In practice we don’t always hate the world (sinful rebellion) as our enemy.  In practice, we don’t always act as if God is our friend.  If we did, we would always want to do his will.  

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.James 4:4
With these words James presents a stark contrast between two different relationships.  There’s your relationship with the world and then there’s your relationship with God.  The two ought never to be of the same sort.  One way or another these two relationships should always be radically opposed.
Now we could consider what it means to have friendship with the world.  We could look at what that involves and all its different permutations.  If this were a sermon, I’d definitely do that.  However, in this brief meditation, I want to go a different route.  If what the Holy Spirit says is true (which it is), then we ought to be able to flip the terms around in his formulation.  When we do that, we discover something remarkable.
What I mean is this:  if “friendship with the world is enmity with God,” then the reverse follows as also true.  It is also true that “enmity with the world is friendship with God.”  Moreover, anyone who wishes to be an enemy of the world is a friend of God.  When we put it like that, two key questions still need to be answered.
First, what would it mean to be an enemy of the world?  Enmity with the world means a relationship of hostility or hatred with the world.  And what is meant by “the world” here?   It refers to everything associated with humanity’s rebellion against God.  “The world” is all the different ways in which sin manifests itself amongst human beings.  Being an enemy of the world really means being hostile towards sin.  Rather than embracing or coddling sinfulness, you hate it and long to see it destroyed.  Being an enemy of the world means you harbour no affection for the rebellion which has the potential to destroy you and other human beings.  This is the way it ought to be for those redeemed by Christ.
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If you are a mature, grounded Christian in a good church, with a good sense of discernment, you can find a number of helpful things from the world of Moscow. But there’s a difference between snacking on Moscow once you are already full of good Christian discipleship and feasting on Moscow for three square meals a day. I fear that much of the appeal of Moscow is an appeal to what is worldly in us. As we’ve seen, the mood is often irreverent, rebellious, and full of devil-may-care playground taunts. That doesn’t make us better Christians. 

“Each of the great world civilizations,” Christopher Dawson wrote in his classic work from the 1940s on Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, “has been faced with the problem of reconciling the aggressive ethos of the warrior with the moral ideals of a universal religion. But in none of them has the tension been so vital and intense as in medieval Christendom and nowhere have the results been more important for the history of culture.” At the heart of Dawson’s provocative thesis is the insistence that Western European culture was the coming together of two cultures, two social traditions, and two spiritual worlds. The cultural formation of Europe combined “the war society of the barbarian kingdom with its cult of heroism and aggression,” leavened by “the peace society of the Christian Church with its ideals of asceticism and renunciation and its high theological culture.”

Arguably, the Crusades expressed the best and the worst of this synthesis. There were times when the fusion of warrior-heroism and Christian virtue produced something noble and exemplary during the centuries-long effort to reclaim the Holy Land. And there were times when the fusion failed and produced something ugly and lamentable. But even the failures teach us about the aspirational ideals of Christendom. We cannot understand the rise of Western culture without the religious unity imposed by the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, and likewise, we cannot understand the flourishing of Christendom unless we understand that it grew up out of the soil of warrior kings and barbarian kingdoms.

Dawson’s thesis, though concerned with the rise of Western culture in the Middle Ages, is instructive for our own age. For many of us, it looks as if Western culture has been overrun—whether by Muslim immigration in Europe, critical theory in our universities, sexual degradation in our popular culture, violence in our streets, or plain old anti-Western vitriol in the hearts of many Westerners who have no idea how much more miserable the world would be if their deluded wishes came true. If this is the world we live in—or even something generally headed in this fearful direction—the question we in the Christian West are wrestling with (or should be wrestling with) is what to do now.

The Appeal of the Moscow Mood

Which brings me to the reason you are likely reading this article in the first place, and that is the name “Doug Wilson” in the title. “So, what do you think about Doug Wilson?” is a question I’ve been asked many times during my years in pastoral ministry. I’d say the questioners have been pretty evenly split between “I’m asking because I really like him,” “I’m asking because I hope you don’t like him,” and “I’m asking because I’m not sure what to think.” Even now, I’d rather not be writing this piece because (1) it takes a lot of time, (2) I’m not looking to get into a long, drawn-out debate with Wilson or his followers, and (3) I know a lot of good Christians who have been helped by Wilson and by the people and institutions in his orbit. I’m answering the question now in hopes that I might help those who appreciate some of what Wilson says but also feel like something isn’t quite right.

