Power, Family, Community and Law

Community and Crime Q & A

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Sociology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 8

Track: 39

Dictation Name: RR12A2

Date: 1974

Our scripture is from Deuteronomy 21; Deuteronomy 21:1-9.

“1 If one be found slain in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him:

2 Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain:

3 And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke;

4 And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer's neck there in the valley:

5 And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the Lord; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried:

6 And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley:

7 And they shall answer and say, our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.

8 Be merciful, O Lord, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

9 So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.”

Crime is very much a problem with us in our day, and people have forgotten some of the things the Early Church and St. Augustine spoke about, and are therefore distressed and amazed at the growth of crime and look for answers to it apart from the faith. “By their fruit shall ye know them,” our Lord said, and can a godless generation have good fruits? Our Lord said not. St. Augustine as he dealt with the fact of crime, said that when a people were godless, their nation, their civil government would be no more than a large and organized band of robbers. It could not be otherwise. True, it would still give, in terms of Romans 13, a measure of obedience to law and order, because it could not permit total anarchy. But you would have to recognize that the State then would be no more than an organized band of robbers. Being ungodly, the works of men would be ungodly. And of course, we see this increasingly. God’s Law has been set aside. The Word of God is not obeyed. We live in the midst of an unregenerate, ungodly generation. Should we be surprised at the consequences? If you want law and order, you’re not going to get it by going to the courts where you have ungodly men, or by going to the senate or to your state legislature, because the old saying still holds true, you cannot make a good omelet with bad eggs. And when your society is predominantly made of bad eggs, the results of anything they do will smell.

A very fine Christian, a friend of mine, a strong supporter of Chalcedon is our State Senator, Bill Richardson, who is currently running for U.S. Senate against Cranston. And recently, Bill had an argument with a chief of police, in fact, the Chief of Police of Los Angeles. And he made certain claims about what the actual crime situation was in Canada, in Europe and various places. And the chief said, ‘that can’t be so,’ and ‘that’s not the kind of statistics we’re getting.’ And so Bill said, ‘I would be willing to bet almost anything you ask for, a steak dinner—what—whatever, what do you want, that I am right!’ And Davis said, well, no, I don’t want to bet, and you don’t either, but I don’t think you’re right. Well, Bill got on the phone and called up not the department which announces the figures, but the statisticians behind in various police departments in Canada and abroad. He did it with tax money, but, he felt there was an important point here. And he found that they were the same virtually everywhere, that for public relations purposes, the statistics announced were often far different from the statistics that were known to the statisticians, and basically, what he found was this; I’m giving you the California statistics for the last year of record and substantially the same picture across the world:

About 760,000 serious crimes against persons and property were committed in one year against a population of 20 million. Well, divide 20 million by, say 4 or 5, to get the average family, and it means that 750,000 into every 5 million means that it strikes pretty close to home, that the likelihood of one’s family being the next target, or one’s property of a major crime is very real.

Moreover, he found in then pursuing the statistics, that there were about 226,000 arrests for these major crimes. In other words, about 1 in 3 cases was there an arrest.

Then, the district attorneys felt they could only go to judges and juries with the open and shut cases, ones that were so obvious there would be little likelihood of losing. So out of the 226,000, they took a little better than, I believe 50,000 to court.

Out of the 50,000, less than 5,000 served time. In other words, crime does pay. Less than 1% of the serious crimes in California, and across the world, on the average, actually result in any kind of imprisonment. Crime does pay; and with reason.

The average man is a sinner, and he knows that if the law were really enforced, he himself is somehow guilty before God, and he doesn’t like law enforcement. As a matter of fact, just before Bill told me about these statistics, I was making this point in our study group and I said that the average man today was on the jury, and the average man in the street is against strict enforcement because who knows, it might be his family or himself who’s next.

Two days later, on man who works for the Navy called me up and said his commanding officer had just been on jury duty and had opted for a not guilty plea, or a not guilty verdict. And when Dick reprimanded him for that, rather boldly considering he was subordinate, the man said, well, you never know, your own kid could be next. That’s the mentality. We have a problem. And today, the majority, the overwhelming majority of crimes go unpunished. Our scripture tells us how God requires that we deal with them.

