Sources of Morality

11 Then I asked the angel, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?”

12 Again I asked him, “What are these two olive branches beside the two gold pipes that pour out golden oil?”

13 He replied, “Do you not know what these are?”

“No, my lord,” I said.

14 So he said, “These are the two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth.””

It is imperative nowadays for any national magazine to be a success, that it have a continual report on what other people are doing, their styles of dress, their activities. For any national periodical to overlook these things is to court destruction, to court ruin, financial ruin. And so we have in every national publication a continual round of reporting on what is popular in art, and on the newest fads in music, the far out styles of clothing, the newest, most radical, and most popular ideas in housing, and a variety of similar things.

Moreover, we get an extensive reporting on this sort of thing in every kind of communication media. Television, Radio, the daily newspapers, every where we turn. We are continually kept up to the moment on the most recent, the most modern, the most advanced style in everything. And of course, being up to date in terms of modernity is so essential that we have to retranslate our bibles so that it speaks to the idiom of today, We have to revamp the church so that it meets the modern dictates, and we have this insistence on modernity, on meeting the changing moods and fashions and styles of men, everywhere we turn. Why? Well, the answer is very simply this, that instead of being oriented to God and His word, we are now oriented to the group. And that which controls men today is no longer their conscience under God and His word. It is no longer faith, but it is the group; what other people are doing, and what other people expect of them.

This morning, just out of curiosity, I checked the tv guide, and sure enough there are several soap opera in the morning. And Soap operas under radio achieved a great popularity, and Soap operas also fall into this same category. Because they present not living in terms of principle, but living in terms of example, and their influence is religious on people. They present a continual example, and people today cannot act on principle because they have no faith, they act on examples, from following the group.

This temptation is man’s temptation in any age, but certainly in our age this demand for meeting the dictates of the group rather than the word of God, is as prevalent as it has ever been in history. And so it is that the word of God through the prophet Zechariah is especially timely for our age, I think perhaps more timely than when Zechariah spoke.

It was a time of discouragement. The people were led by Zechariah, a prince, by Zerubbabel, a prince of the house of David, and by Joshua the high Priest. Thus they had Godly leadership in Church and state. But what was this church but a minor province of the Persian Empire, and Zerubbabel’s powers were exceedingly limited, almost inconsequential. And Joshua the High Priest having a limited flock of some 40,000 people, many of whom were opportunists and time servers and hypocrites, had really a relatively small flock, the foundation had been laid for the temple, but we didn’t have a building. And so it seemed indeed as though nothing could be more insignificant than the work of Zerubbabel and Joshua as they stood surrounded by a world of evil, and had evil in their own midst.

And so it was that the discouragement was very great, and so of course to that it seemed to them that all that they did was more or less futile and insignificant.

Zechariah was given a vision of a golden lampstand. And this golden lampstand was fed by golden pipes from two olive trees, one on either hand. And the olive oil flowed into the lamps to give a bright shining flame, not a flickering flame but a burning flame, supernaturally fed, coming through these two olive trees inexhaustively to this golden lampstand. And Zechariah was perplexed by the vision and asked for the meaning.

The golden lampstand he understood, this was a symbol for the kingdom of God in all its fullness, but the two trees, what were they? “These are the two anointed ones,” he was told. “Who stand before the Lord of the whole earth.” The anointed ones were Zerubbabel and Joshua. God’s called servant in the church and in the state. And God declared: That man should not look at the feebleness of outward circumstances, but the certainty of Gods power. For the work of Gods kingdom is not by human power, and its advancement or retardation is not the work of man but the work of God. Therefore, if the strength to do Gods work comes from God, the weakness and frailty of man cannot be an obstacle, for it is as saint Paul declared: When we are weak, that we are the most strong in Christ.

Zerubbabel had very few resources, very limited powers, but the work was one which had been begun in the Lord, and which was to be completed by God and not by man, and therefore however feeble Zerubbabel and Joshua appeared to be. There was more with them than there was against them.

