Human Nature In Its Second Estate

Freedom From Testing

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 7-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 16

Dictation Name: RR131J17

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] {?} freedom from testing. We have been dealing with the nature of man in the state of depravity, and next month we shall continue with the nature of man in the state of grace. The next few weeks we shall be dealing with man in the state of depravity. 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.

(Gen 3:7-13)

When God confronted Adam with his sin, Adam’s immediate response was to blame God. The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. Eve’s response was the same. Both clearly refused to accept their guilt, as we saw last week, and moreover, both clearly resented being put to the test. The Garden of Eden, from the beginning, had testing always in the foreground. Man from the very beginning had the option of obeying or disobeying God. There was always the tree, as a test. As a moral trial of man. But the only kind of paradise acceptable to fallen man is one without problems. One in which there is no necessity for decisions. One in which there is no testing. The attitude of man is, how unfair of God to put man to the test.

How unfair of God to give man a choice which can have ugly consequences. As a result, whenever a man imagines a utopia, an ideal world, it is a problem free world, a world without any moral testing. Through the ages man has imagined that somehow he can, if he works hard enough, create such a paradise. One in which every necessity for decision is removed. One in which there can be no testing, no failure for man. Of course, we have already begun to apply this concept in our state schools. Increasingly, the idea of grading and of testing students is being attacked, even dropped, in some of the lower grades. Some professors in universities insist on giving A’s to all students, to express their contempt of the idea of grading. Obviously it’s an easy way also to be popular.

But very obviously God does not agree with man. Testing is built into the universe, it was built into the Garden of Eden. At every point, every person born into this world faces testing. He always has decisions to make. The world is full of moral decisions and it’s a steady round of moral responsibilities. In fact we can say that testing and responsibility are as much a part of life as the air we breathe. Modern man hates testing. He hates responsibility. One prominent psychiatrist has said that the modern parent, by which he means the modern irreligious parent, feels radically guilty about having children. Why? Because he feels now, with family planning, every child represents a moral decision. And he doesn’t like that. He’s brought a child into the world and look at the problems, the decisions, the responsibilities of life. Therefore he is guilty for having brought this child into such a terrible world.

Therefore at every point he tries to spare that child from moral testing, from decisions. Saying to himself, you’re not going to have to go through what I had to go through, how horrible all the decisions I’ve had to make. In other words, parenthood is made into a guilty burden. And as a result increasingly parents who are on the psychiatric couch feel guilty because they’ve brought children into life, and their children are being tested. And, the age of psychiatric patients is being continually lowered, now there is a very heavy amount of case-loads in the early twenties. Of young people who are having to face testing. And who react in panic to it. The world of causality, of consequence, haunts sinful man. Man the sinner wants to be a god in a world without consequence, without guilt, sin, sickness, disease or death. He dreams of creating such a world for his children. An article recently in the New York magazine by Jane O’Reilly, began with an interesting story, which probably is not true, it’s hard to believe it is, and yet it certainly, in a sense, is true in that it sums up the modern attitude so tellingly. I quote, “They tell the story of the Cadillac that drove up to the Plaza Hotel. The chauffeur helped the mother out, then the twenty-six pieces of matched luggage. In the back of the car a boy was sitting in a wheelchair. As he was being wheeled down a special ramp and into the hotel, the manager murmured a few discrete words of sympathy to the mother. Why? What’s wrong? She demanded. Your son not being able to walk, he said. Of course he can walk. Thank God, he doesn’t have to.” Now that story has more than a slight ring of truth, whether it happened or not, because that is so often the attitude of parents today, as almost any teacher can testify.

And any minister. Any psychiatrist or psychologist. Author Jane O’Reilly then in this article, goes on to give numerous illustrations of this kind of thing. Of one mother who felt so guilty that she had brought children into the world, such a cruel, cruel world, that after preparing a meal for her husband, dinner, whatever he wanted, she then cooked, on order, for her three younger children, and then her nineteen year old son was living with his girlfriend, they were not married, up in his room, and he had to have a special vegetarian diet, and she prepared that meal for them. After all, she had to do something for the poor dears, she had brought them into this cruel world. And of course, the attempt is being made on all sides to turn the whole of our society and political order into one in which all testing disappears, in which no responsibility is left. And so we have a war on poverty, and we do not say that poverty may be precisely what these people brought on themselves. And war of war, without going into the fact that maybe war sometimes is the lesser of two evils. And so on down the line. We have a war on everything which might point to testing. But of course this is precisely Satan’s dream. A world without God, a world without responsibility, a world without guilt because it is a world without testing. No man should feel guilty because he has failed to meet God’s test. And yet it is an ironic fact that even these people find that testing is inescapable. Jane O’Reilly who wrote this article, manifests no Christian perspective, and many of her conclusions are wrong. And yet she cannot escape herself, the fact that she puts people to a test. And she herself winds up, inspite of her faulty presuppositions, condemning a generation for failing to face its responsibilities.

