Showing results by author "Douglas Wilson" in All Categories

In John Knox: Stalwart Courage, Douglas Wilson staunchly defends this staunch reformer, not only lauding his stalwart courage, but also upholding his much-neglected gentler virtues - love, mercy, tenderness, and humility. At Knox’s funeral, one of his friends said, “Here lies one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.” John Knox sought the approval of neither commoner nor queen, but only his God. John Knox was a reformer of church and culture worthy of honor and emulation, and his story should be one we know well.

Fatherlessness is a “rot that is eating away at the modern soul,” writes Douglas Wilson, and the problem goes far beyond physical absence. “Most of our families are starving for fathers, even if Dad is around, and there’s a huge cost to our children and our society because of it.” Father Hunger takes a thoughtful, timely, richly engaging excursion into our cultural chasm of absentee fatherhood.

Douglas Wilson writes to a young man on how he should pursue a woman. Feminism has catechized us in many lies about what makes the sexes attracted to each other, and evangelical pastors have often only reinforced those lies with platitudes about servant-leadership. When they find out that being a doormat doesn’t attract anyone, young men often rebound to the secular manosphere. Douglas Wilson offers his own commonsense advice, sharp-edged and thoroughly biblical, not just on how to be the kind of man who attracts the right woman, but how to be the kind of man that keeps her.

God has designed each family to be a culture. It is the duty of the father to ensure that the shaping takes place according to biblical wisdom. Through the Messiah, God promised blessings to his people, "their children, and their children's children forever". The norm for faithful members of the covenant is that their children will follow them in their faithfulness. The oddity should be children who fall away. Unless we reestablish faithful Christian culture in countless homes, we will never reestablish it anywhere else.

Christians believe that the Bible is the "word of God." But to what text does this refer? Is it the Bible translation I hold in my hands? Is it a textual family behind the King James Version? Is it a modern critical text, with its attempt to recover a single "original"? Or is it something else? In this lively debate about the world's most influential book, two Christian intellectuals confront this subject head-on. Both participants come from a conservative evangelical tradition, and yet passionately disagree about what version of the New Testament is truly God-breathed.

Published almost 20 years ago, Douglas Wilson’s Case for Classical Christian Education is a call for parents and educators to do more than just teach kids how to read or to do math and science. Instead, parents and teachers need to educate children’s minds, hearts, and imaginations. Both homeschooling parents and Christians seeking to build schools will find a lot of guidance from this book. Wilson explains the benefits of an education that is both distinctively classical and distinctively Christian, and explains what such an education might look like.

Easy Chairs, Hard Words offers an honest look at difficult passages in Scripture. Presented as a series of fictional conversations between a curious young Christian and a seasoned pastor, these dialogues speak with clarity to those new to the Reformed faith. They begin with the question, "Can salvation be lost?" and from there wrestle with other hard-to-swallow doctrines, including the freedom of the will, election, and original sin.

The book of Revelation was written to do just that: reveal. In this commentary, Douglas Wilson provides a passage-by-passage walkthrough of the entire book, showing how John’s most notorious prophecies concern the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Explaining symbols and characters as he goes, Wilson shows from the text that not only is this book not an elaborate code, but that Revelation is not even ultimately concerned with the end of the world as we know it. Revelation is about the triumph of the Church, which always happens when the Man comes around.

Marriage is not a vending machine, and love is not two quarters to put into it. It's a manner of life, not an exchange of commodities. So, what does it look like when a man loves a woman? Douglas Wilson answers that question in How to Exasperate Your Wife and Other Short Essays for Men, and his responses are as wide-ranging and humorous as they are incisive and down to earth. He explains why men's distorted view of wisdom handicaps their understanding of their wives, and he exposes rigid (and wrong) approaches to marriage and relationships.

Reforming Marriage, by this same author, began the discussion of covenant headship. This collection of essays, Federal Husband, continues that discussion in greater depth, dealing with more specifics of federal husbandry.

Sinister forces lurk in the corners of the Iron Kingdoms - restless souls, mischievous and cunning creatures, darker beings that bargain for mortal souls. Most pass unmarked, shunned, or avoided, but there is one group willing to seek out and study what others fear. In abandoned halls and forgotten ruins, the investigators from the Strangelight Workshop illuminate the darkness, armed with wisdom, curiosity, and specialized tools.

Families are formed by covenants. But what is a covenant, and what does that mean for your family? Throughout Scripture, God makes covenants with his people. This is not just a contract, but a personal bond in which God takes responsibility for his people, and his people respond to him in faith.

Evangellyfish is a ruthless, grimly amused, and above all, honest look at one of the darkest corners in the western world. Douglas Wilson, a pastor of more than 30 years, paints a vivid and painful picture of evangelical boomchurch leadership...in bed. Chad Lester's kingdom is found in the Midwest. When Lester is (falsely) accused of molesting a young male counselee, his universe begins to crumble. He is a sexual predator, yes. But strictly straight. Detectives, reporters, assistant pastors, and old lovers and pay-offs all come out to play.

Stymied and stumped by arguments that wrap around you like web of mystification? The Amazing Dr. Ransom's Bestiary of Adorable Fallacies is here to help! This "Field Guide for Clear Thinkers" is filled with descriptions, exercises, and analysis to help you identify and avoid fallacies you might encounter in everyday life.

Modern culture is increasingly hostile to Christians, and Christians are increasingly aware that they need to form strong communities to do for them what the culture no longer can. This is a good thing, but it will only work if we, like Nehemiah, remain committed to resisting the dictates of our culture. In this short book, Pastor Douglas Wilson describes some of the most important ways to create and maintain countercultural Christian communities. Whether it's the need for kids to get calluses or the necessity of love and loyalty within churches, Wilson brings decades of wisdom.

The key to a good marriage is honest, complete, and humble confession of sin. This short, little audiobook, coming from a pastor with 40 years of experience, offers concrete practical suggestions about how to confess sin properly and how to avoid other snares married people tend to get snagged on, usually depending on whether they're the man or the woman.

In this audiobook, Pastor Douglas Wilson takes on the unpopular question of PKs (pastors' kids) and pastoral qualifications.

It is no secret that our world desperately needs change. Politicians know this and use it to collect votes. Journalists exploit it to sell newspapers and magazines. Advertisers, to sell everything else. Each of these groups (and countless others) spend their lives working to convince others that they hold the key to a better country, a better life, a better future. But what exactly is this change we all long for? And how can it ever come about?

Even though America is fiercely divided between the left and the right and protests are becoming increasingly violent, both sides of the political aisle remain committed to secularism and increasingly to looser standards of sexual propriety. If we want to understand contemporary American culture wars, we must first come to grips with the culture wars of the 19th century. In this book, Douglas Wilson explains how our nation's failure to remove slavery in a biblical fashion has led us to many of the quagmires we find ourselves in.

Satire is a kind of preaching. Satire pervades Scripture. Satire treats the foibles of sinners with a less than perfect tenderness. But if a Christian employs satire today, he is almost immediately called to account for his "insensitive" and "unloving" behavior. Yet Scripture shows that the central point of some religious controversies is to give offense. When Christ was confronted with ecclesiastical obstinacy and other forms of arrogance, He showed us a godly pattern for giving offense.