The first issue of Good Work contains an article explaining the mission of the magazine. Man, that was tough to write. I wanted to reframe the terms of the “culture war” without a) throwing down my weapons or b) picking unnecessary fights. I’m not 100% sure I succeeded. Judge for yourself.

Or you could read this excerpt from Doug Wilson’s recent newsletter on education (paywalled, unfortunately). Leave it to Doug to say what I’m thinking more lucidly than I can.

Chesterton spoke wisely of the man who fights, not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. And I have taught (for decades I have taught) that just as you cannot have a naval war without ships, or tank warfare without tanks, so also you cannot have culture war without a culture. And a culture is something you must inhabit, as one who loves his home, and so you must inhabit it as a dutiful citizen who is devoted to . . . culture care.

This means an essential part of culture care is fighting off invasions, and resisting predation. When the Germans conquered France, and were confiscating enormous stores of rich wines, culture care needed to include hiding wine from the Nazis, as in fact it did. But in order to do this, there would have to be some recognition of why they were needing to hide wine from the Nazis. Not to be too obvious about it, they were having to do this because of an invasion. There was a war on because someone was attacking. There was a culture war because someone was invading and seizing the cultural artifact—wine.

As he says, “you cannot have a culture war without a culture.” This means someone has to be plowing, sowing, watering, and harvesting to feed the man on the front lines. Good Work is that first guy.

The flaw in my analogy is that, in a real war, the farmer and the warrior are mutually exclusive. As long as the farmer’s planting, he’s not fighting. When he takes up his pitchfork to fight the bad guys, he has to ignore his fields for a bit. For Christians, good work, done to the glory of God, is an act of war. The man who cares for his family, goes to church, reads the Bible, sings the Psalms, and prays for his country is a culture warrior even if he never holds a picket sign. In other words, a faithful Christian life is always warlike, though it may not look like it from the outside.

You may have seen the video of Doug torching a bunch of cardboard cutouts with a flamethrower. Lots of people loved it. Lots of people hated it. But most of them ignored the most important part, which came near the beginning:

Here we footage from the front lines of the culture war. Want to do your part to demolish the city of man? Eat dinner with your family.

That said, there are times when Christians must behave like warriors in the conventional sense, when we must be belligerent and accept nothing less than victory. What if Martin Luther had been content to read Romans in the privacy of his own home (for the sake of not causing a fuss) and never challenged the authority of the pope? For that matter, what if the apostles had kept the news of the resurrection to themselves, so as not to ruffle any feathers? Sometimes, being a faithful Christian means picking a fight.

How do you know when to tend to the farm and when to grab your flintlock? Good question. We’re certainly living in times that require us to work through the answer.