By any measure, one has to marvel at the literary, digital, and institutional output that has come out of Moscow, Idaho in the past several decades. While some internet cranks are wannabees trying to make a name for themselves by trying to tear down what others have built up, Wilson is to be commended for establishing an ecosystem of schools, churches, media offerings, and publishing ventures. For a scholarly and fair assessment of what Wilson has tried to do in Moscow, I recommend Crawford Gribben’s excellent book Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Wilson also deserves credit for being unafraid to take unpopular positions. True, he often seems to enjoy stating his unpopular positions in the most unpopular ways (more on that later), but no one is going to accuse Wilson of being a spineless Evangellyfish. He offers the world and the church an angular, muscular, forthright Christianity in an age of compromise and defection. On top of that, Wilson has a family that loves him and loves Christ.

Moreover, Wilson understands that opposition to Christ—his word, his gospel, and his Lordship—is not to be taken lightly. Many Christians are witnessing the disintegration of our Western world, and the Christian consensus that used to hold sway, and they are thinking to themselves, “This is terrible. I can’t believe this is happening.” To the Christians with these concerns—and I count myself among them—Doug Wilson says, “Yes, it is really bad, and let’s do something about it.”

I’m convinced the appeal of Moscow is visceral more than intellectual. That’s not meant to be a knock on the smart people in Moscow or attracted to Moscow. It is to say, however, that people are not mainly moving to Idaho because they now understand Revelation 20 in a different way, or because they did a deep word study on ta ethne in the Great Commission, or even because of a well-thought-out political philosophy of Christian Nationalism. Those things matter to Wilson and his followers, but I believe postmillennialism and Christian Nationalism are lagging indicators, not leading indicators. That is, people come to those particular intellectual convictions because they were first attracted to the cultural aesthetic and the political posture that Wilson so skillfully embodies. In short, people are moving to Moscow—whether literally or spiritually—because of a mood. It’s a mood that says, “We are not giving up, and we are not giving in. We can do better than negotiate the terms of our surrender. The infidels have taken over our Christian laws, our Christian heritage, and our Christian lands, and we are coming to take them back.”

Where the Mood Misfires

And yet, for all that is understandable and sometimes commendable about the Moscow mood, there are also serious problems. In my criticisms that follow I’m not going to focus on historical or theological disagreements I may have with Wilson. I won’t be touching on Federal Vision, or paedocommunion, or his views on the antebellum South, or his arguments for Christian Nationalism, or his particular brand of postmillennialism. My concerns are not so much with one or two conclusions that Christians may reach if Wilson becomes their intellectual mentor. My bigger concern is with the long-term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating the Moscow mood. For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible with Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project.

Rather than expounding these claims in abstract terms, let’s look at a couple of concrete examples.

Five years ago, Doug Wilson and Canon Press started something they call No Quarter November (NQN). The idea is that during November, in addition to giving away free resources, Wilson and his crew will show no mercy (give no quarter) to their enemies. Each year, in advance of NQN, Wilson puts out a promotional video. They always involve a good deal of fire and more than a little sarcasm.

The 2023 NQN video ends with a Clint Eastwood-style closeup of Wilson puffing a massive cigar, strapping on a giant flamethrower, and setting ablaze an assortment of Disney characters and media logos. Here’s what Wilson says in the first half of the video:

Welcome back to No Quarter November.

For eleven months out of the year, I’m notoriously timid—as cautious and polite as a Southern Baptist raising funds for the ERLC. But the month of November is a time for taking no prisoners and for granting “no quarter.” If you think of my blog as a shotgun, this is the month when I saw off all my typical careful qualifications and blast away with a double-barreled shorty.

Everything we do this month will be focused on one singular goal. We want to help you apocalypse-proof your family.

But why should you listen to me about such things? Well, when it comes to culture war and culture building, we’ve been at this for half a century now—much longer than such things have been cool to talk about in the green room at G3.

