Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Fools and Blind 

Engaging the Culture - Meaning of Judgment
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 29 December 2012

In the long aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, one of the things that has become apparent in the midst of all the recriminations is we do not know how divine judgment works. We do not yet know how God operates, and we do not see how diseased our culture has actually become. We are not only visited with horrors like the shooting, but also with the horror of officially sanctioned nonsense circling over the first horror like an opportunistic murder of crows.

To the extent that Christians think about cultural judgments at all (which is not as much as it should be), we tend to think that because we have done this bad thing "over here," then that other bad thing might happen "over there." This might be the case early on, when the judgments are still warning shots, like the collapse of the tower at Siloam.

But what we are dealing with is a judicial stupor across the board, and it is the hand of God upon us.
This means the darkness is settling in over everything. God is the one who strikes with blindness (Ex. 4:11), and He knows how to do it. Our prayer must be for a black swan reformation or, failing that, that God will encircle His people with the angel of the Lord (Ps. 34:7), protecting them from the chaos of justice outside (Zeph. 2:3)

"For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: The prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered" (Is. 29:10).

The central judgment upon us is that we do not understand the judgments. Our seers, our poets, our writers, our essayists, our producers and directors, our pundits, and our prophets all spend their time giving one another "blindest of all" awards at the Kennedy Center.

God is not just judging us for abortion; He is judging us with abortion. He is not just judging us for homosexual marriage; He is judging us with homosexual marriage. He is not just judging us for confiscatory taxation; He is judging us with confiscatory taxation.

We need to get this principle down. Adultery is not just a sin for which there will be judgment later on. Adultery is itself a punishment (Prov. 22:14). God does not just strike a man for adultery; He strikes him with adultery. Homosexuality is not just a sin for which there will be judgment; it is the result of the judgment already falling (Rom. 1:24-28). God does not just judge us for gay pride parades -- He is judging us with gay pride parades.

So again, what sense does it make for us to set all our hopes on all the parliaments of the blind voting to bring back blue?

If this the hand of God, then only God can stay His hand. And in order for God to stay His hand, it must be in accordance with the terms of His everlasting gospel -- Christ crucified and risen for all the world. And how will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent?

There will be some who try to slip off the point by pointing out that I was not even-handed in this -- I condemned abortion and homosexual marriage, for example, but not gun ownership. Doesn't all America -- both left and right -- need to repent of her sins? Yes, but gun ownership is not a sin. It is a virtue. Neither is the ownership of 30-round ammo clips a sin. That's a virtue too. Sin is defined by the law of God, and not by the night terrors of the recipients of Kennedy Center awards.

So all America -- left and right -- does need to repent of her sins. Abortion, sodomy, statist thieveries, voting for purblind leaders, secularism, fornication, and child abuse. That'll do to start with.

And Christians, in the meantime, need to learn how to see this unravelling spectacle as a severe instance of what God is doing to America with the left, and not a example of what the left is doing to America in spite of God. As though "in spite of God" were a real category! Fools and blind!