Douglas Wilson Quotes

A challenge always is good. Normal design does not come under the constraints of a small budget and time frame. But it has helped me to make quick and knowledgeable decisions.

Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other.
The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists.

In Scripture, doctrine is practical and high doctrine is highly practical. Those who disparage doctrine for the sake of practice are impractical. Those who disparage practice for the sake of doctrine are unskilled in the word of righteousness. We are never to put apart what God has joined together.

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all.

Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly - 'Did God say not to eat from any tree?' In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.

We are like fruitflies, measuring everything in terms of our own lifespan. But since our lifespans are so short, our perspective is entirely wrong.
God, who inhabits eternity, sees things differently. He knows that our lives are just a mist. We should trust Him. It was not that long ago that Jesus came and it will not be that long before He returns.

I enjoy talking to fans.

Without a shared hermeneutic, authority is meaningless.

You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe.

I know people don't think I work.

Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks.

Our good God, our overflowing God, our God of yes and amen, has always been able to promise far more than we are able to believe.

I don't feel safe around anything when Jesus is not the Lord of it. Calvinism without Jesus is deadly; it's fatalism, it's simply Islam. We need Jesus. When the precious doctrines [of Calvinism] are used to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, morbidity, slander, gnat-stringing, and more, the soul is not safe.

Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary.

I'm very flattered, but I don't think I'm the sexiest man on the planet.

Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called "hate crimes" legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed.

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.

We're able to influence younger generations on design and art. They might not have realized they were an artist.

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let's call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers.

Once young girls used to play with baby dolls, seeing themselves in the role of the nurturing mother; now they can be seen playing with Barbie dolls, seeing themselves in the place of the doll. And of course, the doll is both pretty and stacked. The pressure is on and stays on.

In two days, it's hard to to get the quality you would normally want for a design project.

Without the new birth, all the doctrinal and liturgical work in the world is just the reorganization of dead materials, instead of what it is described in the Bible as being, which is the organization and discipleship of living materials.

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

I want to get the point across that you may not have money to give to a charity, whether that is Ronald McDonald House or Broadway Cares or DIFFA, but you can help RAISE money or give your time and talents.

Writing well is more than mechanics, but it is not less.

Organized labor is organized to take control of an asset away from its rightful owners without paying for it. Organized labor is organization of property by those who don't own it. Organized labor, by driving up the costs of production through coercive means, destroys industries. Organized labor is piracy without the boats and eye patches. Why would anybody want to celebrate organized labor?

Leftism is that impulse that wants to establish coercion and call it community. Apply

Fortunately, given the state of criticism these days, lots of people miss - especially the feminists, who usually throw like a girl.

One of the staples of discussion about basic aesthetic principles is that art has to exist for its own self and cannot be prostituted to advance any particular cause or point of view. Perfect nonsense, of course, but that doesn't keep it from being repeated ad nauseam.

Christian equality can be described as equity, or even-handedness. Egalitarianism, in contrast, demands sameness, or equality of outcome. These two visions of equality are about as comparable as dry and wet. Think of it in terms of ten teenage boys trying to dunk a basketball: equity means that they all face the same ten-foot standard, and only two them them can do it - equity thus usually means differences in outcome. Egalitarianism wants equality of outcome, and there is only one way to get that - lower the net. Sameness of outcome requires differences in the standards.

People who insist upon dressing casually also want to think casually. And in a fallen world, thinking casually means being wrong more often than not.

In a world of spiritual eunuchs, it is good to find a man who is more than simply male.

Use plants to bring life.

If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else

But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink.

One of the glories of education is the opportunity to hear the truth come out of a human being with blood in the veins and air in the lungs, and not just off a printed page.

I'm having the time of my life and I'm glad people are enjoy it.

The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing?

Immodest and attractive is easy. Modest and repulsive is easy too. But modest and attractive is an art form.

It's a character I've created. Actually, that's pretty much the opposite of me, off a farm in the Midwest.

Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.

Criticism should be received as a kindness (Ps. 141:5).

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

We need to make sure we are doing what Jesus said and not what we thought Jesus must have said. The textbook case against Christian activism can be made in one word - Prohibition - the word that would have made the Lord Jesus at Cana into a moonshiner felon. We did a great job there of setting aside the Word of God for the sake of our tradition

We confess that Jesus is Lord. He is not simply Lord of a spiritual zone somewhere, but He is Lord of the nations.

