The Ninth Commandment

Every Idle Word

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 14

Track: 107

Dictation Name: RR130BG107

Date: 1960s-70s

This morning, that deals with slander and begin next week and especially two weeks from now, that dealing with legal procedures.

Our text this morning is from St. Matthew 12:33-37, “Every Idle Word.” St. Matthew 12:33-37:

“33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

36 But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.

37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

If the existentialists are right, then we live in a world without any moral absolutes or any transcendental law. There is no law, then, to appeal to. Then no such thing as slander or false witness exists. All we can say is that some things are unwise to say because they may get you into trouble, and some things may be very helpful to say because they will further whatever you’re doing. And truth has nothing to do with it then. In other words, in a world of existentialism, we have a pragmatic counsel, not a moral law.

The sad fact is that existentialism is increasingly taking over the thinking of our age. And those churchmen who do not teach the law end up in the existentialist camp whether they know it or not because they are in effect only teaching people moral counsel, advice—not law.

Now scripture has a great deal to say about slander, about bearing false witness. we have dealt with many such passages, and to touch on just a few more:

o       Luke 6:41-45 we are told that slander and false witness come from an evil heart.

o       Psalm 109:3 says it arises from hatred.

o       I Timothy 5:13 declares that lack of faith plus idleness often breeds slander.

o       Proverbs11:9 says that hypocrites are addicted to slandering those who are godly, those who are righteous

o       Psalm 50:19, 20 tells us that the wicked are so addicted to it, they even slander their own family.

o       Revelation 12:10 tells us the devil is an accuser or slanderer.

o       Psalm 52:4 tells us that the wicked love to destroy men with their slander. They take pleasure in destroying godly men.

o       Proverbs 10:18 declares that anyone who indulges in slander is a fool

o       Titus 2:3 warns older women against indulging in it for lack of things to do.

o       I Timothy 3:11 declares that the wives of church officers, of people in position of responsibility must be especially careful.

o       Matthew 26:60 makes clear that Christ was the target of perjury.

o       Jude 8 tells us that rulers, people in public office are exposed to slander from filthy dreamers or false idealists.

o       Romans 3:8 and II Corinthians 6:8 make it clear that St. Paul was the target of slander.

o       A number of passages such as: Psalm 38:12, 109:2 and I Peter 4:4 make it clear that the people of God are always exposed to false witness.

o       Many, many passages such as Psalm 34:13, I Peter 3:10, and many others give us instructions concerning our conduct in relationship to false witness.

Some of the practical effects of false witness are cited. It separates friends, it gives a deadly wound, it leads to trouble, to discord among brethren and to murder. The unbridled tongue is represented as an evil desire to lord it over other men by debasing them, and it receives the greater condemnation because of greater accountability. But of all these passages, perhaps the most telling is the one that we read as our scripture lesson, our Lord’s words. “But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.”

Every idle word; that phrase can be translated as ‘every useless word, every careless word, every inoperative, non-working word.’ What does it mean? It means that man’s life must be a true witness. It must bear good fruit to God. Just as we plant trees in an orchard or in our backyard and expect those fruit trees to bear fruit, so we are God’s creatures, and are required to bear good fruit to God. Every idle word is a useless, inoperative fruit. Every idle word means that we are bearing not good fruit, but worthless fruit, useless fruit. Idle words are thus pointless words, words apart from man’s calling under God, idle as against productive. If every idle word is so severely condemned, how much more so every wicked word such as perjury and slander?

Now scripture makes it clear that the courts must deal with the wicked word, with false witness, with perjury, with slander, and God says He will judge every idle word Himself. And the scripture goes on to declare, “For by thy word shall thou be justified,” (or acquitted)” and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” There’s clearly a legal reference here. In other words, man apart from Christ is at his best, given to idle words. He’s not bearing fruit in his life or in his words, to God. And therefore, his every idle word is brought before God on judgment day, and he is either acquitted or condemned in terms of his life and words. Words are thus a basic part of man’s fruit, of man’s production and are so to be judged.