She comments and I quote, “I felt so sorry for my cousin, who arrived in his 4000 dollar car, under terrible strain. A complete failure who had not been admitted to college anywhere. When I suggested that he leave home and get a job, he said he couldn’t because, what about the car and my mother’s credit card? The price of independence came to high. And then came a moment of enlightenment. I asked him to help me peel potatoes. I can’t, he said definitely, I don’t know how. These kids don’t know how to peel potatoes or wipe their noses, or tie their shoes. But those are minor skills quickly learned, the only problem is to get out of the house, where they will free to learn, because at home mom and dad are still raising children instead of adults. Turning on the bathwater, organizing the little league games. Driving the kids to school, offering options, and instant gratification. Removing the frustrations, never leaving their children alone. In a thousand little ways paralyzing them, proving that they, the parents, are needed. Because who needs the parents either, aside from their kids? The child centered society where the children define and justify their parents lives, especially mothers, the good person is a good mother. A bad person is a failure whose child runs away.” Unquote. But unhappily, she has no answers, except to say, let them run away. But she cannot escape the fact that in this world guilt persists no matter what you do. And this is precisely the problem of the people she describes. Abolish testing, abolish the idea that there is a sin, abolish, as Freud did, the idea that guilt has any reality. And it still persists. Man feels guilty and man puts himself to a test.

This came out very amusingly some years ago in an address by the psychiatrist Karl Menninger, at a meeting of psychiatrists in which he paid honor to the memory of Freud, who had died not long before. Freud, who had made it clear that there was no reality to guilt, but it was a psychiatric problem and could be easily eliminated. And he says of Freud, I quote, “Freud was our Moses. And like the children of Israel we feel guilty in connection with his death. No matter how much we consciously reject it, and despite the fact that we can be charged with no responsibility for it.” Unquote. Now this is a peculiar statement. Freud died in his old age of cancer. Why should Menninger and other psychiatrists at this nation convention feel guilty because of Freud’s death? The key of course is the resentment of Freud’s eminence. Why did that so and so get to be the leader of the, father of the psychiatry. I’m a much better man than he. And he goes on to say and I quote, “Our tendency as analysts is to react to our guilt by attacks upon one another. From our own science we know that the atonement often repeats the crime. Those who feel unable to atone for their sense of guilt may feel impelled to make overt attacks upon some symbol of the leader. His memory, his theory, his principles, or other followers in self justification. One recalls the perilous cry of a man forty years ago, must I always stand in Freud’s shadow?” Unquote. Menninger recognizes, although he will not face the full implications, that without true atonement there is a renewed attack upon others and increased guilt as a man tests himself and sees his sin and then feels all the more ready to condemn himself, and all the more to lay his sins, either upon another, sadistically, or upon himself, masochistically.

And so Menninger added, with respect to Freud, “These things we should all face. Our attitude toward Freud should certainly not be a religious one. Superstitious religion is based on the theory that men were made by a god in his own image. To recognize that man creates his god is the ideal of a benign father and with the highest aspirations of human thought, is to exemplify the spirit of a civilized, intelligent religion, not incompatible with rigorous scientific discipline. This spirit should determine our feelings toward Freud. Freud was not our god, he was our Moses. But in his death we did not lose our {?} leader. No matter how much more we learn, Freud will always be our leader, as Galileo will always be the leader of astronomers and Newton of physicists. His physical presence was not the important thing. Freud’s principles, Freud’s integrity, Freud’s honesty, and above all, Freud’s discoveries, these are still with us, and they will always be with us. It is not only our privilege to add to his discoveries, but it is our duty.”