His pastoral antennae were buzzing and sparking, and it seemed to him that he was inevitably going to be dragged into this swamp of charges and countercharges. And if so, he preferred going in headfirst and not grabbed at the heels by the swamp monster of circumstances in order to be dragged helplessly into these stagnant ponds of punk water. He was just doing his duty, but his duty seemed a lot bigger than normal.

Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.

Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen of them, to give him an 87 percent. But we go far beyond this. A student writes an essay on a sunset, let us say, and the teacher writes 87 percent at the top of that paper. What he is saying, in effect, is that there is a mathematical metaphor operative here. The figure of 87 is to 100 what this submitted essay is ... to what? What on earth is this supposed to mean?

Collect and read dictionaries. Take a couple of minutes every day to read a page. Highlight fun words you didn't know before and write them down somewhere else.

Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace - that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth - every manifestation of it - and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The

There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013.

It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people.

And so it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a teenager to enter the kingdom of heaven listening to the Dave Matthews Band.

I've had rooms that didn't come out to my liking.

You have to put your own personality into your home. Do what you feel is you!

Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person.

One of the most pernicious errors that has gotten abroad in the Christian community is the error of sentimentalism - the view that evil is to be evaded, rather than the more robust Christian view that it is to be conquered. The Christian believes that evil is there to be fought, the dragon is there to be slain. The sentimentalist believes that evil is to be resented.

Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself.

If there are weeds in my garden, I have a problem. But it does not lead me to question the existence of lettuce.

We must also consider the nature of prayer. It is curious that Christians are pushing so strenuously for prayer which they don't believe to he prayer. Christians pray to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ-not to Allah, Krishna, or God-as-you-conceive-him/her-tobe. If we were successful in establishing Christian prayer in the
schools, we would be violating the religious liberties of those who are not Christians. If we establish prayer that is not Christian, what have we gained? Why fight to get prayer in the schools when you believe the prayers, once instituted, won't get past the ceiling? Do we really want our children led in a daily vain repetition?

The church has ministers - which was a gift of Jesus Christ Himself from Heaven - and the church also has a professional class, which may or may not be a gift from Heaven.

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of
Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions.

If God doesn't want us to do it, He doesn't want us to get pleasure from thinking about doing it

The reign of Christ has been established. The nations who object to this settlement trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon.

One of our great problems today is that we have gotten caught up in our culture-wide quest for authenticity. We want our jeans authentic (pre-ripped at the factory), we want our apples authentic (grown locally instead of somewhere else), we want our music authentic (underground bands nobody ever heard of), we want our lettuce authentic (organically manured), we want our literature authentic (full of angst), we want our movies authentic (subtitles), and we want our coffee tables authentic (purchased from a genuine peasant while we were on some eco-tour). In short, we are a bunch of phonies. We are superficial all the way down.

Sensory experience should not be draped on top of the story as sort of a last-minute decoration. Done right, it is woven into the fabric of the story, and as this happens, the reader is woven in, right alongside the description. In giving advice to writers, E. L. Doctorow once said that good writing should communicate more than the mere fact that it is raining. The reader should feel rained on. A

If John had been paying close attention to Lester's face, he would have seen him go white, the way men do when they see a trap swinging shut on them.

Ripping up carpet is easy, tiling is the issue.

The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know.

Violent overthrow of the revolution is revolutionary, and compromise with the revolution is revolutionary.

And the heart of it is this. Real conversions are marked by the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit. Regeneration has a tell, and that tell is love. As John Owen noted, the gifts of the Spirit are not the saving grace of the Spirit.11 And the love we are talking about is not a momentary thing. Love is not a walk around the block, but rather a long-haul trucking trip.

The apostle James tells us that a man who can control his tongue can control the rest of his body as well. This goes double for the man who is putting what the tongue does into a more permanent setting.

God could have made every creature just exactly the same, all of us round and shiny like little ball bearings one centimeter across, with all the invisible serial numbers distinguishing us one from another hidden away in the decrees and secret counsels of God. And there we would all be, pretty much all of us really bored. But what He actually did was make the gaudiest show ever, which started at the beginning of our story when Adam looked at Eve for the first time and, as already noted, started speaking poetry.

Christian men ought not refrain from the sexual pollutions that surround us because they object to lovemaking; they refrain because they object to the wanton vandalism of it. Our culture is doing to sex what people who chew with their mouths open do to food.