Now this is not a counsel of sweetness and light in our speech. Our Lord Himself said judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. We are to judge. We are not to stand back and be idle in our words, as some people are who think they are avoiding judgment. It’s become fashionable in some circles today not to condemn abortion. Why? A great many doctors are excusing themselves from taking stand, some of whom pretend to be Christian, by saying, oh well, who are we to judge? Now that is not being godly, it’s being wicked; perverse, because we are commanded to judge righteous judgment.

In Revelation 22:15 we have a declaration from our Lord concerning those who were denied citizenship in the Kingdom of God. They are described in these classifications:

o       Dogs (that is, homosexuals)

o       Sorcerers (that is, those who practice magic, who play at being God)

o       Whoremongers (the sexually unchaste)

o       Idolaters (those who are worshipers of false gods)

o       Whosoever loveth and makes a lie (those who are guilty of false witness)

On the other hand, blessed are they who do His commandments that they may have right to the Tree of Life and may enter in to the gates into the city.

Now, the classification, ‘whosoever loveth and maketh a lie’ is important. The scriptures I read earlier made it clear over and over again that the liar loves his lie. He loves the destruction he works with it. It is his way of playing god, by causing trouble, by trifling with the lives of people and causing untold damage. His way of striking at men better than himself.

Now in every age of history since the fall of man, since Cain, the first liar, lying, perjury, slander has been common. But it has remained to Humanism, especially since World War I to make it prominent. One of the interesting things from the 20s through the 50s was the rise to prominence of someone who has created (now that he’s passed from the scene into retirement), a legion of followers. That man was Walter Winchell. There’ve been books written about him (I have a couple of them), which point out how must of what he published was slander—deliberate falsehoods. How, for example, when he went on the air, he stipulated that the radio stations took over all the law suits, which gave him all the more freedom to talk without any restraint, because someone else had to pay off. And yet, even though Hearst himself regarded him as something too low to associate with, he hired him as did many others, because in spite of all the law suits for his falsehoods, people lapped it up. They loved a lie. They loved a lie.

And today, there is and always will be, as long as you have an age that is ungodly, this love of a lie. And the more flagrant the lie, the better the circulation it gets.

The lie has become basic to government policy. It has become basic to the writing of history. And we should not be surprised at it. When you have a powerful government anywhere in the world that denies God, it will make itself its own god and be its own arbiter of what is right and wrong and what is truth and error.

Some years ago, a very interesting episode happened, a very sick and ugly one. A very distinguished American scientist, Dr. Frederick A. Cook, on April 21, 1908 became the first man to reach the North Pole. Dr. Cook had a long record as a distinguished scientist. But at this point, he stepped on the toes of the U.S. Navy because meanwhile, a navy engineer, Robert. E. Peary was also trying to get to the pole. He arrived there almost a year later, in April of 1909. He returned to embark upon, with all kinds of help in high places, a campaign of vilification of Dr. Cook. Everything was done to make him out a liar. Supposedly, he never reached the pole. Subsequently, Dr. Cook was arrested and tried for an oil swindle, ostensibly. He was a geologist for a company doing oil work in Texas and Arkansas. The company had taps in tremendously wealthy fields producing, subsequently became among the richest oil fields in the United States. These facts were not brought out in the trial and Dr. Cook was actually sentenced to prison as a swindler, when he had swindled no one.

