Human Nature In Its Second Estate

Guilt

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 6-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 15

Dictation Name: RR131H15

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our lesson is Genesis 3:7-13. And our subject, guilt. Genesis 3:7-13. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

Guilt is central to the psychology of fallen man. It is impossible to find any culture anywhere in the world where guilt is not deeply imbedded. Both in the social and the personal psychology of the people. Guilt is a consequence of sin. The primary or original sin is the temptation to be as God. Knowing, that is, determining for oneself good and evil. All sin is a product of this original sin, all guilt is related to this fact. However, in analyzing himself through his various psychology, the thing that characterizes man is that he avoids the term sin. The word sin has no place in modern psychology. Guilt is admitted. Guilt is too present a fact, it is too dominate in the psychology of fallen man for it to be avoided. But guilt is separated from the fact of sin, in modern psychology. Sin points to an act, a violation of law, to responsibility and to God.

Guilt also does. But it cannot be ignored as easily, since it infects man’s psychology. And by trying to separate guilt from the fact of sin, modern psychology has tried to make guilt merely a state of mind, and an aspect of man’s primordial past. The reaction of Adam and Eve to guilt was very simple. It was straight forward environmentalism. Adam did not say, I have sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight. Instead his excuse was, it’s not my fault, but the woman’s. More than that, the woman that Thou gavest to be with me, it’s your fault because you gave her to me. And of course, the psychology of Eve was the same, again environmentalism. The serpent did give me and I did eat. Poor little innocent me. I wouldn’t have done it on my own.

With Lamech, as we saw last week, there is a more sophisticated attitude towards guilt. He boasted of his sin and declared it to be virtue, strength and principle in him. And thereby tried to deny sin and guilt by taking an attitude that he had done nothing wrong, in fact, everything right. But guilt feelings remain. Modern man is very strongly plagued by guilt feelings. This is why it is important to realize what Freud did, I referred to it the other day in passing, and of course have dealt with it in my book on Freud. Freud recognized it very clearly, and said, that all the attempts by men to prove by science that there was no god were useless. As long as man felt guilty, man would seek a savior, would seek God. The point therefore was to take guilt and make it no longer a religious question, but a scientific problem and to explain it away scientifically. And he, following W. Robertson Smith, reduced it to a part of man’s primordial past. As I point out in my book on Freud, what Smith did has influenced all modern religion, in that in every seminary today virtually, with the exception possible of one or two, the ideas of W. Robertson Smith govern all the teachings.

What was Smith’s point of view which Freud adopted? Well, to summarize it, as Smith and Freud developed it, man’s will to live is made up of three basic urges which go back to man’s primordial past. To the time when man was a cave dweller living in a pack. At that time the father is the dominant figure, possessed all the women and the daughters, and would drive out the sons when they reached a certain age. And so, the sons finally ganged up and killed the father, possessed the wives and daughters and ate the father. And according to Smith and Freud, and this is basic to the whole modern psychology, they developed a guilt feeling in this, so for the ages as this was done over and over again, and so the will to live is precisely these three impulses, parricide, incest and cannibalism. Which also precisely the guilt feeling. So for Freud, the only way you could get rid of guilt feelings was to recognize what they were. Which in effect nullified also your will to live. This is why by the time Freud was forty, having adopted this idea, he was, according to his official biographer, impotent. Because having associated guilt and the will to live, there was really no will to live left anywhere in him or any real capacity. Now the sexual revolution of our day has tried to dispose of guilt by calling evil good. By saying that everything that man feels guilty about is really something very good. So why should he feel guilty about it? Do those things you felt guilty about. Recognize that there is no law against any of the sexual offenses, that the laws against theft and murder are sociological and pragmatic, and there’s no real moral foundation for all of these things. This is why it is emphatically stated by the new left that the sexual revolution and the political revolution are one and the same.

Now with all of this, the very prominent psychologist, Rollo Maye who lectures at Harvard and Princeton and other schools, approves very definitely. But he says, and I quote, “External social anxiety and guilt have lessened. Dull would be the man who did not rejoice in this. But in internal anxiety and guilt have increased.” Unquote. What is he saying? Well very simply, that the revolution has worked in breaking down the outward barriers, that in many circles now there’s nothing wrong with doing any of these things, so the social guilt has been, to a large extent, broken down. On top of that, he admits that the sexual revolution has not solved the problems it claimed it would. I quote, “We are confronted by the curious situation of the more birth control, the more illegitimate pregnancies.” Unquote. And still another psychologist has found that many of these illegitimate pregnancies reveal masochistic and sadistic guilt feelings. In fact, Maye admits at one point that the sexual revolution winds up as a new form of self castration. Still another writer, Elliot, speaking with respect to Sweden, has admitted there is a high rate of suicide there that increases as the sexual revolution increases. And one of the things that made a hero in a Swedish film very heroic to the people, was the kind of attitude expressed in his statement, my need is to be dead. Absolutely, totally dead. Interesting comment to make a hero out of a man. Alcoholism is also increased, as men have run away from life, in Sweden.