Now there are many, many laws in scripture that deal with the matter of crime. The biblical method is not imprisonment. Prisons in the Bible were only to hold people in temporary custody pending trial. When they were tried, they were not then put into prison which is a further penalty upon us, you know, we then pay taxes to support them. And they do live rather well in the modern prisons. More and more new prisons are being built across country. I’ve visited in them. I’ve preached in them. There are T.V.s in many of the modern ones, in every cell. There are swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, there are rooms for visitation overnight by the wife or the girlfriend, and now we’ve got a new system for rehabilitating the criminals in California. They periodically take groups of them and fly them to Catalina Island for a holiday so that they won’t feel that society is hostile to them. Of course, I’ve never been able to afford that trip all the time I’ve been down there, and one of these days I’d like to go, but I’m not sure I want to go, now that I know who’s going there! [Laughter] But this they get at our expense, so when you’re robbed, you are then taxed to take care of the thief, who now has all the comforts of home, plus.

But the Bible says there must be restitution: civil atonement. That the man who robs $100 must restore the $100 and be fined $100. And restitution, depending on the type of crime, must be from double to four- and five-fold. Now this was once the law in the United States, in the Colonial and post-Colonial period, restitution was still required. It still is required in one area, by the way, although perhaps it’s collapsing there. If you rob the Federal Government, you make restitution! As a matter of fact, when I was in the Indian Service, one Indian Service official was dipping into Federal funds quite extensively and taking it to town, a hundred miles south to gamble. When they caught up with him, they did not put him into prison. He owed something like $20,000. They made sure that he stayed on the job, but that a certain amount of his every check went into the government till as restitution. As a matter of fact, the man got promotions so he could make more money and repay more readily! This is the logic of modern unbelief.

Now restitution was required in the Bible, that restoration of God’s order be made. The whole drift of scripture is, from the Fall on, restoration. And towards that end, restitution; restitution God-ward through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ typified first in the sacrificial blood of the animals upon the altar, and restitution man-ward where man was offended, but at the same time, always God as well, because all sin is against God primarily. But if our brother be offended, restitution towards him, and restoration. Now in some offenses, there is no way of finding out who the guilty party is. And our scripture gives us an example of that; a dead man, murdered man, found in the field, not in town. So the town nearest to the victim is therefore responsible. There is a measurement of the distance to the nearest community. That community then has the responsibility. Restitution must be made. God’s Law and man’s needs must be met. That community has a responsibility toward the family of that person, according to other laws of scripture; but here, the restitution toward God. The priests, the sons of Levi, must be brought in. A heifer must be taken and sacrificed. And they must declare, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, oh Lord unto Thy people, Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto Thy people Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.” In other words, all sin must be atoned for, or it is laid to the charge of the people who do not see that restitution is made. And the blood of that innocent man would be upon that community.

Do you begin to see what God requires of us? How as a community we have an obligation that God’s Law be kept, that as a community we have an obligation either to be acquitted of the blood or to bear the blood? This means there is a fearful responsibility upon every community that is godless; that God’s judgment accumulates with all the unsolved, unatoned crimes. And we as Christians have an obligation therefore, first to be innocent of this blood by praying to God for His cleansing, healing, regenerating power, and to work towards that end. To put away, if we are able to, by commanding the community, the guilt of innocent blood from among us.

God requires that all crime be atoned for. Every crime, every sin, is an offense against God’s order. Secondarily against man’s order, but always against God’s order. And it requires restitution. In every offense, God’s order must be re-established by restitution. Restitution, thus, from the smallest offense to the cross, always requires restitution.

We were dealing this morning with what to do among people’s small offenses. And I said I would deal with that later. Now, I believe one way to promote community and brotherhood is to be mindful that God’s way is restitution. Some years ago I noticed that I would hear remarks like this among women in church groups, if there was a pot luck dinner and so on, that women would remember little things. ‘Well, be careful. Don’t give her those to set, she broke a dish of mine three years ago that I brought a cake on.’ Things like that. Now at the same time, if someone would break a dish, the woman would say, ‘Oh, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. Forget it.’ But they wouldn’t forget it! They would remember it year in and year out that Mrs. Jones broke their dish.