And in the course of this, the judge, a Federal judge, John M. Killits of Toledo, Ohio, in passing sentence, declared in part, “This is one of the times, Dr. Cook, when your peculiar and persuasive, hypnotic personality fails you, isn’t it? You’ve at last got to the point where you can’t bunkle anybody. You’ve come to the mountain and can’t reach the latitude. It’s beyond you. First we had Ananias. Then we had Machiavelli. The 20th century produced Frederick A. Cook. Poor Ananias, he is forgotten and Machiavelli, we have Frederick A. Cook. Cook, this deal of yours and this conception of yours and this execution of yours was so damnably crooked that I know the men who defended you defended you with their handkerchiefs to their noses, rank smelling to Heaven. I wish I could do with you as I might, the way I feel about you. I wish I were not circumscribed by some conventions that I think are mistaken. I don’t think you ought to run at large at all. You are too dangerous. Undoubtedly you’ve gotten those ill-gotten gains of yours laid away.” (Dr. Cook never received a penny) “I don’t see how any living man who has any appreciation of the standards of decency and honesty can suggest that you ought to hold a penny of it, because every penny of it was robbed from orphans and widows and credulous old people, people in the depths of poverty, people anxious to get money enough so as to insure a decent burial.” (Nobody lost money) “Oh, God, Cook, haven’t you got any sense of decency at all or is your vanity so imperious that you don’t respond to what must be calls of decency to you? Aren’t you haunted at night? Can you sleep? What’s the use of talking to you? You’re effrontery, vanity and nerve are so monumental, so cold-steeled, so imperious, so adamantine to what I have to say that the only satisfaction I get in saying that is that I know I am voicing the feelings of the decent people of Texas without any question. Those of them with any brains enough not to fall for what some of these fooling people call your personality, it don’t know where it is. They call it personality whether it is poker face or false face. It is strange that the prosecuting officers have suggested to me that I be not quite so stiff on you. It is my own disposition and my {?} for such crooks as you.”

Now this is what was published in the paper, not the facts of the case. It has since been fully established that Dr. Cook indeed did reach the pole, but there’s not a word of it in the textbooks.

What else can you expect? A government that does not acknowledge God will be its own god and will have its own standards for truth. If you think this is surprising, consider another case.

Two other men stepped on the toes of the Federal Government. However, they did it publically, so it was a little more difficult to un-do what they had done. It was the Wright brothers. They flew a plane at Kitty Hawk. But the Federal government had a scientist, Dr. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institute, who was also trying to do the same. His plane could not get off the ground. What happened? The Wright brothers couldn’t sell their plane in this country for a long time. They went abroad. They had no ends of trouble. They were denied again and again, the title to being the first men to fly. As a matter of fact, about 10 years after the Wright brothers, they took the Langley plane out and remade it. It was structurally unsound to begin with. It did not have the right principles for flight. But they rebuilt it and flew it to prove that it was the first plane to fly. The most recent reference books are beginning to replace the Wright brothers with Langley, so the next generation won’t know about this upstart who challenged and surpassed a government-paid scientist.

It would be possible to go in hour after hour and cite the perversions of history—recent history. But should we be surprised? When men are without God, they make themselves god and they rewrite history. They distort reality to suit them and if they stand in their way, these men like Dr. Cook, they are sent to prison. And their name and reputation destroyed.

Men without God are those who love and make a lie. This is our Lord’s saying. And he spelled it out from one end of scripture to the other. And the many verses I’ve cited earlier are just a fraction of those in scripture that emphasize this fact. The ungodly love a lie. It’s their way of playing God. And it’s their way of trying to remake the world in their own image.

Ungodly man, a Humanistic age, is unwilling to follow the truth. It follows the path of power, and the lie is its handiest tool for power. And therefore it blinds itself to what it does not want to see. And it blinds itself to what others have done. We laugh at the Russians, saying it was the Russians who invented the automobile and the electric light and the telephone and all things else. Why shouldn’t they say that? After all, if they bothered, they could prove that we do that sort of thing all the time, too. And haven’t we done it in this country with Dr. Cook and the Wright brothers and with others as well? Why shouldn’t they get into the act as well? After all, it isn’t truth that is the issue, but power of these people. And so what they do not want to see, they blind themselves to and then blind others, too.

Most people around us are the same way. Being godless, they are not interested in the truth. But what’s in it for me? What will get me ahead?

Perhaps the greatest doctor of the Catholic Church was St. Alphonsus de Ligouri. I don’t share the estimation of the Catholic Church for him. I’ve read Ligouri. But he had a very interesting and amusing little habit. He enjoyed the music in the music halls of Naples, where all kinds of licentious, girly-acts were on the stage. And it was improper for a man of the cloth to be there, especially somebody who was a distinguished doctor and theologian of the Church. And so St. Alphonsus de Ligouri had a very simple answer to that: he was very nearsighted. And so he would go to the music halls were all these nude acts were and he would promptly take off his glasses and listen to the music. And then no one could say he was there watching the girls. He was listening to the music and everything was all right.