Guilt, in other words, is basic to modern psychologies. They want to make it a scientific problem, but is it scientific, their answer? Of course, all that Robertson Smith and Freud did was to create a myth. Not the slightest trace of evidence for any of the ideas they posited about primitive man, if such a person every existed, which we do not believe. Moreover, another scholar, Lewis Joseph Cheryl{?} has observed, that actually in claiming to be scientific, all they are doing is to go back to ancient Greece or to paganism and to adopt pagan ideas, as against Christian ones. His comment was very telling and I quote, “Oddly enough, those psychologists who have most vigorously insisted that their work is scientific, yet results strikingly similar to views held by Greeks and others in past millenniums. Who put the conflict outside of man himself, and then could find no way to solve it, arriving finally at nonsense. For in the last analysis is does not make a great difference whether the nonsense is conceived as due to our being men at the mercy of a pack of stupid gods or as due to our being animals bereft of rationality, trapped by a social environment gone mad, and terrorized by a physical environment of tremendous power in the hands of a crazy society. If man has thought to absolved himself of responsibility for his own plight, and thus to dignify himself in his own eyes, we may fairly ask whether he has accomplished more toward that end when he acted as academic psychologists in modern times, than he did in previous ages by means of myth.” Unquote. Cheryl{?} is right. All they’ve done is go back to the stupid myths of ancient times. Which say that guilt is outside of man. That responsibility, in other words, is outside of man. And what happens when you do that, whether you are a Greek or a Hindu? You end up by saying the universe is nonsense, it is perverse, and therefore all life is futile because everything around me conspires against me. And that’s why I’m in the mess I’m in. And so you end up saying with Buddha, the most marvelous is nirvana, extinction, obliteration.

Or with Neo-Platonists of Greco-Roman culture, that the best thing that could happen to you is to die. What happens beyond that then you don’t know, but at least you’re out of this mess, whatever other mess you may be in. and with the Roman stoics to say well, the true philosopher is the man who winds up feeling nothing. So that if you are engaged in social conversation with other people discussing an idea, and someone reports to you that your house is burnt down, that all your wealth is gone, that your wife and your children have died, and so on, it doesn’t bother you, because you don’t feel anything is important. Then you have arrived. In other words, man is reduced to nothing. And the world is nonsense. Since the Renaissance, because modern humanistic man has, like Adam and Eve, followed this pagan course and said, it’s the universe, it’s God. That not I, the woman Thou gavest to be with me, she did give and I did eat. The serpent did give me and I did eat. Not I. since the Renaissance modern man has been determined to eliminate God and guilt and to find freedom in moral autonomy from God. This means also freedom from the Church. Freedom from everything that talks about God. And as a result, we have created what was characteristic also of antiquity, the totalitarian state. And the more man departs from the recognition of God and of man’s guilt before God, from man’s responsibility, the more always he has created an authoritarian, totalitarian state. Which takes away his liberty.

And of course this is the drive of the sexual and the political revolution of our time. Whatever else they may say they are busy creating a super state which will be, in the words of Haggle, god walking on earth. The pornographic film ‘I am Curious, Yellow’, was regarded in this country primarily as a sexual film, but it is interesting that in Sweden it was regarded as a political film even more than sexual. And one of the parts in the film was played by the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. In fact, the Swedish audiences felt it was too political. Of course, they caught the political references somewhat than American audiences probably did. But is interesting that the actress, Lena Nyman, who played the heroine, if you can call her that, saw her role as a religious one, and she said in an interview, I think I’ve wanted to be a kind of sex savior in this film.

But everything that modern man does to try to eliminate guilt only results in all the more outcroppings of guilt, all the more sadistic and masochistic acts which reveal that he not only is overwhelmed by guilt but he is trying to project it, with the sadist, on the world around about him, or, with the masochist, trying to work it out by masochistic activity. And the Christian must reject all these. He must say that I, even I have sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight. That the cause for guilt is sin.