Like my parents taught me: a strong family isn’t possible without quick, full, and honest confession of sin, without any wussy excuse making. And especially now, it’s just as important not to confess and repent of things that aren’t really sins, because lying is bad and so is being a wuss.

You really should watch the four-minute video if you haven’t already. Notice several things about the mood.

First, it strikes a tone that is deliberately sarcastic and just a little bit naughty. No one really thinks Wilson is timid and cautious the rest of the year. That’s the sarcasm. The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.

Second, the video takes cheap shots at other Christians. Wilson’s sarcastic bite is not first directed toward the wicked, the hardhearted, or the forces of evil in our world. He takes a swipe at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and at the G3 Conference. Both are conservative Baptist groups—groups, we might add, that would be on the same side as Wilson in almost every important cultural battle. It’s fine if Wilson wants to disagree with these groups; they’ve disagreed with him at times. But Wilson doesn’t mention them in the video in order to make a serious argument. He uses them for a punchline. If you like Wilson you are supposed to think “Oh no, he didn’t?! That’s hilarious.” And if you like the ERLC or G3, you are supposed to be triggered, because if Moscow can watch their opponents get triggered, that is also funny. When serious criticism is leveled at Moscow, the response often includes a smattering of mockery and memes. This isn’t Wilson using his famous “serrated edge” to make a prophetic point against a godless culture. This is intentionally making fun of other Christians for a quick chuckle.

Third, the point of NQN is explicitly about culture warring and culture building. Rightly understood, it is good to do both these things. But it is instructive to see that Wilson’s stated aim is to “help you apocalypse-proof your home.” I think it’s safe to say this is what Wilson aims to do not just in November (in an intensified fashion), but during the other eleven months of the year, and in Wilson’s mind preparing for the apocalypse means doing battle against the forces of leftism in our world. Wilson’s public persona is largely about commenting on the culture, pushing back on the culture, lampooning the culture, and getting Christians ready for the coming cultural collapse.

Fourth, the video is squarely focused on Wilson himself. On one level, this is not surprising. Christian institutions and organizations often use their founder, president, or leading voice as the “face” of the ministry. But the focus here is not on Wilson as the conduit of biblical teaching and doctrinal truth, or even as the instrument of helpful cultural analysis.

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No one goes to Heaven merely because they recognize His existence. There must be, alongside this, a worshipping and glorifying of Him accordingly. There is a fruit born out of love that begins with the eyes opened to see the beauty and holiness of Jehovah. To go back to the preface to the Ten Commandments for a second if God is your God and has raised you from the spiritual dead then how can you fail to “. . .trust, hope, delight, rejoice, highly esteem, honor, adore, choose, love, desire, fear, believe, meditating, remember. . .” His glory in grace? You can’t. These things are so inscrutably linked as to be defined together.

As with when we went through the commandments last year in the Shorter Catechism, I’ll warn you ahead of time that this process will be somewhat slow and unending. Yet, I will do what I can to try and punch up the blessing that is the law of God, even if at some point it may feel like it is getting not only repetitive, but oppressive. Some have criticized the authors of the Larger Catechism for their so-called navel gazing fastidiousness.
However, I think we will find much meat to fill our souls with grace as we spend time considering what our Lord would have us learn.
There is an idiom below that is worth pulling out for some more examination before we read the Q/A’s themselves and that would be “. . .in the whole man”. It is a curious phrase which means not only in our outward obedience, but in the inward as well we are to apply these commands. It is a part of course of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount that we sin not in deed alone. Our minds and affections are as much affected by the Fall as our physical activities. We sweat when we work, yet the truth is that pricking the finger on a thorn results in all types of inward cursing (or outward for that matter) that testifies to the reality of our transgressions before the Lord. So, as we walk through each of the Ten Words let us keep in mind what God is requiring of us.
We open with the first commandment. It is, as you might expect, the foundation for all the statutes that come after and this is why when we read the duties required in Q.104 we see something of all the rest of the Decalogue listed in some form or fashion. It is helpful to remind ourselves that obedience to God is complete and full.
Here are this week’s Q/A’s:
Q. 103: Which is the first commandment?
A. The first commandment is, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Q. 104: What are the duties required in the first commandment?
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