For as God declared to Zechariah, “Not by might, or by armies, not by might or by armies, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.”

This then was the choice. Were they going to move in terms of God or circumstances. If we are to move by circumstances, by what the group does and says, we are going to feel hopeless as we face the future, because the world is against us. And circumstances if they are going to dictate to us, require that we surrender our hope in God. But if we are going to move by God, then we must not be disheartened by circumstances. It is not only unwise, but it is definitely wicked to be disheartened because of the feebleness of our strength, when it is God’s work we undertake. We dare not then allow the enemies we must encounter or the work we must do to dishearten us, because God is our strength, our glory and our hope, and to despair is to deny God.

And so it is that God said to Zerubbabel, “Who art thou, oh great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain. Who art thou oh great mountain, oh great obstacle, enemy, hindrance to Gods servants? Before Zerubbabel the mountain shall become a plain; because it is through Zerubbabel that I shall bring forth my kingdom and my only begotten Son.” And the hands of Zerubbabel having laid the foundation of this house, his hand shall also finish it.

And then with an eye to all the people of God, the Lord declared: “For who hath despised the day of small things? Who dares despise the day of small beginnings?” Are you going to move in terms of sight, or in terms of faith? And if you are going to move in terms of sight, then you will despise the day of small things, of small beginnings. And you will say wherever Gods work is begun, wherever a foundation is established in terms of Gods purposes: “This is futile, this is nothing as against the monstrousness of the evil.” This it is to despise the day of small things.

God or circumstances. Will we allow circumstances to be our God? Or will the Lord reign over us. Will we walk by faith or by sight? And what will be the source of our morality? God or the group? Because when we allow examples, the group, to influence us, then we say: “The group is our source of morality” rather than God and His word.

It is important to recognize that historically there have been two sources of morality. We are so used to thinking of morality, of ethics as something that is derived from theology, the word of God; that we forget that outside of the Bible morality has never been derived from religion, from the word of God. The historic source of morality, of ethics, has been politics. So that, historically, ethics has been a branch of political philosophy, of political science. This it was in antiquity, this it was in Greece for example. Aristotle’s Ethics is a branch of his political theory. “Man,” he says, “is a social, a political animal. Therefore his morality is to be determined by the state, by the group.” Hence his political philosophy, political science is the theory of mans relationship one to another, morality, ethics, is therefore a branch of politics. This was the theory in ancient Rome. This was the theory in Ancient China, and it was your political philosophers like Confucius who established your morality in China.

This is the morality of Shintoism, a political morality. This is the morality of every modern philosophy. Of Marxism, of Fabian Socialism, of our modern education philosophies, and their basic moral principles, equality, brotherhood, democracy and so on, are derived from political philosophy, from the group. Nowhere except in Biblical faith is morality derived from the doctrine of God, and from the word of God.

I read this past week a very interesting book which gives a very concrete and one might add a very devout example of political morality. It is a work edited by Doctor Peter D. (Nubower?) M.D., published in 1965 and the title: Children in Collectives, Child Rearing Aims and Practices in the Kibbutz. It is a study of the children in the collective farms, the Kibbutz, of Israel. These are socialist communities. They are concerned with therefore, a systematic morality, and therefore the morality is political. The whole world is one family, and therefore on the collective, everyone present is one family. The children are not reared by their parents but by the collective, and they must regard all as brothers and sisters, and all as their parents, all women as their mothers and all men as their fathers. They are not brought up with their brothers or sisters or parents, they are reared together, four to a room, two boys and two girls, until the age of 18 when they are drafted. The morality they are taught, the way of life they live is regarded as highly moral, because it is a part of the morality and the philosophy of the state, and for them morality is a branch of politics. This is true in the Soviet Union, it is true throughout Western Europe, it is true in the United States; only we have not gone quite as far in planning it, but it is the basic philosophy of our schools. Morality is a branch of political science, of political philosophy.