Turning again to Dr. Cheryl{?}, he has, very beautifully, summed up the Christian position with regard to responsibility for guilt. Even though he is not in any sense an Orthodox Christian nor does he share our perspective. He has said and I quote, “In Christianity it is commonly held that the responsibility is within man himself. Every possible escape from this hard conclusion seems hedged about in Christian teaching. It is hardly necessary even to recall the characteristic emphasis of Christian doctrine regarding mans’ responsibility, so familiar are they. What of man? He is responsible for the outcome of his conflict, from him is take the satisfaction of sitting in judgment on any other man, nor does his own condition which requires judging, he is the sinner, and the wages of sin is death. He is responsible for the plight into which his own sins have brought him. He is even accounted responsible with a kind of {?} responsibility which reaches into the past and takes in his heredity. He is blocked off from attributing the blame for his own situation to his fathers’ or to his fathers’ before him. More yet, he is held accountable in many lines of Christian thought for the sins of the fathers themselves, as when it was said by Jesus, that the blood of all the prophets slain from the foundation of the world shall be required of this generation. Luke 11:50.

Thus when to the teaching that every man is a sinner are added the yet more difficult doctrines of original sin, little more remains to be said by way of a reminder here that in Christianity the responsibility is held to be within man himself. And yet it means but little in Christianity to say that man is responsible, for man is responsible to God. In Christianity, as indeed in Judaism and Islam as well, man is under the judgment of God, he is a sufferer, but he is more than that, he is an offender. It is the will or the law of God which he has not kept.” Unquote. Now the verse that Cheryl{?} cited, Luke 11:50, is very interesting. And it tells us much about the biblical doctrine of responsibility and guilt. In that verse our Lord said that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation. That’s a staggering declaration. What did our Lord mean by it? Apart from the specific application to the generation of His day, what He meant was that in every generation, every one of us have an inheritance from the past. Good and bad. None of us are born into the world empty. We are born into a world that has everything around us, it’s a filled world. Now much of this is good and much of it is bad. We have the inheritance of all the wealth, all the invented genius, all the progress, of thousands of years. This is on the good side. On the bad side, the guilt, the apostasy, the evils that men have done, we have inherited that too. We have an accounting to make. Both of the wealth we receive and of the guilt we receive from the past. It is personal, it’s not a collective guilt. How do we deal with that?

Do we make a stand against the evils that are present in the world as we find them? And do we use the wealth to the glory of God as stewards under God?

Now what our Lord said applied to everyone of his generation and what did the disciples do? By regeneration. They acknowledged their guilt and Christ as their sin bearer. By sanctification, by obedience to the law of God. They worked to set right that which was wrong, so they could leave the world a better place than they found it, and they did. And so we also, we have an obligation and the blood of the past will be required of us. We must make an accounting. And the wealth of the past is required of us, we must make an accounting as to how we leave the world. The fallen man, as Rollo made it vivid, the more he denies externally the guilt, the more socially he says there is no guilt, the more the internal pressure of guilt builds up. And Samuel Warner{?}, still another psychologist has recognized that when internally guilt builds up, man becomes dangerous. Because he is governed then by a will to death. And he becomes destructive socially. We must therefore say that when a society denies guilt before God, when it denies that it is a sinner. It is going to be suicidal in its course. In its politics, in its economics, in its religion, in its driving, and in its personal relationships with others. It will be suicidal, it will be murderous. Sin is a lawless assault against God’s order. Guilt is either atoned for and removed, or it seeks to continue that role{?}. It seeks new frontiers of assault against God and His law order. I mentioned earlier the Swedish film, ‘I’m Curious Yellow’. What very few people realize is that surveys in Sweden have shown that the people there tend to prefer, if they can get them, American Western films and similar films, to any other kind.

But such films are by and large barred from Sweden. They use the excuse, there’s to much violence. Although their own films have far more. Even more, the pornographic films have a 75% subsidy from the government. Very interesting fact. The socialistic governments are busy debauching their own people. But retaining their hold over them. It is interesting that now, in Scandinavia, since there must be new frontiers of assault to be explored, incest is being urged as being normal, and is in fact superior sex. And various scientists are busy trying to prove that it’s a superior person, and the superior mother and father and children, who indulge in such activity. There is a governmental assault on God’s order. The fallen man thus, while he talks of a new order, is only in essence, in that new order, indulging in a prolonged assault on God’s order. And in making a noisy denial of guilt before God. But guilt will last. It must either be atoned for by Jesus Christ, or men will try to make someone else atone for it. The urge for atonement is basic in man. Atonement is not just a religious word. In the ‘Politics of Guilt and Pity’, I dealt at great length with this fact.