Menninger also said that it was necessary to maintain loyalty to one another. That as psychiatrists, they should not allow their guilt feelings to lead them to tearing at Freud and to tearing at one another. Now if this were not so insane, it would be funny. It is ridiculous in a very real sense. There is no god, he says, therefore there is no sin, therefore there is no guilt, but none the less we do feel guilty even though there is no reality to it, and because Freud is so eminent, we feel guilty because of his death, because we wish the so and so had never lived. So that we could have been the discoverers. Therefore, because we feel that way, we feel guilty because of his death, and we resent him and we resent one another, and we tear at one another. And Menninger has no answer to that. He only pleads, let us be loyal to one another.

Now why is there this element in Menninger and others, to reduce guilt to a sense of guilt? Where there is real guilt, it is related to actuality. Where there is a sense of guilt, it is related to fantasy. If I feel guilty for Freud’s death, I am involving myself in fantasy. If I feel guilty for having killed a man whom I actually murdered, then my sense of guilt is related to reality. Now why are these men indulging in a sense of guilt and admitting to a sense of guilt, which is clearly a matter of fantasy? If it s a matter of fantasy, if it does deal with the world of imagination, and guilt can be reduced to imagination, and sin can be reduced to imagination, then man can dispose of, or thinks he can dispose of, what is a part of his own creation. In other words, if I invented it in my mind, whether I today or as a part of my unconsciousness, in my primordial past, then I can dispose of it. And if it is I who have created the idea that I am always on trial, and other people are judging me and some god is judging me, then I can dispose of that testing, I can say, well it’s all my imagination. So that if guilt is reduced to a sense of guilt, my imagination, then my imagination can dispose of it. And if God is a figment of my imagination, and moral responsibility and testing are a part of my imagination, remember that Menninger said that it is superstition to believe that God created man in His image, rather man created god, that’s mature religion, he said. Then god being a creature of man, man can wipe him out in his imagination.

When Adam said the woman Thou gavest to be with me, she did give and I did eat, Adam was fleeing from reality into his imagination. He was living in a dream world. He was saying, this world of testing which you’ve created, God, is not to my liking. And I say the nature of the world is such that I, being by definition god in my own eyes and innocent, the fault for whatever happened is yours because you made the world this way, a world in which I could be tested. And you gave the woman to be with me and she did give me and I did eat. In other words, Adam took the world around him and rearranged it in terms of his imagination. So that it was a dream world. A world in which God was at fault and Adam was innocent. He denied testing as valid, hence there was no guilt and no sin. But the world of our imagination is only the world of our imagination. And the real world is that made by God, who is maker of Heaven and Earth and all things therein. The more man seeks freedom from testing, the more inescapably testing bears down on him. Until the judgment is for him, as it was for Belshazzar and Babylon. Weighted in the balances and found wanting. No man can escape testing. The sinner dreams of such a world, but Scripture tells us that they live in the vain imagination of their hearts. But we, by the grace of God, are His people, are called to live always in reality. It is a good world, God made it, His grace surrounds us, and when we face up to our responsibilities, He gives us grace and strength to meet them.

And when we fail in them, He is merciful to all that seek His forgiveness. Let us pray.

Almighty God who of Thy grace and mercy has made us Thy people, and has given us the world of testing of which we can be refined as by fire, and purified as gold is purified. That we might be prepared for Thy kingdom, for Thine eternal glory. We come to Thee rejoicing that Thou by Thy testing are day by day preparing us for Thy better service in time and in eternity. Give us grace our Father therefore to accept all things from Thy hand, to seek Thy Word and Thy purpose in and through all things, and in all things to triumph by Thy grace. In Jesus name, Amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The first sin was in their mind, when they began, in the imagination of their hearts, to dream that there was a better way than God had declared.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Even with the ungodly, testing forces them to produce their best.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Sir Isaac Newton. Yes. He was.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The basic thrust of psychiatric healing with respect to guilt is to explain away the sense of guilt. The homosexual is not guilty because there’s nothing wrong. He learns to accept his condition. In other words, acceptance of what one is the is the basic cure in psychiatry. Since there is no sin, you just say well, I’m a different kind of person. It has no concept of health, because it has no standard. To have a standard you have to have a moral law and you have to say, this is the norm. Every departure from it constitutes a sin. If you deny that there is any such thing, anything and everything is healthy. Therefore you accept what you are and that constitutes health.