And so I began to tell the women, ‘Look, there is a simple way to solve these problems, all of you say the same thing if someone else breaks it, and one or another of you sooner or later is going to do it, and a good percentage of you have done it at one time or another. If you break a dish, go out and buy some dish better than that one and give it to the woman to whom the first one belonged, so that she has something better. There might have been sentimental memories connected with that one, somebody she loved gave it to her. Buy one that is at least twice as good and give it to her, so she will remember you with pleasure there afterwards.’ And it works! It really does work. The women went on saying, ‘oh, that’s alright, forget about it.’ But they didn’t forget about it and didn’t feel better about it until restitution was made. And a lot of the tension that is so commonplace among women in any women’s group in a church began to dissipate with that. Now that wasn’t my way, it was God’s way. God says restitution is His law. It is His requirement. And it does work in the church and in the home.

My daughter dropped a kettle, a very expensive enameled one, big heavy ironware, with an enamel finish, and of course the enamel cracked and fell out inside. And so I told her, fine, your mother’s getting a new kettle. Well, she went out and priced it, and the price had gone up over the few years that Dorothy had had it, and it came to $60. And it hurt Joanna when she put out the $60, and I said, the old one is now yours. But, she felt better about it when she did, and of course Dorothy felt better about it as a result. It works in the home, or any place.

Restitution is God’s requirement. The purpose is to establish His order. God Himself works towards restitution. Man having by his sin, by listening to the tempter, destroyed God’s order. God works through the prophets and through His Law and finally through Jesus Christ and His atonement to restore His order. The first great step in that is regeneration. Then the regenerate, who now have the capacity to do God’s work are by obedience to His Law-Word to restore His order wherever they are, in whatever they do, and God in His own way is working toward that great restoration which is the New Creation when all things shall be made new. Where there shall be a total restoration of all things and we shall live eternally in that glorious and restored creation, and where the wicked, who will not be a part of restitution, or restoration, are cast into he dump heap of the universe, there to have what they want forever—their own will.

C.S. Lewis has ably described the difference between Heaven and Hell. He said Heaven is the habitation of those who say to God, “Thy will be done.” And Hell is the habitation of those to whom God says, “thy will be done.” And that of course, has a great deal of truth to it.

Thus, our scripture makes clear that a community, a nation, bears the guilt of innocent blood, of every violation of God’s order and its punishment accumulates until judgment finally accumulates. And we are, very clearly I believe, moving in a time of judgment. Remember that because Israel did not obey God’s Law of the Sabbath of the Land, the land was taken from it and had to rest for seventy years, until the Sabbath of the Land that it had missed was fully kept by force—God’s force. And I believe we are in a time of judgment because we have been in a time of apostasy.

In my Biblical Philosophy of History, I deal with the fact that in the 15 years, I believe, after World War II, there were more natural disasters by considerable measure (earthquakes, flood and the like, tornadoes and so on), than in the 50 years before. And since I wrote that, the pace of these natural disasters has greatly increased. Now, since not a sparrow falls apart from our Father in Heaven, I believe it is God’s judgment that these disasters are occurring all over the world, in judgment for the wickedness of man, his waywardness. Punishing men who will not make restitution, who will not seek first of all the restitution He requires through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and second, who will not man-to-man make restitution in terms of His Law-Word. Thus, we must remember that we must give unto God that which is due of our persons, of our substance, of that kind of law order which He requires; because God’s order will prevail if not in faith and obedience, then in judgment. Every sin must be atoned for, or it is judged. Either you are under the blood of Jesus Christ and you then move in faithfulness to Him to yield Him that obedience which is His due and to men in Christ that restitution which is theirs, or you are under His judgment.

Thus it was Zaccheus was truly a believer, for he knew what God required of him, because when he confessed his faith in the Lord, he said, “If I have robbed any man, I will restore unto him four-fold and five-fold.” And our Lord said, “This day is salvation come unto this house.” The day when we as a people recognize the requirements of God’s Word, that day too salvation will begin to descend upon our household as individuals, as communities and as a nation. God is not mocked. What a man sows, that also he reaps.