And many people who in theory disagree with this, who are shocked when you tell them about life in a Kibbutz, are none the less guilty of the same kind of faith, the same kind of morality, because their life, their morality is basically derived from the group. And they look around them and their whole principle is one of: “What is the group doing? And how big a group can we get for our cause?”

Someone recently who claimed to be a Christian and a conservative was belligerently insistent that nothing could be done for the conservative cause or the Christian cause unless you lined up millions. In other words, all power is in the group, and not in God.

The word of the Lord to Zechariah, to Israel and to us remains the same. “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, not by might or by armies, or by numbers, nor by power but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

What is the source of our morality? For who hath despised the day of small things? Those whose faith is in the group, in the mob. Thus it is that the future belongs not to the millions, not to the masses, not to the majorities, but to dedicated groups like us and others, who commit themselves unto God, unto His word, and to His Spirit, and who trusting in the word of God, refuse to despise the day of small things. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us unto the day of small things. Thou hast called us to be with Thee. And we pray our Father that Thou wouldst confirm us in this faith; so that we may not fall into the sin of looking at the masses, unto the armies and the arrays of human power but unto Thee, and standing in terms of Thy spirit, may prevail. So that the great mountains and obstacles before may become as a plain, because of Thy power, Thy Spirit, and Thy calling. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?... Do you think that because of the fact that true morality is in fact from the word of God, …?... that this is innate to people …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, when Man rebels against God he is at war with himself, so that the ungodly cannot help but be mentally disturbed. They are waging war continually against themselves when they declare war against God. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very true. Too many people who profess a faith in Biblical morality at the same time are actually following the group. And there’s is the most difficult role because they are trying to serve two masters, and our Lord said ultimately this is impossible, no man can serve two masters. They are going to hate the one and follow the other. So it is a futile attempt that some Christians, so called are making, to serve two masters.

[Audience Member] I read something this week, very hurriedly, ...?... clearly it seems from what I read, that there is no such thing as free will of man, that either you obey the will of God or the will of Satan.

[Rushdoony] Well, the whole question of free will is an important one that is so often misunderstood. First of all, only God has an absolutely free will, because we are not free in any primary sense. We are not free for example, to be born when we choose, to live as long as we want, to be male or female or brilliant or musically inclined, we have no choice in these things, we are free to be what we are. So that our freedom is a secondary freedom, not a primary freedom. We are free to be what we are.

Now, we can be responsible in the use of our God given abilities and aptitudes, or irresponsible, so that our freedom thus is a secondary freedom. Now, there are four conditions of man, four states of man historically. First there was the state of innocence in the Garden of Eden, when man secondary freedom was basically good, he was innocent of an evil will. The second state of man was the state of the fall, the state of sin. In this condition man is basically inclined and in every area inclined, in his will, in his mind, in every area inclined to evil, and amenable to the influence of Satan, so that having submitted to Satan’s temptation he is primarily disposed to Satan’s influence. The third state of man is the state of grace. In this state the man has been freed from Satan’s influence; so that his will is freed from Satan, although not perfectly in that he is not perfectly sanctified in this life, and now he is free in grace to obey Gods calling progressively, so that he is beginning to find his true freedom which is to be determined and guided by God. Because ours is not an absolute freedom detached from God, but to be free under God, to be determined by Him, to be governed by Him.