Yes.

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] There are a number of Christian psychologists and Christian psychiatrists, so-called. I don’t know them all, but those who have published are basically schizophrenic. For this reason. They definitely have evangelical Christian ideas. But, when they go into their psychology or psychiatry, they still operate in terms of Freudian premises. As a result, their basic position is not Christian. Their basic position is simply Freudian. They have never reconciled the two. Now I’m not saying there could not be such a thing. But I have not yet seen it. The closest thing to it was by a non-Christian, Mower{?} at the university of Illinois, who has said, and there are several others in the same school, that mental sickness is not a sickness. That it cannot be classified in the same category as physical ailments. That it is basically a failure to meet responsibility. That in a sense the older Christian concept of sin had some validity, that what we all mental sickness has, at its roots, what was called sin. This is Mower’s thesis, not {?}. {?} also denies the whole idea of mental sickness. Mower{?} says, however, that there is no such thing as sin, in the Christian sense. An offense against God. There’s only an offense against man. So that he would try then to introduce the concept of moral offense against man, to try to formulate a humanistic basis for that. But of course the minute you talk about a responsibility to man you’re talking about a moral standard, and this is where the thing falls apart. If every man is his own god, if every man is ultimate, as humanism is, how can you come to a moral standard where everybody is agreed? {?} also says that it is testing, its failure, but he doesn’t go beyond that, because he does not want to formulate anything that smacks of a Christian moral absolute. He’s very hostile to it, as Mower{?} is. So they fail.

And basically, while they have gained a little bit of attention, the drive of humanism is hostile to what they’re doing. Because the basic impetus in humanism is, since it makes man ultimate, to ascribe evil to the environment. And when you do that, of course, you destroy law. You create a growing crisis.

Along those lines, if I may take a minute or two more, there was this interesting item which should surprise none of us, because it’s a logical development from the humanistic drift of law today. I quote, “A New York state court recently awarded thirty-three thousand to a man whose wife had been killed by the driver of a stolen car. Guess who had to pay that thirty-three thousand? Not the thief, but the man whose car had been stolen. The thief testified that the owner had left his keys behind in the car, and therefore the court ruled that the death was the car owners fault. Since many other states follow the lead of New York courts, it may be that careless car owners are really going to be in hot water. After all, stolen cars are involved in two hundred times as many accidents as other cars, and cause thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries. Thieves tend to be teenagers speeding like crazy.” Unquote. Now that’s a logical extension of the whole premise of environmentalism. The capitalists are to blame, the war mongers are to blame, the pigs are to blame, or the white racists are to blame, and the person whose car is stolen is to blame. Don’t leave your keys in your car, in other words.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, this is the kind of thing you can expect, and we’re going to see more and more such examples in the days ahead.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The question is with regard to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Does the hymn give a messianic character to the nation, and to the republic? It’s quite a story, the story of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, it was written by Julia Ward Beecher, wasn’t that her full name, I’m rusty at the moment. But the Beecher family is one of the most interesting in America, and there’s a long involved history. The background of the family originally was very thoroughly Puritan and Calvinistic. But in her generation they were rapidly going into Unitarianism, as Henry Ward Beecher did, very definitely. The famous Brooklyn preacher. The poem therefore, which was set to music and became the great northern hymn during the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression, or whatever you want to call it, had overtones of the old Puritan belief that America should be made into a new Zion, a new Israel, of God. To serve and to magnify Him in all things. So there were definite elements of the old Puritan belief that a nation should be God’s nation. On the other hand, while the old phraseology still lingers, there are elements of a purely Unitarian, statist mentality there also. So, it’s a peculiar agglomeration of the two, you could read it almost either way. So you could take it in the wrong sense, but you could take also in the older Puritan sense of the wording. There’ve been quite a few studies written of that particular hymn. It was set to the music of John Brown’s Body too of course.

