Doublethinking Doug Wilson

Psalm 15 and the Moral Requirements for Dwelling on God’s Holy Hill

So, I wanted to just start today's video with a reading from the Psalms. This is Psalm 15, a Psalm of David. These are the words of God. O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent, who shall dwell in your holy hill?

He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up reproach against his friend, in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt and does not change, who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent, he who does these things shall never be moved.

These are the words of God. I love that Psalm. It's a really good Psalm. It talks about the moral requirements of someone who's going to dwell in God's kingdom, is going to dwell on his holy hill. We ultimately know that our own righteousness can't take us there.

That's why this Psalm is primarily, first and foremost, about Christ, but it's not only about Christ. We have to also recognize that there's a way that this Psalm applies to our lives as well. These are the things that we ought to be doing.

We should do what's right. We should speak the truth in our heart. We shouldn't do wrong against our neighbor, but there's one here that doesn't fit. There's one here that makes it a little bit weird.

One of the requirements, there's 10 listed here, to dwell in God's tent and on his holy hill is those in whose eyes a vile person is despised. Despising vile people, that's one of the requirements for being on God's holy hill.

That doesn't seem to fit a lot of what we think we know about the scripture. Despising vile people, that's a weird one. What I want to talk about today is a continuation from yesterday's video on Doug Wilson.

Doublethink, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Doug Wilson Controversy

I go back and forth often about whether to do a serious video or to do another mocking, satirical video like yesterday and all of that kind of stuff. I decided, I talked to my brother this morning and it was a serious conversation, and I decided to do a serious video.

I hope this doesn't disappoint you, but I hope it's helpful for you. Because the reality is, the Doug Wilson controversy yesterday, it had this really weird sort of aspect to it. Honestly, some people call this inconsistency, some people call this double think, some people call this cognitive dissonance, but there's a dissonance in the arguments that we're being expected to believe about Doug Wilson.

And it's really bizarre when you think about it, because on the one hand, Doug Wilson is like presented as this brash, sort of not bashful, just sort of loud mouth, sort of in your face jerk that doesn't mind offending you, in fact, does it intentionally.

I saw a lot of people saying that yesterday, and the big evidence yesterday that I kept getting presented was that he used the word cunt. That was the big sin. He used the word cunt to describe two people.

That's what people kept saying. And now the funny part about this is that the word cunt, I know a lot of you, I'm saying it here, and you're like, oh my goodness, how can a Christian utter this word? It's almost like a sacred word that you can't say.

It's a sacred word that we have to actually replace with something else, like the C word. That's actually a better way for me to say it, the C word. And so the idea here is that you say the C word, this magical word, and that disqualifies you from being a pastor, or it's somehow a sin, regardless of the context.

So I'm saying it in a certain context here, the word cunt. And for a lot of you, that's corrupting talk. That's actually defiling me, to say this word in this particular context. I don't believe that, not for a second.

And so the reality is that what we have here is a situation where Doug Wilson is being presented as this guy who's intentionally offensive, and he'll just own it, and he defended it. People were pointing to the fact that not only did he say the word cunt, but then he defended using the word cunt later.

And that's just doubling down on his sin. He's this guy who doesn't care what you think, doesn't care if you think he's a jerk, doesn't care if you think that he's unqualified for being a pastor because he used the word cunt.

Simultaneously to that, though, is this other weird idea. And this is where I think the doublethinker comes in, the cognitive dissonance comes in. Because in the same threads, often, that we got this whole idea of him being unqualified and not ashamed of being unqualified from using the word cunt, I'm also supposed to believe that he's so bashful and so sneaky and so wants you to like him and wants to be approved by you that he won't own his federal vision theology, that he still holds even though he says he doesn't.

And so he's still federal vision, but doesn't want to own the title. And I find that to be so bizarre. So on the one hand, he's so brash and brazen that he will use a word that everyone agrees is an icky word.

Even I agree. I think it's an icky word. No question about it. It grates on me when I hear that word. So everyone agrees that that's a word that shouldn't be used. And he's so brazen that he'll use it.

But he won't own a title of a theology that he does hold that hardly anybody understands. So these are contradictory ideas. On the one hand, he's so sneaky and bashful. He doesn't want to own his theology that barely esoteric, complicated, nuanced theology that nobody really understands.