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee for the glory of Thy Word, and for the glorious future it proclaims unto us. We thank Thee our Father that Thou hast begun the great work of restoration through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ and Thou hast summoned us to this task of restitution and restoration and doest summon all men to believe in Christ and to become a part of the great restoration which Thou shalt usher in in all its fullness and glory with His coming again. Make us ever faithful, oh Lord to Thy Word and joyful therein that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.

[Audience] To what do you attribute the modern tongues movement?

[Rushdoony] The modern tongues movement is an attempt to find a way of sanctification. Now, one of the problems in the past century has been Antinomianism. Antinomianism is being anti-law. This did not characterize the Puritans and earlier generations of Christians throughout the centuries. There was Antinomianism, but it was limited and it was recognized to be heretical. People knew by and large, that we are justified by the grace of God through Christ’s atoning blood. We are sanctified by our obedience to the Law of God.

Now one of the things that happened in the past century or a little more, was that the attitude began to develop that the Law is dead. Now as I mentioned last night, the scripture never says the Law is dead, but that we are dead to the Law as an indictment, a death penalty, not as the righteousness of God. So because the Law, when we are sinners, is to us only a death penalty, when we accept the atoning death of Christ as our redemption, and we die in Christ, we area dead to the Law as a death penalty. Now as the new man who loves God, it is the righteousness of God, it is the way of sanctification.

Well, uh, Antinomianism began to replace this with a feeling that the Holy Spirit somehow worked in some special way, that one had to seek some kind of special manifestation of the Spirit. And they failed to distinguish (as scripture does), between the gifts of the Spirit and the Gift of the Spirit, which is the Spirit Himself. When our Lord, after the resurrection, met with the apostles in the Upper Room, He breathed upon them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” They received the Spirit then. Later they received the temporary gifts of the Spirit, which passed away with the Fall of Jerusalem.

Now, the Gift of the Spirit is ours as Christians. But people sought these gifts because they had failed to see God’s appointed way: the Law as the means of sanctification. And I know that I am thinking in particular of one very fine man who felt unhappy with the tendency of the church to be stagnant and dead and he wanted holiness, so he began to seek for it in charismatic manifestations. Well, he was right, the church was stagnant and dead, because they were saved, but they weren’t growing. The way of growth had not been pointed out to them. And so until you come back to a view of the Law as the way of sanctification, the Charismatic Movement is going to prosper.

The Charismatic Movement also is heretical with regard to salvation in that it holds to a doctrine of infused righteousness instead of imputed righteousness. We are not saved because any righteousness has been infused in us by the Holy Spirit, but because it has been imputed to us by Christ’s atoning work. And this is why in the Charismatics, they do not have, when you press them, a sound Doctrine of the Atonement.

One of the greatest of the Nazarene theologians, back in the 30s said the atonement was a mystery. And of course it was. Because their doctrine of righteousness was infused righteousness, rather than the imputed righteousness as the result of Christ’s death and resurrection.

[Audience] Does God hold us responsible for things we might be forced to do, like at gun point?

[Laughter]

[Rushdoony] Yes, because even at gun point we can say no and die. You see, life isn’t the highest and most important virtue. Now that sounds easy to say from the comfort of a pulpit, but people can live that way, and I come from a people who did. As a matter of fact, my father was the first man to die in bed for countless generations, because we are Armenians (my wife is Scotch but my background is Armenian). And both my grandparents were killed. One grandfather- uh, my great-grandfather- no, my grandfather (paternal grandfather), was first blinded for persisting in preaching the Word of God. And he insisted on preaching it because it was his calling. I might add that there is an unbroken line of clergymen in my family, back to the 300s. And then, after that, because he still persisted (he memorized the scriptures and continued), they killed him. You don’t have to live. So, we are responsible for everything we do. If we say that gun point absolves us of responsibility, it makes valid the old joke that was common in Nevada when I was there about the alcoholic who had promised his wife he was never going to drink, and he came home roaring drunk one day and he insisted somebody had pulled a gun on him and made him take a drink. Well, you can see what happens. We can always find somebody to pull a gun on us, if we are going to have absolution by virtue of a gun point. But a gun does not give us absolution.