The fourth state of man which is open only to the saved is the state of glory. When in the eternal order we are wholly good and wholly free under God because we are truly free only when we are truly governed and determined by God. As saint Augustine said: “Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” Similarly, we are never free till we are free in Christ. “If the Son of man make thee free, and are ye free indeed.” Our Lord said. So that our freedom is a secondary freedom, and the nature of that freedom varies in the four states of man, from being free to do evil, to being wholly free under God.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all Aesop’s fables as you read them in school represents, let’s say, a Christianized version. Originally they were more openly Greek in their total morality, but the stories have been basically revised over the centuries to give them although the same basic Greek character remains, amore Christian kind of moral conclusion. I believe someone recently translated the original form of Aesop’s fables, and they are quite different. Second, we can recognize that Homer is a great Greek poet, and certainly on the collegiate level, those who are specializing in history and in the history of thought should know Homer, but the emphasis on Greek mythology and on Greek poetry throughout our curriculum is a part of the paganization of our education curriculum. Because the basic morality there is the group, it is a social mores, and this has been its appeal throughout the history of the west to many, many minds. They prefer it to the bible, because this is something that is not hard and fast, and is reasonable you know. It doesn’t ask a man to stand out from the group.

For example, in the Iliad, you have Odysseus and the other Greek heroes involved in a great hassle. What has happened? A girl has been seized, and the question is, who is going to have her? One of the Greek heroes takes her, another Hercules, another pulls rank on him to take possession of her. And how is it settled? Well the group gets together to decide how to arbitrate this without breaking up their forces. There is no concern about right and wrong there, either with respect to the king or Hercules or the girl, the question of Justice there is what the group decides in its arbitration. And of course, this is the kind of thing that is basically acceptable to social morality, and throughout Homer this is the essence of it, and his morality is far superior because the group was not as perverted a group in his day as you find for example in Plato. In Plato this comes to the natural conclusion, communism, and Plato’s Republic is of course the blue print for a communist state.

The ethics is totally the ethics of the group, so that you not only arbitrate things, what is just and unjust in terms of the group determining it, now your whole life is determined by the group. This is Greek morality, and this is why it is so popular in our education system, because this is what they want to use to supplant the Bible, and we must realize that for the Greeks homer had all the authority of Scripture, virtually. So they are supplanting the holy book for our holy book.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, the existentialist is a moral anarchist but a political statist. In other words, the existentialist says: “There can be no law that governs me, I am free to follow the dictates of my biology, so that anything I want to do is morally right.” So that in the realm of what we as Christian consider to be Moral action, he is an anarchist. But, because he is also a pragmatist, in other words he knows he has to live in a world of real people he cannot have anarchy in the political sphere, so there he is a statist. And since there is no law above and over man, or the state, the state has total power. And a truly existentialist state will not be guided by any dictates of the past; and those who best have divorced themselves from religion and social mores are best suited to govern for everybody, because they can give you as they guide the state the best existentialist kind of operation. So the existentialist is a moral anarchist and a political totalitarian. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The kind you heard. Without any violence in them, without anyone losing…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] None. I recall in the early 50’s being invited to sit in on a youth council meeting in a city where I had newly gone, and the gist of the meeting was this, from the very social workers, women from various women’s clubs, and city officials and the like, on the traumatic effect of baseball on grade school children. Baseball is an especially bad game, and it should be uprooted from American life. Why? Because one team always loses, and on both teams there are always traumatic incidents, a boy strikes out, or is thrown out, or he is out in field and he drops the ball, and this is terrible, terrible for young children to be subjected to this. Is no wonder they grow up full of hatred and malice and violence, because of all this which they suffer. So the idea is, if you rear them up in a world of sweetness and light where there are no problems, then they are going to be perfect little angels.

Now, I have seen children reared like that, on the Indian reservation one of the things that was most remarkable when you first went on to it was this: You never heard an Indian baby cry. The moment an Indian baby cried, he was promptly fed. Whenever an Indian child wanted something, food or anything else, it was gratified. If a 5 year old boy wanted to get into a game that some 12 and 14 year old boys were playing, they let him in. There was this total indulgence. And so it was that no teacher ever had any problem there with any children cutting up in class and making noise and talking out of turn, the trouble was getting one of them to open their mouth and answer a question. They just sat there without a word. And you could be in a group of a 1000 Indians speaking and you never heard a baby cry and they would be there with all their children.