I can't tell you how many times I've talked about Doug Wilson and federal vision. And people go, what the heck is federal vision? You know, I mean, most people don't understand this, but he's too bashful to own that.

But even though he has owned it in the past, you see what I'm saying? This is the other thing. He's called himself federal vision in the past. So even though he has done that in the past, hardly anybody understands it.

He wants you to like him so much that he won't, he's too bashful to own that. But he will say the C word and defend it. Not only that, but he's written articles drawing attention to the fact that he's no longer going to call himself federal vision.

He doesn't think his theology has changed, but he understands that there is some confusion because federal vision, people that call themselves federal vision, believe a variety of different things that he does not believe.

And so he's written an article about this. It's not like he just secretly stopped calling himself that. Like in the, like in the last Jedi, if you noticed halfway through the movie, they stopped calling the resistance, the resistance and started calling them rebels.

And nobody identifies why it's just, if they just made the change, the, the, the, the first order starts calling them rebels, the resistance starts calling themselves rebels. And nobody, no one's, no one's acknowledging the fact that we've made a shift here.

We just, they just made the shift. Doug Wilson has drawn attention to it and here is why I'm making this shift. It's confusing people. I don't believe what so-and-so over here believes anymore or not anymore.

I don't believe it. I never have. And so I think it's confusing for us both to call each other federal vision. I agree. Now here's some red meat for you. If you, if you need another reason to not like me, I attended a federal vision church for about six months, six to 12 months, something like that.

There was a period where I had decided to leave my church because I was, I was worried that they were getting too charismatic, too Bethel churchy. And so I left them. But I was already intending on moving to Vermont at this time.

So I had a short period where I needed to find another church to go to. And I found a CREC church in Brooklyn. The pastor was fantastic. And not only was it a CREC church, but it was one of the more extreme varieties.

Like this, the pastor had more extreme beliefs, not, it didn't really carry over into the worship service. But he was one of the more extreme versions of federal vision. He was a great guy. I learned a lot about how to preach from him.

I learned a lot about, um, you know, how to be a man from him, that kind of thing. And he was a great guy. And he wasn't like this evil guy that was trying to get one over on you and believe something like work salvation without telling you about it.

He sneakily wanted you to believe work salvation so that you could become a secret sneaky heretic. It wasn't like that. He's just a regular guy. He's a pastor trying to be faithful, uh, being faithful to his family, his wife, his children, his, his, uh, his, his church and all of these things, trying to do church discipline, trying to, you know, baptize believers, teaching them to obey everything Christ commands.

That's what he was trying to do. And he had some beliefs that I did not agree with. And you know what? That was okay by me. He had some beliefs that I don't agree with, but I didn't have to assume he was like this secret heretic.

I don't, I don't understand what this obsession is of people trying to find cause cause cause cause heretics. Here's the thing about heretics. Like, yes, they sneak in unnoticed, but then they teach objective heresy.

They're not going to tell you that, you know, listen, I believe in salvation by faith, but really they believe in salvation by works. That's not how heretics work. They want you to believe their heresy directly.

It's not, you can't trick someone into heresy. It just, it's very weird. It's very weird position, I think, but, but, but here's the thing, guys, here's the thing. Isn't it, isn't it possible that when, when, what am I trying to say here?

Because there's, there's two, there's two schools of thought. There's two, there's two schools of thought here, and I think that they're related. I said this in my video about Doug Wilson before, like, I think a lot of the aggression when it comes to the pushback on Doug Wilson, it has very little to do with the theology because there's a lot of people whose theology I don't agree with that I think is ultimately kind of dangerous that, and, and, and a lot of people out there that the theologies that they think are, they don't get the vitriol that Doug Wilson gets.

I think what happens here is that he's just not ashamed of it. He's not going to nuance things to death, right? He doesn't want to, he doesn't, he just wants to be able to say what he believes and, and, and what he believes is, is what he thinks the Bible teaches, and he just wants to say it, right?

He just wants to say it. Peter says baptism now saves you. Doug Wilson wants to be able to say baptism now saves you without qualifying it to death, without qualifying it to death. And so, and so the reality is here, I think that there's a, there's a real problem with people seeing how unashamed of the Bible he is, unashamed of despising vile people, like the Bible says we should.