Very briefly, atonement is basic to the psychology of every man living. Every man needs it. He will either find it in Jesus Christ or he will, through savage, murderous activity, try to make someone else the scapegoat. And so the murderous assault against God and against God’s order will be stepped up as men seek to find someone else whose blood must be shed for their atonement. On whom the guilt must be laid. The woman Thou gavest to be with me, she did give me and I did eat. Not I, but judgment must fall upon the woman and upon you, God. This is the way to make atonement for what happened. And this today is the politics of the modern world. Of politics of atonement. Of politics of atonement, whereby guilt is laid upon anyone who is innocent, who is successful, who stands up against the revolution of man against God. But as God made clear, every house that is built upon sand, when the storm of judgment comes, God’s judgment, great shall be the fall thereof. But the house that is built upon the rock, Jesus Christ, shall endure. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, for Thy grace and mercy have take away our sin and guilt through Jesus Christ, make us strong in Him that we may conquer this world for Thee. That the kingdoms of this world might be the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. And that His peace may prevail not only in our hearts but in the lives of men and of nations. Prosper us in this task we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very good question. The temptation of our Lord in the wilderness was very definitely temptation, although he was sinless, yet he was in all points tempted like as we are, we are told. Thus, while he was very God of very God, he was also very man of very man, truly man. Now what was the temptation there, basically? If Thou be the Son of God, if you are truly God, then the answer is, turn these stones into bread. The poor people, they’re hard up, it’s not man’s fault, it’s the environments fault, it’s God’s fault, so do everything the easy way. Give them cradle to grave security. And if Thou be a Son of God, get up on the top of the pinnacle of the temple and cast thyself down. Give them miracle so faith won’t be a problem. They can see and it’s proven to them that you are a supernatural being. And finally, bow down and worship me. Recognize the rightness of what I’m doing. That really man has a case against God. That the responsibility is not in man but it’s in God. Now, our Lord answered at each point by quoting from God’s law. But the temptation was real in this form, in that our Lord did feel for the people, he was very man of very man. We know his grief over the people, even as he went into Jerusalem and he wept.

And when he was carrying the cross to Golgotha, he turned to the women of Jerusalem and said, women of Jerusalem, daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves, because he knew what was coming. And so he was grieved. So in that sense it was real, he knew what could be done, but he also knew he would not do it, and could not do it.

Are there any other questions? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The earliest records we have of man indicate a very high culture. The oldest civilizations that we have uncovered are those of {?} and the Minoan civilization of Crete. And as I pointed out before and I believe I brought pictures once of the Minoan culture, there you go back to the dawn of history and you find, {?} Crete the three story palace with hot and cold running water, flush toilets, every mark of a highly advanced civilization, at the very dawn. Now, the so-called caveman, the only evidences for that are a few caves in Europe, which apparently were used in the summertime as a place to stay when the nights were hot in houses. There’s no evidence that the people who stayed in those few caves in Europe were primitives. The art work they left behind was highly sophisticated and stylized. It was not primitive. So, out of a handful of caves and a few things in them, they developed the whole concept of cavemen, which is nonexistent.

Moreover, the so called primitive peoples give no indication of being primitive but rather of being degenerate. Decadent. Their languages often indicate that they are far more highly evolved languages, more refined and developed, than the English or French. As a matter of fact, I was interested some years ago when I was working on an Indian Reservation as a missionary, a Swedish psychologist who was there to study the Banach{?} language, of one of the Peyote’s. And he said most scholars assume that because they were a primitive people that there were about 600 words in Banack{?}. And he said there are more words there then in English, as far as I can gather, from the handful of Banacks{?}. That it’s a highly developed language with conjugations and declensions that we don’t even know about in English or Swedish. now that’s your primitive man.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] He was busy recording the language.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. It was not a written language.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very interesting. The Australian Aborigine’s have been called the lowest people of any society. Well, one reason why they are, in a sense, low culturally is that there is absolutely no discipline within their culture. Everything is totally voluntary. When you have something totally voluntary, there is been a breakdown, a radical breakdown of society. However, the evidences of their culture that have been gathered by scholars who’ve worked among them indicate a very highly refined language, a very extensive body of knowledge, and the women have a very important status, it was considered that the Aborigine’s there had, the women were about the lowest creatures on earth. Well, a woman, Dr. Cadbury{?} spent some years working among the Australian Aborigine women and her report indicated not only a highly developed knowledge and culture, but a very important status that the women had among them.

