America began thinking in terms of toxic masculinity, the church pioneered that,
46:21
the evangelical church pioneered that. So a couple of good books that I could recommend.
46:26
One is written ironically by a feminist named Ann Douglas. And it's called the feminization of
46:32
American feminization of American culture. Yeah. And she she does a marvelous job explaining
46:39
how the the drift away the falling away from the Calvinist ethos of early America set us up for
46:47
this, the feminization of American culture. And then Leon Podelis, P O D L E S wrote a book called
46:54
the church impotent, the church impotent. And he undertakes to explain why it is that church in the
47:02
West, he's speaking of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in the West is so inimical to men.
47:12
Okay. And and why men don't go. And his thesis, which I think is quite quite compelling to to me is
47:26
that the in the West, a form of piety developed where the the church is the bride of Christ. So
47:37
corporately, we are feminine. And the Lord Jesus is the bridegroom. And we are feminine
47:44
corporately. So it's appropriate for the church to sing him that is the church is the bride. But
47:53
what happened was in the in the Middle Ages, in the West, that piety was individualized.
48:04
So you began, you began speaking and praying in your personal devotions, like a bride preparing
48:12
yourself for her husband. Well, the women, the women could do that. But the men sure couldn't.
48:18
Right. And so they said, deal me, they said, deal me out. Or you occasionally ran across a man who
48:26
was good was good at it. And and that was another different kind of problem. And I think what we've
48:35
seen is we've seen such a lack of true, godly, biblically based masculinity from the pulpits.
48:42
And this is something that you talk about in future men, which is not the point of today's
48:45
discussion. But that's another book that you wrote, where you have the two dichotomies,
48:49
you have the incredibly effeminate, and then you have the the counterfeit. So the counterfeit
48:54
masculinity being the, you know, four wheel drive trucks. And you know, I'm gonna run in the mud,
48:58
and I'm gonna chase women and drink whiskey and smoke scars and blah, blah. And as you know,
49:01
I pass her friend, Toby Martin says, it's like, that stuff's make that stuff makes you awesome.
49:05
It doesn't make you a man, though, like, and it's just kind of one of those things like, yeah,
49:08
that's that's exactly how it goes. Now, I wonder, I may be drawing a correlation here that isn't
49:13
super related, but is our discussion, Doug, about how the church has spoken into culture,
49:20
how the church has operated congregationally, or, you know, as as a corporate environment.
49:25
Does that get into a discussion about the dichotomy between what you talk about in terms of a cold
49:30
law and a hot gospel? Because I feel like when you go into a lot of these churches,
49:36
there are some churches that are really hot on the law, and they love pointing out the things
49:39
that are wrong with people. But then there are other churches that don't ever want to point
49:43
out the law because the law is icky and mean and judgmental sounding and not cry like somehow.
49:48
And the gospel message that they give is so just absolutely vapid and like, it's just nothing.
49:54
It's not a real full-throated, robust version of the gospel. Does that work in here cold law and
50:00
hot gospel? Yes, very much so. Basically, there's a difference between telling a man the truth
50:08
straight up the middle in a cold matter of fact way, which men will take. When I'm telling a man
50:16
that he's got to look, man, you've got to stop behaving this way. You're destroying your life,
50:21
you're you're going to ruin your marriage. When I talk to him that way, when I give him a Dutch
50:26
uncle talk, I'm respecting him as a man. Right. Right. I'm treating him as though he has dignity
50:35
and agency and responsibility. And that doesn't mean all you're doing Doug is acknowledging that,
50:41
right? Right. And I'm coming to my brother and I'm saying, man, you have to stand up straight.
50:46
You have to take, you know, but there is even though it's a repute or an admonition,
50:52
I'm respecting him. I'm respecting his dignity. But in the tearing down of men that's happens in
50:59
the evangelical world, it's not that he's sinning that's the problem. It's his masculinity. That's
51:06
the problem. Right. His masculinity is being treated as the thing that we really have to get
51:13
rid of. Your problem is that you sometimes think your wife is wrong. Well, is it possible that she
51:22
might be? Right. I remember hearing one time, a woman who moved to our church, they joined the
51:32
church. And one Sunday, I said, in the pulpit, I said, now here's an area where you wives sin.
51:42
Okay. And it was like, whoa, yeah, it was like she sat up straight and like, I've not heard this
51:49
kind of thing before. Oh, he can see the what has happened in the evangelical world is because
51:56
the pastors have count out to the women. They have left women pastorless. There's no spiritual
52:04
guidance. So the men are fronted and insulted and chased away. And the women are flattered
52:11
and left without guidance. And the end result is everybody is at sea. Everybody's lost.