That's one of the qualifications in Psalm 15, unashamed of doing that. And they feel, they feel ashamed because they know that they're not that kind of person. They know that often they try to make excuses for what the Bible says directly.

They try to allow room for some, you know, some nuance. They say words like human flourishing when they, when, when, when in inappropriate ways where it applies, it doesn't apply. It's not that the Bible doesn't talk about human flourishing in that way.

Affirming someone in their, in their sexual perversion in any way, allowing room for their perversion in any way damages them. Doug Wilson knows it because the Bible says it. He'll just say it. He'll just say it damages you.

And if you promote it, that's disgusting. You're hurting people. And a lot of you out there that make room for it and don't really confront it directly. Don't know what it means when Psalm 15 says that one of the qualifications for dwelling on his holy hill is to despise vile people.

Here's what it says. Let me read it again. Who sojourns on your holy hill, who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly. He who speaks truth. He who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor nor takes up reproach against his friend in whose eyes a vile person is despised.

Covenant Objectivity, Church Membership, and Charity Toward Disagreement

You see, one of the attractions of federal vision, I think, and one of the reasons why one of the, one of the ways it's influenced me in a good way is doesn't, I don't have to have complete, how do I put this?

You don't have to subscribe to every doctrinal distinctive that I have in order for me to look at you as a brother. I think this objectivity of the covenant thing is a very good impulse. You know, like, like I'll give you a perfect example.

Justin Peters, you know, got into a little hot water for saying some things about Kanye West. And I thought what he said about Kanye West was stupid, right? But I don't have to hate Justin Peters. I don't have to call him a heretic.

I don't have to say Justin Peters has a false gospel in order to, in order to say that what he said, I think was stupid. It's okay for me to say that what he said was dangerous and stupid and not disqualify him.

Oh, he really believes in salvation by works or salvation by doctrine. That's what he really believes. Even though he says he believes in justification by faith, what he's actually believing on the down low is a secret heretic is that he has to show all this fruit before we can even say anything about his salvation.

No, that's not how it works. I don't have to say that about Justin Peters. That's, this is one of the attractions about the objectivity of the covenant stuff. You a baptized believer? You have a credible profession of faith?

Are you under church discipline? I mean, these are the questions that, so, okay, I'll treat you like a believer and you might be a young believer that says some wrong things. You might be a mature believer that just says some things that I don't agree with and that I think are very serious, but we can still have fellowship, right?

I mean, I always talk about baptism and you know, like if you believe differently than me on baptism, I think it's a very dangerous thing that you're teaching your kids. I think it's a very dangerous kind of damaging thing to not be a Presbyterian when it comes to baptism.

That's what I believe, but we can, we can work together. You know what I mean? Like we can, we can love each other. We can, we can acknowledge that the other person is trying to be faithful to God, even as they articulate something differently than I do.

And, and, and look, there are some, there are some non-negotiables, right? But these are the things, man, this is what bothers me is that, is that a lot of these non-negotiables, like people will say, well, Doug Wilson is federal vision, even though he's not a federal vision, they'll insist on calling him federal vision.

That's fine. Doug Wilson's federal vision denies justification by faith alone. And then Doug Wilson would be like, I don't deny justification by faith alone. I believe in justification by grace through faith and all that kind of stuff.

But he really teaches that you have to obey. I teach that too. You do have to obey, but not to be justified before God, because we make a distinction. You know, we make a distinction. We might articulate it slightly differently.

We might do that kind of stuff. But, but, but you see like, like, you know, who doesn't dwell on his holy hill? People who slander others. And so for you to say that, you know, I don't believe in justification by faith and all that kind of stuff when I do, and I teach it and I completely teach it, it's anyway.

But, but yeah, this is, this is the weird thing about it is, is, is a weird, it's very weird. I find that, that, you know, Doug Wilson is simultaneously like this brash guy who doesn't care what you think when it comes to something very obvious that everyone disagrees with.

But on the same time, he's, he cares very much what you think when it comes to this esoteric thing that very few people fully understand, including myself. I don't necessarily think I understand it completely either.

But anyway, I, I hope this is helpful. I hope you're not disappointed that it wasn't a funny video. I was intending on doing something different with this video, but, but that's okay. So anyway, I hope this is helpful.

God bless.