Now, well, they haven’t gotten as far along. What happened when they faced the real world after having this total indulgence? They couldn’t face it. Totally incapable of meeting a competitive world. By the time they were in the 4th grade they were beginning to turn to drink. The world was too hard a world for them. And their alcoholism is one of defeat, of running away from a world where you succeed or fail, and as a result they are prone in their (?) under the influence of alcohol, to be violent. To have illusions of grandeur that they can beat everybody. Totally non competitive when they are sober, and ready to be violent when they are drunk. Now this is what they are producing. And this is one of the reasons why you are having a rising rate of alcoholism, of narcotic addiction. There was an interesting article in Life magazine which one of you passed on to me recently about the characters on sun set strip, and what is it that they like about their life? That it is totally without judgement, not one person judges anyone else, and so they dress as they please, they can become as filthy as they want, they can look any way they want, they can stink, and nobody is going to judge them because it is a society totally without any judgment.

Now, is it any wonder that this is the kind of thing that is setting the pace in our life? So that even High school kids who are not a part of the sun set strip kind of thing, find their styles from such characters, because they are being reared in terms of this non competitive living, this sweetness and light. “Don’t get involved in nasty things like baseball, you might strike out.” Yes?

[Audience Member] You mentioned in the very last verse describing the meaning of the anointed ones, that it was …?…

[Rushdoony] No, here it is Zerubbabel and Joshua who had been anointed as civil and religious official were then. In a sense you have to say today that those who are in church and state are anointed of God, they are called of Him, and they are going to be especially subject to judgment, according to scripture, because they have been faithless. So that, they represent false anointed ones; they are therefore doubly under the judgement of God. But those who are in church and state and are faithful to their calling, are the ones through whom God feeds His kingdom and nourishes it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Joshua. The faithful church and state servants. We have time for one more question if there is another? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Propaganda today to break down our parental discipline. I think one of the most vicious pieces recently was in last week’s Sunday section, magazine section of one of the papers, this week there is something comparable about what makes a mass killer, a mass murderer, and of course the answer was, it was somebody who was brought up under authority, under morality, under strict religious training, and in a family where they are addicted to the use of guns, where they believe, well, you can write your own ticket. In other words, we are the producers of mass murderers, according to this. It was as vicious a piece as you can imagine, but this is typical, and of course these parents are guilty of having apolitical morality. Their idea is that if the child is conformed to the group, then all is well with the child, but if the child is made to stand apart from the group the child is going to suffer. But the child is going to suffer if the child is not conformed to God. Because God is the real judge, not the group. And the child who is conformed to God is the one who is able to stand up to the group and be independent from it. The thing about these collective children that struck me the most forcibly, and even these writers who are so proud of the achievement of the Kibbutz with respect to these children, was that their activities are always so thoroughly governed by the group, they are shaky apart from it. They have to eye the other people and see what they are doing. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and if these people are right, then the colonial period when everyone was reared under the strictness kind of colonial discipline should have been THE age in American History of mass murders, and it was an era that was practically free of violence.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, yes.

[Audience Member] Do you think that parents are sometimes …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course the basic cause of rebellion in the child is sin, the child’s sin; however parents can sometimes do this. I recall the first congregation I ever served in the late 30’s, wincing because there was this very fine woman who was always there with her boys in the second row; and her attitude was, her folks made her go to church and it was good for her, and whether her boys liked it or not they were going to go, she made herself go, and if she could go they could to. Well, its no wonder those kids were rebellious, and they were little kids, because she treated it as though it was medicine, bad tasting medicine that she took for her own good. But in any home where the parents enjoy going to church, and look forward to Sunday, and consider it a privilege to go and learn more about the word of God, the children pick up this attitude very quickly, and they look forward to going to church, they play at being at church when they are little tots, and there is no problem. They do pick up their parents attitude, and parents who treat it as medicine are going to create children who look upon church as a painful experience.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.