By Shafer Parker

Well, if you are looking for an answer to the title question, you won’t get one right now. It’s too early to give the whole game away. All I am authorized to say is, it’s a name that appears in the title of a recent book by Doug Wilson. Who is Doug Wilson? Well, he’s the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, a faculty member at New Saint Andrews College in the same city, and one of the most astute observers of the North American spiritual scene. He’s also a much-published writer with a whimsical sense of humor, which explains why he wrote a short, profound book two years with the title Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World.

Did I suggest his title is an example of whimsical humor? Yes, I did, but the book, while sometimes funny, and never boring, makes serious points that 21st century Christians need to hear. Well, I guess I could say that you only need to hear them if you are concerned about the current state of our world and wish there was something you could do. There are, in fact, many somethings Christians ought to do, and Mr. Wilson is just the man to tell us what they are. So, here’s my proposal. Over the next several weeks (with interruptions for things like a vacation in August, etc.) I’m going to blog about Wilson’s book, starting with the “Introduction” and working through the book, chapter by chapter.

Introduction (the book’s introduction, silly, I just finished mine)

Wilson begins his introduction by putting forward a big, and controversial concept. It is his decided opinion that on the whole North America, including Canada, has been blessed with liberty and freedom, including protections for individual rights, private property, and the right to self defense, unlike anything found in the rest of the world. In fact, we’ve been blessed with so much for so long that most Canadians have forgotten our national benefits are God’s blessings stemming from centuries of obedience and the worship of Jesus Christ by our forefathers and foremothers.

That forgetfulness leads to a problem, Wilson says. Because many newcomers to Canada and the U.S. have come from other cultures, they have no sense of the power for good generated by millions of Christians praying and living as God would have them do. On the other hand, says Wilson, when it comes to spiritual things too many Canadians (and Americans) are like the children of billionaires. Just as such children often take “Daddy’s money” for granted, in the same way too many children from Christian households take for granted the spiritual liberties our fore parents won at great cost. That means danger lies ahead. “Experiencing blessings without understanding the basis of those blessings,” Wilson writes, “is like dancing blindfold along the edge of a precipice.”

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GIVE TODAY!

But who is to remind us of the connection between obedience and blessing? Wilson says it is the church minister’s job. He cautions that while the minister’s first job is to preach the gospel, many fail because they forget to make their message “oriented, as it necessarily must be, to the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27).” In other words, Wilson says, “This [gospel] is not a message torn out of the Scriptures, but rather a message that is situated at the center of all Scripture.”

Wilson explains further:

Preachers of the gospel must also be students of the culture they are sent to. A minister must be a student of the Word, but he must also be a student of men. He must study them—not just men generally, but the men of his own era, the men to whom he is charged to bring the gospel. When the Lord speaks to each of the angels of the seven churches of Asia, the message for each church is different. Same gospel, different sins, and so a different message applying that gospel.

But then Wilson brings up a subject for which many modern ministers have no receiving mechanism. They react much like an AM radio when faced with an FM broadcast. They can’t even detect the signal. The purpose of studying the culture, Wilson says, is to learn how to mount an effective attack on current “fortifications against the Spirit of God.” Different fortifications (in our day vs. our grandparents’ day) “must be attacked differently.” And that brings me to today’s last extended quote from Wilson.

A man who is charged with pulling down strongholds must be a student, therefore, of two things. He must be a student of the gear he is using, and he must be a student of the tower he is charged with toppling. He must know the gospel, and the Scripture that houses it, and he must also know the state of the current imaginations, whether those imaginations are healthy or diseased. He needs to know where to attach the ropes. This means that in order to have a true impact, a local church must understand some of the fundamental theological issues in play and how they intersect with the large cultural issues of our day.

So far, we’ve only looked at Wilson’s introduction to Gashmu Saith It, but that’s enough for this week. Surely you can see by now that the book was written to help us understand three things: (1) the need for a martial, or militaristic approach (in a spiritual sense) to attacking today’s “fortifications against the Spirit of God,” (2) a better understanding of the gear God has given us (spiritual weaponry) for the fighting that must be done, and (3) a clear view of where to attach the ropes necessary for pulling down today’s spiritual strongholds (II Cor. 10:3-5). “But you haven’t really explained the title,” I hear someone cry. “Who on earth is Gashmu, and how does he, if it is a he, come into this book?” All in good time, I say. When we get to the chapter where Wilson explains Gashmu, so will I. Blessings for now, and may God grant all of us the courage we need “for the facing of this hour.”

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