Quotes from Douglas Wilson

Love dictates that you refrain from waving something obnoxious under the nose of a brother with scruples about it. Christ died for him, so you may not do that (Rom. 14:15). At the same time, we need to reject, and reject with godly vehemence, every attempt to bind the consciences of the saints with regard to what they may eat (Col. 2:20–23). We defer to the weaker brothers at lunch, which is not the same thing as letting them teach on this.

And what sound does ough make? As somone once noted, "A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." This should be read by the learned as "A ruff, doe-faced, thawtful plowman strode throo the streets of Scarboruh; after falling into a sloo, he coffed and hiccupped." Quite a language we have here.

Education is one of the central instruments given to us by God for the establishment and perpetuation of a culture. And if we want the culture to be believing, then the education that feeds into it must be believing.

On the sabbath rest that remains for the people of God (4:9), which is to say, on the Lord's Day. God created the heavens and earth in six days, and he hallowed the seventh day as one of holy rest. No sufficient reason for changing the day can be found—short of a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. We have a new sabbath because we have a new creation; the old has passed away.

But He is the Lord, and He might tell us of some other remarkable things he has done. He might tell us about the time He sent one of His celestial glories down into our sky over Bethlehem. And He did this to especially mark the most remarkable thing that He ever did—His eternal Word took the form of a baby boy. And the miracle in the sky above was nothing in comparison to the miracle in Mary's arms in the house below.

So my responsibility is, so to speak, whatever is in front of me, there on my workbench or desk or counter. I should do a first-rate job with that, and other things will fall into place. And as they fall into place, it will not be the impersonal doing of Adam Smith's invisible hand. Every blessing a Christian ever receives is from a pierced hand.

We are badly diseased with regard to vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, and what we desperately need is for someone to write an elegant little volume of sane English usage that will make us all whole again.

Right next door to the question of secession—a right that the Founders should have made more explicit than they did—is the equally challenging matter of expulsion. There needs to be a mechanism for frog-marching somebody to the curb. But enough about California.

So here is the foundational principle: Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. Everything else in all political economy is a footnote to that profound and glorious reality. And we don't need to pray in order to make that true. It was true before any of us were born. But we should pray that God gives us the vision to see and believe that. Why should we believe that? Well, we are called believers, after all.

Were the wise men placing Jesus and Mary in their debt with these very expensive gifts? Or were they showing their indebtedness? When our federal government today cuts a check, are they exercising authority or showing submission? This is not a hard question.

Never forget that God loves you. But more than this, never forget how long God has loved you.

husband must teach the Word of God to his family, especially his wife, to cleanse her with its application, encourage her when she is faint-hearted, and oversee the help she is to him.

Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, and our political sins are not exempt from this salvation. Why would our political sins (which frequently have been among our foulest sins) be excluded? Jesus

If all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time.

Confronted with the gross and unbelieving history of the Jews, the baptist must say the Old Testament record of the disobedience of the Jews does not apply to our situation, and that to compare them is to compare apples and oranges. But this means he must therefore explain why the New Testament draws parallels where the baptist draws contrasts.

By playing these games about "arbitrary" gender roles, we have not succeeded in outlawing masculinity, but we have robbed it of much of its vocabulary. There are not very many acceptable ways to speak "masculine" anymore. We are all in denial, and the results are not pretty.

I have wanted to "make books" since around the sixth grade, and I published my first book when I was in my late thirties. My point is that the time in between was not wasted—submarine service, marriage, college, bringing up three kids, starting a school for them, and so forth. This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say.

They always wanted to do it for the children. But they never do, turns out, and the children go home crying, not having received the candy they were promised.

A husband must be hard in order to take on masculine responsibility. A husband must be soft in order to avoid crushing those for whom he is responsible. Maintaining these twin imperatives in balance requires great wisdom, far more than men may have apart from the grace of God.

If someone takes human choices in the marketplace as his absolute, the end result will be a market in which the fundamental commodity will be the souls of men. But if someone takes the law of God as his direction, the end result will be a market in which a man can buy and sell his cabbages or cabinets or cars without getting permission from some functionary at the Department of Hubris.

Held the right way, narrow truths create the broadest of hearts

In our world,' said Eustace, 'a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.' 'Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what a star is made of.'"1 Think for a moment about what a bizarre place the universe actually is, and how we moderns have tried to use our powers of imagination to tame it, instead of using our imaginations for the purpose that God gave them to us—to enable us to see it.

They had money - quite a bit of it, actually - but for them, money was just bullets.

as I have been thinking about this, I decided it might be better to be a broken man than a man who never risked breaking anything.