I’d like to make an announcement, then call something else to your attention. A reminder of the Teachers Training Seminar for Christian schools, Monday and Tuesday, August 9 and 10 at Nottsberry{?} Farm. And the faculty will be made up of the Reverend and Mrs. Robert L. Thoburn{?} of Fairfax Virginia and myself. And the cost for the two day seminar is thirty-eight dollars. Those of you who are interested please see me and I will give you the application blanks. Then some of you may have noticed, recently, the summer ‘71 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Which is to appear as a quarterly now. Published from Indianapolis. There is an especially important article in this issue on the economic common sense of pollution by Dr. Larry Brohte{?}. In view of the fact that we hear so much about pollution today, it is important to read this article if you are interested in the subject, because it is a particularly intelligent argument and the perspective is one of very sound economics. To read just a few of the opening sentences, to give you an idea of its approach. “Pollution is not new. Our concern about it is. Spanish explorers, landing in the sixteenth century, noted that smoke from Indian campfires hung in the air of the Los Angeles basin. Trapped by what is now called the inversion layer. Before the first century B.C. the drinking waters of Rome were becoming polluted. Most pollution is not due to wealth or affluence, despite the current popularity of this notion. In India, pollution runs in the streets, and advice against drinking the water in exotic lands is often well taken. Nor can pollution be blamed on the self seeking activities of greedy capitalists. Once beautiful rivers and lakes which are now open sewers and cess-pools, can be found in the Soviet Union. (Especially in the Soviet Union. It’s one of the most polluted areas), as well as the United States and some of the world’s dirtiest air hangs over cities in eastern Europe, which are neither capitalist or affluent.

In many ways indeed it is much more difficult to anything about pollution in non-capitalist societies. In the Soviet Union there is no way for the public to become outraged or to exert any pressure, and the polluters and the courts there work for the same people, who often decide that clean air and water, like good clothing, are low on their list of social priorities. In fact, it seems probable that affluence, technology, and slow moving and efficient democracy will turn out to be the cure more than the causes of pollution. After all, only an affluent technological society can afford such luxuries as moon trips, three day weekends, and clean water. All though even our society may not be able to afford them all. Only in a democracy can a people hope to have any real influence in the choice among such alternatives.” And then he goes on to document the situation and precisely what can be done and what is being done, and to look at it from a common sense point of view, and one of sound economics. Today it is commonplace to glamorize the past. But pollution existed in the past. It’s commonplace to glamorize the Indians, and one health food magazine in a current issue has a great deal about all the remarkable drugs and natural medicines that the Indians have. And there has been a medical study made of this, which is, of course, very true, and very interesting. But the fallacy is this. All of the remarkable natural drugs that are cited, are very true indeed, and today modern science is making good use of them. But, the mistake the authorities who write these books make is this. They go back and they find, say, the Peyote Tribe had a particular kind of drug that was used by the medicine men, which was very good. True. The Shoshone’s had another, the Navajo’s had another. When you put them all together, it makes a very impressive book. But what you have to realize is that all of these things were not shared by all of the tribes.

And when you go back there and you find that a particular tribe had, among its medicine men, and everyone kept what they had as a closely guarded secret that was passed down the line, never shared with any other medicine man. Even in one’s own tribe. You realize how little each one had. And how the bulk of their medicine was indeed extremely primitive. In other words, it’s very, very telling, if you go back, say, to 18th century England, and you say, look at all the great works of art that was produced. And all the beautiful buildings that were produced. True. But what about all the art that was junk art that did not survive? And all the hovels they put up that have long since been torn down and disappeared? In other words, what we’ve inherited from the past is that which is good. And we don’t see the whole truth, say, about the particular Indian tribe.

Now, pollution in those days. Of course, when there were are only three hundred thousand Indians, at most, in the whole of North America, there was not much pollution. But this does not mean that they had a proper use of nature in mind. When they were agricultural tribes, they farmed an area until they worked out the soil and they just left it and moved to another place and made a clearing and used that soil, precisely what is done in Africa to this day. In other words, you worked the soil to death, and then you moved on. And since there weren’t many of you in the continent, it didn’t matter. Moreover, what they also did was, since they didn’t have a horse in those days, the simplest way to hunt was to have somebody go off in one area and start a fire and turn to the wind, which would drive the game your way. If it burnt down a lot of trees, it didn’t matter. This was one reason why the prairies were growing, when the white man came. Because with their strategy of burning, they were burning the forest further and further back on both ends of the prairie. That’s pollution, that’s destruction. Only there weren’t as many of them to destroy. So we need, this is not what is in this article, there’s a great deal more here but in another area, that’s very valuable. But we should not go overboard on some of these ideas that are being propagated, which are done without any balance or common sense.

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.