Yes, we do get disappointed, yes, it’s hard to take… when we need a solid Christian stand from our leaders–from our clergy, at least. if no one else–and all we get is dodgeball. R.J. Rushdoony in 1995 took aim at “Empty Suits.”
Where do these craven, chicken-hearted, fumfering leaders come from? They come from us. Even if elections are rigged in favor of the empty suits, the lucky empty winners are still born and raised and educated by us. No enemy country imposed them on us. They didn’t drop out of the sky.
He reserved some of his sharpest barbs for churchmen who chattered about “values” without even mentioning where those values come from, and at most venturing “an occasional ‘nod to God’.”
Even 30 years ago, prominent “conservatives” had cut themselves off from their Christian roots. Without those roots, whatever anyone says is merely his personal opinion, nothing more than that. It may have been more eloquent, but William F. Buckley’s opinion was worth no more than Elizabeth Warren’s. If it ain’t planted in the solid, nurturing ground of Christianity, it will bear no fruit. (Buckley did turn back to Christianity later in life.)
By 2010 I realized that bow tie-and-country club conservatives had nothing to offer but another brand of worldly chit-chat. I hear so much of it.
Conservatives! What do you think you’re conserving?
At first glance, it might seem very odd to see Rushdoony writing about the “freedom to sin.” But he is not saying, as Rasputin used to say, “We must sin in order to be saved!” What he’s getting at are the continuing efforts by the Godless to root out and abolish sin–and how these eventually add up to the biggest sins of all.
God didn’t create us to be paper dolls, with no will of our own. Sophomoric persons think He should have created us in such a way that we would have no choice but to be good all the time.
But a birdbath is incapable of sin. Does that make the birdbath righteous?
Why did God create us with “the freedom to sin”?
Rushdoony’s answer can be found in the article cited above.
R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1993, long before Everything was Racist. I can’t help but be amazed by his prescience. He looked deeply into the past and present, and saw the future.
Somewhere along the way, “thinkers” (LOL) discarded the doctrine of Original Sin, which stated a moral fact and explained why people do bad things: because they’re sinners. But that left them without an explanation, so they had to cook up a new one: we do bad things because we belong to the evil race, or the oppressor class. The one is a “genetic fact”–which precludes conversion or repentance: how are you going to repent your biology?–the other a socio-economic fact. And just lately we’ve got “the wrong gender,” too. So many ways to hate and fear each other!
Constant race-hustling must lead to rage, conflict, violence, and maybe even war if it goes unchecked for long enough.
Sin, the moral fact, has been atoned for by Jesus Christ. We are all sinners outside of Christ; inside, His righteousness is imputed to us.
But if you’re bad because you’re white or male–well, you’re out of luck.
“Everything is Racist” is a toxic ideology, fit only for angry fools.
When R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1994, we had no “Clergy for Choice” promoting abortion, no unrepenting “gay clergy,” no “re-imagining” conferences of minor league theologians trying to take the Cross out of Christianity. But we do now, and what he wrote in 1994 is only even more starkly true today.
The question he asks, he dares today’s churches to answer: “How will Christ the King treat a church that hands His world over to His enemies?” Ouch.
In Acts Chapter 6, the church in Jerusalem creates and appoints deacons to minister to her members, adding to the church an active agency for helping the poor and needy. In no time at all the establishment turns against the deacons and puts Stephen to death. That’s how important the deacons were. But in our time, in many of the churches, deacons have lost their function–if you can even find any deacons at all.
We as Christians need to reclaim lost ground for Christ’s Kingdom: too much of it has been surrendered.
Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation by R.J. Rushdoony–I wasn’t ready for this book when I first read it almost 20 years ago; but much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and I think I’m less unready now.
Check out Reputable Bible Scholars Inc. on Daniel–they so want this not to be true! So they insist it isn’t. Exiled Jewish priests made it all up, hundreds of years after the events Daniel supposedly prophesied.
This is what Rushdoony called “the offense of Daniel.” Daniel offends modern, humanistic sensibilities. Rushdoony divides the great offense into four elements:
*”It manifests in unavoidable terms the biblical concept of God.” A God-centered universe, in which man is a created being subject to his Creator, really cheeses off the Bible Scholars. They want to be the center of the universe. With tenure.