52:17
The sheep are all over the mountain. And the shepherds are just, you know, they've got an
52:23
Instagram account to the, you know, send me out pictures of the coffee and the Bible study they
52:28
had this morning. And I feel like it does such a disservice to women, obviously, as you pointed
52:34
out, and how they view themselves because they will almost deify themselves. And then the men feel
52:40
like, you know, obviously men get more of the brunt of all the blame and we deserve it because
52:44
we've been given a a important different calling than the women that is somewhat more substantive.
52:50
But at the same time, when you look at your wife as somebody that is infallible, right? And it's
52:56
like, oh, it must be a me problem. That's not just bad for you and your own psyche. That's bad for
53:01
your marriage. It puts way too much pressure on her, especially if she's bought into the lie
53:05
that there's nothing that's wrong with her either. And so yeah, you were, I guess you're a fan of
53:11
stepping in it. You like to step in it and just kind of see what happens. And you know what,
53:15
you've already given us more time than what we had bargained for today. So I'll make this
53:18
the last question of the day. If you Google your name, or if you go to your Wikipedia page or do
53:22
any of those things, you're always stepping in it. You're always hitting the hornets nest. There's
53:26
always some sort of controversy about something that you've said. And you know, whenever you do
53:31
your was it with the stuff you do in November, like no quarter November, like all those types of
53:36
things, like you're you're just getting after it. And I like that because it's like, I don't care
53:41
about people that have opinions, I care about people that have bold opinions, because if you
53:44
have a bold opinion, that typically means that you have some ways to substantiate your position,
53:49
and that you're ready to give an account for that or an apologia as it will. But for you,
53:54
I'm curious, is there a controversy that has befallen you throughout your career that is like, especially
54:01
funny to you? Because I'll do stuff. I'll say stuff on my show and people react negatively to it.
54:05
And I'm like, I'm so amused by people's positions on it. I just find it very, very entertaining.
54:11
Is there one particular that sticks out for you that the that's like, this is so rich, I love it.
54:16
I would say the one the one sticks out, maybe it's because it's the most recent one. But it's
54:22
really a good example of this is I've been teaching these things on on life between the sexes for
54:29
my entire ministry and have written books on and stuff. And routinely, I've been attacked from the
54:35
left on it, where I'm attacked for being a misogynist and being a patriarchalist and all of that.
54:44
But recently, just within the last year, I've been getting attacks from the right also simultaneously
54:51
accusing me of being a feminist. So basically, what I call that when people are attacking me from
55:03
the left for being misogynistic and a patriarchalist, and people are attacking me from sort of the
55:09
manosphere, right, where they are chewing tobacco is sort of the apex of masculinity or something.
55:19
When they when they attack me, I'm being attacked from both directions simultaneously. And what I
55:24
call that is a sweet spot. That is that means that I think that there's some sort of balance
55:33
going on. I believe that men's sin, and I believe that women's sin. And I believe that men's sin
55:39
in distinctively masculine ways and women's sin in distinctively feminine ways. And a pastor,
55:46
a pastor job although pastors are all to be men, they're not to be men because they're they're
55:53
hired attorneys for the men's side. My job as a pastor, my job as a pastor is to speak for Christ,
56:00
not to speak for the men. Okay, I can speak speak up for the men when Christ does,
56:06
I can speak up for the women when Christ does. And how do I know that? Well, it's in the word,
56:12
it's got to be exegetically derived. So that would be the the most ironic, the most ironic
56:21
controversy I've been in. Well, and there is the age old wisdom that if you're not taking
56:27
criticism from different people, you're probably not being bold enough. And that definitely applies
56:30
to your Christian life. If you're not actually feeling some level of persecution, it might be
56:35
because you haven't got a hot enough gospel, but we've gotten everywhere in this conversation. I'm
56:39
very, very happy with how it's gone. But have we had enough fun, Doug, for you to come back on
56:44
at a later date to talk about future men, because there's so much in that book and we couldn't get
56:47
to any of it. Yeah, happy to do it. Okay, well, that's all for me. Is there anything else you
56:52
want to get off your chest? No, that's good. That's good. All right, Doug Wilson, thank you
56:56
for coming on on Don't To the Life of Man's podcast. Thank you.
56:59
There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Doug Wilson. But before we let you go,
57:04
we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Adam Don to life, our mission is equipping men to
57:07
push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
57:12
So the links I've got for you today, I've got a link to Doug's blog and map blog, whatever that
57:16
is. That's his website. You can go check that out in a couple of Amazon links so that you can buy a
57:20
copy of mere Christendom and also future men. Thank you guys for listening to this episode.
57:24
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review.
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If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info
57:32
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allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua,
57:52
which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description.
57:57
I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
58:03
mental and physical resilience, keep seeking the Lion of Judah.