Just recently they located a small band of Aborigines who’d never had any contact with whites, and a couple of anthropologists worked among them for a time. And again the evidence indicates a highly developed society, but one that is not very far along, because there is no discipline in it. And this you find is a characteristic in all of these so-called primitive cultures. There’s no sense of discipline or punishment, either one. One of the things I’ve commented on a time or two before, when I was among the Indians the thing that was most characteristic was that I cannot recall ever hearing a baby cry. It just wasn’t done. Because the minute a baby showed any signs of restlessness it was given the breast, it never was frustrated, the minute it wanted something it got it, if a little toddler wanted to play with older children he was allowed into the game, even though it ended the game. Nobody did anything to frustrate anyone else. And this is why, by the time they were in the 4th grade they were beginning to become alcoholics. You see, no frustration.. But life does frustrate you. And the less you’re frustrated as a child, the more impotent you are in coping with it. And this is why the so-called primitive cultures don’t get very far. They simply have no capacity for coping with things in any self-discipline. About the only kind of thing they are disciplined to is taking very, very minimal conditions of life, and a great deal of punishment. In other words, it’s a discipline that is passive rather than the discipline in dealing with reality. Whereas the disciplined culture, such as Puritan culture, has a capacity to go out and achieve things because it has the self-discipline in order to cope with problems. Now that’s really the difference.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Those are never skulls. Those are reconstructions of the heads of these men. The skulls they find are no different then your skull and mine and those of people walking the streets of Los Angeles, this has been demonstrated over and over again. It is the reconstructions they make of these. And more than one of these have later been proven to be a fraud. The {?} man case was very prominent in the papers a few years ago. And incidentally, {?}, the Catholic scholar was one of the men who uncovered the {?} man, Java Man, has also been demonstrated to be a fraud, and so on. These reconstructions are fraudulent. Nebraska Man turned out to be, it was just one tooth they discovered, and have even his home life written up before long. And Nebraska Man turned out to be a peccary tooth.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] What’s that?

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] You cannot, unless it’s the advance in another direction. You see. It can be highly refined and developed. In other words, the society of the Aborigines in Australia chose tremendous advance in a particular direction. Now we would not consider it to be progress. But it does advance, it moves in a particular direction. Highly refined, highly developed. Everything is tradition bound, hide bound, and it continually becomes more so. And this is why with many of these primitive societies ultimately work themselves into a bind and kill themselves. Because they have become so tradition bound, so hide bound, so refined, that life becomes unworkable. They’re highly complex societies.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] But it’s a passive discipline, you see. In other words, some people will take almost anything, rather than do something.

They adapt themselves endlessly, rather than change something to make conditions better. Now this is the kind of discipline, if you can call it that, that the primitive society develops. For example, our time is really up, but let’s go into this for a while. The Plains Indians that I knew, in order to become a man, a young Indian brave, in the old days, had to dance the Sun Dance. Now, this meant that they presented themselves before what looked like a maple and there were thongs coming out from the umbrella like branches, leather thongs, and they’d pry up the muscles on their back and slip it under, and they had to dance on their toes, as much as three days, with the Sioux, chanting about the joys of being a man. Now if they fell they had to come back next year, if they passed out. Now what this cultivated was a remarkable endurance. A remarkable endurance. An ability to take pain, I could go on, I’d turn your stomachs probably, and tell you the kind of stories where I have been a witness and know, the kind of pain that the Indians could take. Developed physically to the nth degree. The weaklings died.

Now, with all their intelligence, and I submit that the American Indian has a superior intelligence, what was developed was a passivity. An ability to take, rather than to go out and do. I.Q tests have shown that the average Indian has a very, very high intelligence. And yet he’s at the bottom in American society. He should be near the top, in terms of I.Q. But there’s this passivity. And the development in that direction. One of the hardest things in any classroom of Indian children is to get a child to speak up. To say anything. They’ll do anything to avoid reciting. They’ll take an F rather than recite when they know everything backwards and forwards. You see, it cultivates a passivity, when you have this lack of discipline. So that they can be a superior people, and many of the tribes are, now some are not as much so as others, but never underestimate the high intelligence that has been developed among many of the American Indian tribes. The weaklings got killed off, but at the same time a passivity was developed with this lack of discipline.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The older generation at least had some discipline from the necessities of survival, and the younger generation has less of it, yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Well, this is why, when I was on the reservation, the Christians, because they became Christians and developed a different attitude towards life and a discipline, were far superior to the government employees there. There’s no comparison between them, they were a far superior group. Because there was a basic ability there, but this passivity was a very difficult thing to overcome. And they knew that this was a problem.

Well, our time is up, let’s bow our heads now 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.