Choosing Eight Years of Famine

Doug Wilson was kind enough to respond to my last post.

I will just attend to one point. He writes:

———

Brian then asks this . . .

"What's a little "creative destruction" of real people and real wealth to achieve a desired political end? Forgive me if this strikes me as extraordinarily glib and misanthropic. It is frankly immoral to wish catastrophe on people in pursuit of one's agenda."

But I am not deciding between catastrophe on the one hand and rainbows, fluffy clouds and unicorns on the other. I am deciding between rapid fire catastrophe and slow motion catastrophe. I am deciding between a fiery death in a plane crash or three years in a cancer ward. I am David trying to decide between 7 years of famine, 3 months of hotfooting it, or 3 days of pestilence (2 Sam. 24:12-13). David accepted the options in front of him, and did not ask Gad (sic) why "his best life now" was not on the list.

When David choose (sic) the pestilence, he was not wishing catastrophe on others in some immoral way.

———

A few (very) short responses:

1. Doug chooses to believe that Romney is slow-motion catastrophe. If that's the baseline, there's no helping him there. Even though I can see pretty clearly Romney's liabilities, I see no reason to just take that for granted.

2. Doug is not David, and I presume no prophet has appeared offering him this "choice."

4. David chose a three-day catastrophe instead of a seven-year catastrophe. And Doug wants to slip by me the notion that choosing an eight-year catastrophe is following David's example?

5. Doug's reasoning presupposes that catastrophe is historically inevitable. He does not know this. He cannot know this. And nowhere are we called to resign ourselves to a perceived historical judgment of God, much less attempt to hasten it. Which is what Doug is doing. I might have to add "masochistic" to my "misanthropic." The Psalmists everywhere recognize God's righteousness in judgment. That doesn't cause them to ask for it.

6. I hope Doug changes his mind.