Propaganda (things to be propagated) is inescapable. It is not *whether* certain values will be propagated, but rather, *which* values will be propagated.

I gave the couple a hint of a design that would work great with the bones of their home. They weren't ready for it, and they embarrassed themselves and that's too bad.

Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.

What people respond to in my room makeovers is the daring design - fearless colors, bold fabrics and occasionally outlandish decor.

Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This is why individual heart transformation, not legislation, is fundamental to national reformation. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.

They want to keep the government 'out of our bedrooms.' What are they talking about? I have to live in their society, remember. And I built my house, which means I built my own bedroom. The government told me how far apart the studs had to be in my bedroom wall, they dictated how thick the sheetrock had to be, they mandated how far apart the sheetrock screws had to be, they had policies on the configuration of those sheetrock screws, they have laws on the size of the windows and what kind of glass I can have in them, and there are stern legal warnings on the mattress tags. What do you mean, you want to keep the government out of our bedrooms? The president is probably contemplating, right this minute, the establishment of a bedroom czar.

I was supposed to be the antithesis of Frank.

God is an ironist. He folds the story up in unexpected ways, tying things together that we could never have imagined. He is the ironist of time, of history, of story. He, in possession of ultimate right-handed power, determined to set it all aside, and overcame evil by taking on an invincible vulnerability, inviting us to learn how to do the same. He is not just strong, but also wise in the authority of humility. And He is love, which means He overflows in sacrificial ways. But His sacrifices are not throwaways, but always come back to Him thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Love is fruitful, and in imitation of Him we begin to learn that the more we give, the more we have.

There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

The trick is to state what we know in a recognizable fashion but in a way that is slightly off, in a way that arrests us.

For some reason foreign to our modern ears, God tells us that celebration is central to pleasing Him; it is central to leading a good life. Modern American life has no time for serious celebrations as did life in centuries past. We've got work to do; projects and deadlines press us. And yet for all our industrial-strength pragmatism, few if any truly important things get accomplished. We have forgotten that celebration isn't just an option; it's a call to full Christian living.
Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating-whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking-are all part of obeying God's command to "love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength" (Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30). We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips.

Being in the design industry, I've tended to meet more people who are affected by HIV and AIDS.

You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate.

The State is not the hope of the world; it is an institution grounded in the threat of violence, whether via capital punishments or petty bureaucratic intrusions.

When the wrath of God is revealed in the world, it is revealed as God "lets go" of a culture,

That's why moderns have to have hobbies. They can't find satisfaction in their money-earning work, so many seek creative satisfaction in model planes and trains.

Offensive Takeaway Point: We should look for a way to stop responding to initiatives of the adversary and start behaving in such a way that they have to figure out how to respond to us. Take the initiative.

If you keep the law of God, you are not described in Scripture as a pinched legalist, but rather as happy (Prov. 29:18).

I've made an incredible amount of money stealing fans from homeowners.

Allusion is lovely, and experience with other forms of writing brings the ability to use that device pervasively. This in turn sets high expectations for the reader- in that you are expecting him to pick up on it- and this is a way of respecting your readers. And when you respect your readers, they will come to respect you.

The point is not to read widely so that your voice will be sort of a mutt descended from them all. The point is to read widely enough to know what delights you, what you would like to imitate, and what you want to stay away from.

If it does not come at the last to gladness, then to hell with it.

This is why stories like this, with great evils in them, are necessary for children to read. Kids just got here - they are still figuring things out, and stories are one of the central realities that can help them. Chesterton says somewhere that stories about dragons and knights do not teach children to fear dragons. They had dragons under the bed already. They had the fear already. The stories actually teach children that dragons can be killed. And

Pain concentrates the mind. Pain tethers you to this world, and the rope is a stout one. But at the same time, the grace of God enables you to look along the pain, to look down the entire length of the trial, and to see the purpose and point of it all.

You don't have the right to be left alone with that abortion decision. The child is present ... you are not alone.

Such laws, such foolish resistance, can cause short-term grief. Think again of Herod and the little boys he slaughtered. But think also about how ineffectual it was. Did he stop the morning star from rising? Did he stop the day from coming? In the same way, we must know that the message of Christmas is not that we have to persuade anybody of anything. The message is far more good news declaration than it is argumentation.