Devil’s Dictionary: CREC edition

Abortion: the reason nothing else should be considered morally wrong, including racism, slavery, the mass murder of adults, the sexual abuse of minors, and stealing other people’s ideas.

Community: the kindness of the church-goers for one another is paramount, because it presents a helpful distraction if anyone raises an objection about the way the church hierarchy functions.

Post-traumatic stress: a sign of rebellion against God’s plan for your life.

Depression: also a sign of rebellion. Don’t be depressed. If hearing that doesn’t cure you, you’re a sinner.

Pantywaist: a term used to describe a perceived lack of masculinity, which allows the user to employ the slightly naughty word “panty.”

Robust: a code word meaning strong, hard and/or persistent.

Insist: a strong, masculine verb used to describe an opinion voiced in one-sided internet arguments. Most often used in blog posts and sermons to cover for the author’s failure to prove his point with evidence and logic.

Full throated: intended to mean hale and hearty; actually means obnoxious, strident and abusive. As in “we employ a full-throated defense of the gospel.” Meant to connote the idea that straw-man stereotyping and name calling are all in good taste and for a good cause, whereas they are actually fallacious misrepresentation.

Conventional marriage: when a robust man takes possession of a physically mature yet emotionally stunted woman from her father, and then colonizes her garden.

Garden: polite euphemism; using the medical term is a sign of serious sin. Having your garden colonized may not be a very pleasant experience for you, but remember: flowers have no say in how they’re fertilized. Their duty is to bring joy to their gardener. The gardener’s skills in the flowerbed is obviously completely immaterial to the garden’s lack of enjoyment. Ladies: just shut your eyes and pray for it to be over quickly.

Feminine: concerned with being deferential to those in authority over her; also probably dressed in modest but tasteful attire attuned to her gardener’s needs. Absolutely no tattoos or outlandish piercings.

Feminist: a woman with small breasts who eats lentils and screams about how much she hates the patriarchy. Actually desires to be a man, which is the only reason she has any carnal desire for men, because sex drives are entirely masculine. Also known as a “small-breasted biddy” and/or as a “lumberjack dyke.”

Tattoo: the outward declaration that you belong to a tribe that is not our tribe. In our tribe, we all look like Edith Schaeffer, the face of 1950s-era Christian wholesomeness.  

Classical education: a term used to describe the process of enculturating youth into a dead culture, specifically that of 1950s-era Christian wholesomeness.

Biblical education: see classical education. Inculcating children with highly specific political and theological viewpoints backed up with tenuous Bible verses (“How are you today?” “Better than we deserve”). Includes shouting these viewpoints en masse, in unison, during assembly.

Shepherding students: includes but is not limited to spanking sessions doled out by the male principal to particularly beautiful, sassy young girls. Also includes eavesdropping on private conversations and critiquing hairstyles as moral failures.

Culture: building an army of loyal, full-throated, robust men and feminine women using the methods above.

Loyalty: the most important trait a human can have, unless you’re Doug Wilson and are striking out on your own.

Plagiarism: a common mistake that most people make when they write books, and not important to consider when choosing which biblical education text to purchase.

Student plagiarism at New Saint Andrews: reason for expulsion, no matter what the excuse.

Co-author: someone available to take the fall should it be discovered that the more prominent author is part of yet another plagiarism scandal.

Editor: check collector; this position requires no actual work, other than sending a mass email to CREC friends asking for contributions, and then running their contributions through spellcheck (but definitely not a plagiarism check, because nobody cares and everyone does it).

Dean: the person you complain to if a girl in your NSA class excludes you from a study group in a way that you’re just positive is on purpose, even if she says she was just having a few friends over and it was not on purpose at all.

Parental authority: what the dean appeals to when he calls you into his office to ask why you excluded someone from your study group.

Sermon: a good way to admonish “fictional” girls who exclude others from NSA study groups.

Generosity: the act of giving many thousands of dollars to the pastor so he can go on vacation and purchase good scotch. The church’s financial generosity should only be extended to people and causes the church deems appropriate, and definitely should not be used to feed and clothe degenerate widows and orphans.

Spot on: any idea thought of by any Wilson*.

*or published by without citation; may not actually be original.

Kicking the devil in the teeth: phrase celebrating how the gospel is like Game of Thrones; meaning the most vicious, bloodthirsty people win.

Persecution: opposition.

Bitterness: what you display if you are upset at being abused and wish to stop others from being abused by the same person or people. Bitterness must be confessed and repented of.

Iron sharpening iron: the notion that people within the church are actually quite different because they have complex debates about very minor theological and cultural differences.

Elder: a church officer chosen on the merits of loyalty, whose chief responsibility is to present a united leadership front and agreement with the pastor. Encouraged to believe he thinks independently because of iron sharpening iron.

Belief: you don’t believe what you say you believe, you believe what we say you believe. For example, if you say that you believe child abusers should be jailed for public safety, we know that actually means you don’t believe in the gospel. If you say you believe the elders made mistakes, we know that actually means you believe the elders are evil. Since the elders are not evil, and since the gospel is real, what you believe is a lie.

Strawman: only a logical fallacy when our enemies do it. See also: every other logical fallacy there is. Logical fallacies are actually great for debate, because they sidetrack the conversation and hence we win.

Letter of censure: a means by which elders and pastors can insist on the veracity of their own authority by kicking congregants in the nether regions as they flee out the door.

Slander: to tell an inconvenient truth. Any criticism of our leaders that doesn’t have a bulletproof, court-ready set of evidence and proofs to back it up. And even the ones that have that proof and evidence, because God, Gospel, Church Authority and Obviously.

Divisiveness: the act of pointing anyone to publicly available documents in support of critique, since critique by itself is dismissed as slander. If you are a peon and the other person is a pastor, you are guilty of divisiveness regardless of the facts.

Orc: anyone causing divisiveness.

The internet: a ridiculous place where people who do not agree with the church slander publicly and with impunity. Not a reliable place to get information, unless you are Doug Wilson; are writing textbooks edited by him; or are reading Mablog or any offshoot Wilson/CREC blogs.

Wikipedia: discouraged as a source for Logos papers, but an excellent place to copy and paste from without citation if you’re writing textbooks.

Scurrilous: any criticism of the leaders that isn’t couched in mountains of fawning and deferential language, or that offers a critique of any substance with or without the fawning language.

Ax to grind: phrase used to indicate a person whose specific assertions can be safely disregarded because they are known to criticize the leaders. Anyone who does that more than once is scurrilous, and hates God and therefore must not be listened to.

Fellowship of the Grievance (FOG): anyone who dislikes Doug Wilson’s teaching and who is friends with anyone else known to dislike Doug’s teaching is automatically part of the FOG. The only possible reason they could be friends is because they love being scurrilous together. Anything else they share is a lie.

Bedfellow: word to describe what a person becomes when they criticize the leaders, as some other reprobates have before them; namely, they get into a metaphorical bed with the rest of the scurrilous and thereby prove they have an ax to grind by joining the FOG.

By Katie Botkin, with St. Tara