By Shafer Parker

This is the second in a series of blogs based on the book Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World by Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and a faculty member at New Saint Andrews College. If you recall, I promised last week that I would only reveal the meaning of Gashmu when Wilson reveals it. And because this is a chapter-by-chapter blog, I can tell you now, it won’t be today. You will simply have to wait another week.

In the meanwhile, having looked at the introduction last week, let’s dive into chapter one today. What we immediately discover is that Wilson, like all good doctors, does a workup on the patient before prescribing a cure. In other words, in chapter one we get an analysis of what’s wrong with today’s church. The difference, however, is that when dealing with the human body, two patients may present the same symptoms, but each may be fighting different diseases. Wilson, on the other hand, demonstrates that while each generational culture has its own set of symptoms, the root disease is always the same.

“The root of every rebellion (in every culture),” Wilson writes, must always be identified as pride, and the lust for autonomy.” Not only is Wilson right, when you think about it, these are elements that lay at the heart of Eve’s decision to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She “saw that the tree was good for food,” and “that it was a delight to the eyes,” and “that the tree was to be desired to make one wise (Gen. 3:6).” Those attributes made Eve desire to eat the fruit, but the part that is often left out is that none of those things are bad. The bad part lay in Eve’s desire to consume the fruit on her own terms, without reference to God’s prohibition. As Wilson states in his analysis of today’s world, Eve’s disobedience sprang from a prideful desire to do things her own way, apart from God.

So, if pride and lust for autonomy are always the disease, what symptoms indicate our modern culture has been overcome by it? Wilson lists six, which he refers to as “ideological tools” for the purpose of dismantling everything good, true, and beautiful about the biblical roots of western culture.

1. “Secularism—the idea that a culture can be religiously neutral.” I suspect that is not the definition you thought of when you first saw the word. You probably thought of something about the separation of church from state, or a refusal to discriminate in the name of religion. But Wilson, I think is right. The problem, he says, is that the very idea is “incoherent.” Why? Because “all cultures serve their gods, and ours is no exception.” The question is, what gods are we asked to serve today?

2. “Darwinism—the idea that we somehow arrived here by ourselves.” Notice again, this is not the standard definition of Darwinism. Instead, it represents Wilson’s considered attempt to get to the heart of its practical effect. Wilson notes that “a century ago, many Christians thought that we could make our peace with Darwinism. But the bills are now coming due.” In my opinion he gets it exactly right. As Douglas Kelly puts it in his book Creation and Change, “It is not always realized how rapidly much of the Christian Church accommodated its teaching on origins to nineteenth-century theories of evolution and the vast ages required for it to take place.” When it comes to origins, only a handful of Christians, and even fewer pastors, approach Genesis with anything other than a fundamentally Darwinian worldview.

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3. “Egalitarianism—the idea that blessings for others are tantamount to oppression for me.” I hope you are starting to see a pattern. Once again, Wilson avoids a standard definition of egalitarianism. But he does so to make the point that from the human perspective we are always faced with limited resources, thus jealousy arises, and sometimes even violence, when it is perceived that someone else has a larger slice of pie. But Christians, he points out, believe in a creator-God who can always make the pie larger. Bill Gates and his billions in no way hinder God from making me as rich as He deems appropriate.

4. “Value/Fact Distinction—the idea that ‘reality’ is divisible, and that science is in charge of the ‘facts,’ while each individual can invent and tailor his own ‘values’ in any way he pleases.” This ideological tool is directly based on the use of Darwinism as mentioned above. Because most Christians have accepted this value/fact distinction, ceding the “facts” of creation to science, when faced with a world that rejects Christian values, “the Bible says,” is no longer persuasive.

5. “Relativism, Subjectivism, the Despotism of Feelings—the idea that the world of facts is not the controlling reality. Reality, in other words, is optional.” I hope you see where Wilson is going. Once you give up the Bible as saying anything factually true about creation, and once the “facts” about values, ethics, and morals are ripped away from us, all that is left is feelings, and Christians are left with nothing to say. Now that science is in the hands of the secularists, it is sold to the public as the magic genie who makes all our dreams come true. No wonder even Christians have lost interest in a God who intends to make His purpose known to us.

6. “Admiration of the Cool Kids—the idea that what really matters is copping a pose.” One would think that churches and pastors would focus their attention on pleasing God, not man, but most of the time one would be wrong. You want proof? Okay, how else do you explain so many pastors leading divine services with their shirt tails hanging out, and why is it that, instead of the church fundamentally influencing popular music (themes and styles), as was the case for a thousand years, for the last two centuries, the church has slavishly followed the world. What’s that about?

Well, keep reading these blogs and you will find out. But I leave you today with this example of Wilson’s Chestertonian reversal of human logic:

Keep in mind that when we answer these challenges in the way we must—in the name of Jesus Christ—we are not supplying Christ as the solution to the problems as posed by these idolatries. He does not give us answers to their questions. He gives us His answers to His questions. Christ is the one who frees us from these idolatries by toppling all six of them, burning them at the Kidron Brook, crushing them to powder, and scattering the dust on the graves of the people (II Kings 23:6-7).

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