Well, this is the world around us, is it not? Men take off their glasses, as it were, so they will not see the lie. Because to admit it is there, to see it there is to say that they have to take a stand and therefore they will not. What else can we expect? Their lies are idle because they are not under God. And therefore, their every word is an idle word, an unproductive, a useless word. Every word of Humanism is an idle word. And every word of man apart from Christ is an idle word and shall be judged. Therefore, we are called upon to stand in terms of God and His Law-Word, in which case our whole lives and our every word is in terms of His calling and is spoken in terms of knowing His truth, discerning and judging the world and all things in terms of His truth. Then our every word becomes not idle, but productive.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy every word. Fill our lives with Thy Word so that our every word is governed, our standards of judgment ruled by Thy Word so that we may speak productively and act and live productively unto Thee. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes.

[Audience] Ah, Ohio … {?} … in the case, and was wrong about that and clearly was not {?} standard {?}

[Rushdoony] No, this is a further alteration of history. Dr. – ah, Admiral Peary had in his expedition, a colored cook. Henson was his name, I believe. And as they made the dash to the pole, they established camps along the way for their return. And they left various members of the party at these camps. At the last point before they went—I believe he either left this colored cook or took him along, I’d forgotten—but the point is, some believe that Henson was the first man there so it was a colored man, so they’re bent on twisting the story to make this colored man the first man at the pole. So if they do come to that conclusion, it will serve Peary right, because he was vicious in what he did and conspired to do to Dr. Cook.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} now, and all things that mattered are in… {?} find {?} amazing … {?} in the textbook… {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. So much of our history today is so thoroughly doctored that it will take a generation to—or two—to undo the damage. All we can do is to teach basically the Christian faith, the Biblical Law, and little by little, as time passes and Christian textbooks are written (and it will take generations), little by little, the damage will be undone. Undone.

There is a deliberate attempt you see, to run down the past, especially the Christian past.

I had a, a… interesting little experience about a year ago. I read a historical journal. And it was a very interesting article because it dealt with a part of the country I know, about the West. And bathing in the West, a generation ago, in the farm and the ranch and the mining areas. Well, that was something I knew something about. I grew up on a farm. I lived in ranching country. I lived in mining camps. I knew a great deal about them. And the article was entirely false—entirely false—ridiculously so. All the man had done was to give the impression, you see how crude and primitive and unwashed people were. And today, how enlightened we are. And so I wrote and I said this article is obviously false in terms of the kinds of experience I’ve had. Now, there are old-timers living who can tell you about the mining camps of Nevada and of California of a generation ago, up to World War II, which is the time you include. Why don’t you consult them? I never got an answer. Course, they’re not interested, you see. This is the kind of thing they perpetuate.

And just this week I was interested, on the same subject of bathing, to read, for example, in the court of Richard II, at the time of Richard II, the preference for bathing in running water. Now, obviously they apparently had running water in their bath houses, because this deals with bathing on the part of the nobility and the gentry and the middle classes, and so on. Running water—they had some kind of shower structure in their bath rooms and bath houses. But we’re not told this, because it’s much nicer to think about those people back then when they were all Christians and {?} a Christian civilization as being a very dirty people. But you can go back to Charlemagne’s time and you find that Charlemagne, coming centuries before Richard II was a great one for daily hot baths. That’s not the picture we have of the age, is it?

Yes.

[Audience] Uh, I’d be interested to in where you’d {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, there’re a number of books that have been written about the Dr. Cook situation, but Andrew A. Freeman, The Case for Dr. Cook, New York {?} McCann, 1961 is an excellent one because Freeman spent a great many years himself researching the matter because he started out very hostile to Dr. Cook and his editor; he rejected a Cook manuscript from another expedition saying the man’s a fraud, why should we deal with him? And so when the facts began to come in, by way of making amends. Freeman himself researched the matter carefully and wrote a very fine book about Dr. Cook.

[Audience] Who {?} then? {?} …what I understand it … {?} chronologically, uh, there was a little {?} controversy … {?} …. The first man to … {?} and there was … {?}

[Rushdoony] They have since taken the photograph he took on Mt. McKinley, and found by taking another picture from the same place that he did. So that also has been substantiated.