*It’s prophecy. Modernism totally rules out prophesy from the get-go. If it’s prophetic, it can’t be true. And then they all run out and prophecy about Climbit Change.
*It has miracles in it. Again, something the scholars rule out: no miracles allowed. This from the same people who believe socialism will really work, just give it a chance.
*It’s offensive because it teaches that God controls history. We don’t want to hear that! We want government control of history! Mandates! Blah-blah.
I’m expecting Thy Kingdom Come to give me insights into Daniel and Revelation, and into today’s events. Why is our culture deteriorating so rapidly, and in such bizarre form? What can we do about it?
There’s understanding available, to be harvested by study, prayer, and exchange of ideas.
As we enter the second year of our world-wide panic over COVID-19 From China, we’ve seen our economy, our laws, and our personal lives turned topsy-turvy–and all of it done in the name of “Science.” As in science as the absolute ultimate authority on everything.
I reviewed this eye-opening book in 2015. Author James Herrick does an impressive job of dissecting science fiction and popularized TV “science” and their unwholesome effects upon our culture.
R.J. Rushdoony wrote a similar book in 1967, The Mythology of Science. Herrick’s book is chock-full of examples and details that abundantly prove Rushdoony’s point.
Oh! But dare we direct any skepticism at “Science”? We are told that’s tantamount to blasphemy.
Herrick lists, describes, and analyzes the various mythologies behind our “Science,” and how they have transformed it from a search for truth in nature to a kind of weird ersatz religion. A pseudo-religion, that is.
It’s a long book to read, but well worth the time.
You’ll never be quite that comfortable with science fiction again, after you’ve read this.
R.J. Rushdoony wrote about this back in 1992–“social amnesia,” which is “the loss of the past.” Not knowing who we are, how we got here, where we came from: not knowing anything.
But he also wrote about “deliberate amnesia,” which boils down to denying something ever happened, or at least suppressing enough information about it to create a false and tainted memory.
And look at this! It’s 2021, 29 years later–and have we got deliberate amnesia to spare! We’ve raised a bumper crop.
Example (or rather, “Flagrant Example”): How far can you read into a Newsweek article, or listen to a CNN broadcast, before you read or hear something about “unfounded allegations” about the 2020 election being stolen, bald assertions that the charge is “without evidence”–just slipped into any sentence as if it were a well-known fact that no one but a fool would even attempt to dispute.
Gee, if those charges are so unfounded, so without evidence, then why are you guys so desperate to deny us our day in court? Why do you refuse to hear the evidence? Doesn’t sound to me like confidence in the rightness of your cause.
Politicians, nooze media, Hollywood–all playing with our memory. All trying to create amnesia.
And people who lack any knowledge of history are condemned to a kind of perpetual childhood.
Here’s some good news that hasn’t been, hasn’t ever been, shouted from the housetops by our Free & Independent Nooze Media Inc. R.J. Rushdoony reported on it back in 1994, and it has only grown since then: the movement to set up home churches and Bible study groups.
Since Rushdoony wrote this, we’ve acquired an Internet, social media, and blogs–like this one, for instance: places in cyberspace where Christians can gather to worship God, study His word together, and seek to know Him better.
We’ve also acquired more enemies, censorship, soft-core persecution (they aren’t throwing us to the lions in the arena yet), and a hysterical Far Left that would like nothing better than to stamp us out.
And yet we grow!
God has not forgotten us, He has not abandoned us–and He will hear our prayers.
R.J. Rushdoony’s essays, written in the 1970s and 80s and collected in Roots of Reconstruction, seem even more applicable today than they were back then. Like this one, for instance:
What are the three guiding principles of humanistic law? Answers Rushdoony: control of other people (the more, the better), redistribution of wealth and property, and enforced conformity.
You’re not going to tell me that’s changed, are you?
Humanism is this weird ideology–or rather, a species of false religion–that preaches the perfectibility of man by man–through coercion, violence, and deceit. Breakin’ the eggs to make the omelet. Because the end game is an earthly paradise, any and all means to that end are justified.