[Audience] That picture doesn’t {?} … particularly a man on top of a telephone {?} man can be anywhere, however, he could to on … {?} 12 days … {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, y---

Yes.

[Audience] The called back into them, {?} got a picture … {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I’ll refer you to Freeman and other writers, there’s along bibliography on the subject, and the Mt. McKinley thing has resulted in the vindication. Even Life Magazine had a vindication a few years ago of the McKinley episode.

[Audience] {?} …. Right now? I … {?}

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Mm, hm..

[Audience] {?}

[Audience] Yeah, [laughter?]

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Do you know {?}

[Rushdoony] First of all, it depends on the person. If a person is supposedly a Christian, you have a responsibility to speak to them. But if they are not, it is useless. You can’t touch tar without getting pitch on yourself. There’s no point in dealing with such people. A liar will only rejoice in the fact that you are upset over it and will only increase his activity.

Yes.

[Audience] I am in …. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, now The Passover Plot is a book of total nonsense, fiction, radically anti-Christian, and the only person who will believe a book like that is somebody who wants to believe a lie, wants to have an excuse for saying, I don’t have to believe in Jesus Christ, you see the whole thing is a fake. It’s a very childish book.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, you see it’s a case of making and loving a lie.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Just walk around her. A person who shows a taste for that sort of thing is no one to associate with, because they have chosen a lie, self-consciously and deliberately, and if they want the devil’s side, they are making it clear where they stand. And it’s—our Lord says not to cast pearls before swine, nor holy things before dogs.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] She doesn’t want to see, you see. So nothing you say is going to change her. It’s only as God, by His grace, so shatters her lie and her life that she will ever see.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, now some of these groups begin the day by saying, I’m told, they repeat first thing in the morning, “I’m God’s perfect child.” Anyone who can say that with a straight face—[Laughter] loves a lie! [Laughter]

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you.

[Audience] I said I … {?}

[Rushdoony] No, they do not recognize the Trinity. A lot of groups use the Orthodox language, but they put another content into it and they make all of us gods, ultimately, so that we have to be careful of some of these groups that use the language of orthodoxy but give it a totally different content, a different meaning. They have the façade, but not the reality.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?} And I, I was …. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, now... who… the question, who are the swine or the dogs before whom we are not to cast pearls or holy things is a good one. And it is one we have to face, because too many people feel they have a duty in any and every circumstance to make a witness. And this is not true. Definitely not true, and this particular verse makes it clear that it is not true.

For example, on occasion I’ve had university students tell me about the particularly depraved kind of character they have as a professor, who is foul-mouthed, who takes a delight in being abusive of anything that is godly, who expresses his contempt in the most ugly language for the Bible and for scripture, and I tell them, there’s nothing you can do in a situation like this. Just keep your mouth shut, do your work, give him the answers that the textbook requires and get out of there as quickly as you can. This is a sound course. And those who feel, oh no, I’ve got to make a witness wind up getting a D or an F. And that’s not godly. They haven’t accomplished a thing. They’ve just been fools, thinking I’ve got to make a witness and they stick their neck out when the result is predictable and it doesn’t accomplish a thing except to satisfy the professor in giving him a target for abuse the rest of the quarter or semester.

Now this is the kind of thing our Lord was talking about. You don’t do things that are pointless. In fact, he said, if people will not hear you in the one city, shake the dust off your feet and go on to the next. Don’t stay around and get abused.

Yes.

[Audience] I heard that they … {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t know what they have done to that book, but I wouldn’t be surprised, because many of the very important older books have been re-edited so extensively that some of the key passages are edited out. That’s one of the most important books on America written in the 1830s was De Tocqueville’s Travels in America. And if you get it, get an old edition, not one of the recent abridged ones because de Tocqueville had some marvelous things to say about the religious character of America in those days. Very important things; he’s one of our most important sources for the period. But the recent editions leave out many of the choicest passages of de Tocqueville.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I believe the name of the man on whose life the story is based is Andrew Selkirk.

Well, our time is up now. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always. Amen.