Law and Life

Grace and Community

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 12 of 39

Track: 123

Dictation Name: RR156F12

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord, oh ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength, give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in beauty and holiness. Fear before Him all the earth. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto Thy Name, O most High, to show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morning and Thy faithfulness every night. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art God, that Thy government circumscribes the heavens and the earth, that all things are known unto Thee, that not a sparrow falls apart from Thy sovereign Will. And so we come to Thee, confident in Thy government, rejoicing in Thy grace, and looking unto Thy mercies and Thy blessings. We thank Thee, our Father, that Thou art ever near us, that we have Thy word that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me. Strengthen us, O Lord, make us bold and venturesome in faith, and more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our text this morning is Psalm 133, Psalm 133, and our subject Grace and Community. We’ve been studying the significance of sacrilege, then the relationship of sacrilege to community, and now we go into the significance of community in Scripture, Grace and Community, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” About 140 years or so ago, a very important work was written by a French nobleman, Alexis de Tocqueville, a two volume study on his travels in the United States entitled Democracy in America. In this very important work, de Tocqueville was concerned with the future. He knew that the old order, the French monarchy, under which he had grown up, was forever gone. The world was moving into a new era, and like it or not it was important to understand that era. This new era, he said, is dominated increasingly by the idea of equality, and as a result, he said, although the cry of the French Revolution was “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality”, equality had first place. And therefore, he felt that sooner or later, liberty and fraternity would disappear because equality would tolerate nothing that might stand in the way of its fulfillment.

In contrasting freedom and equality, Tocqueville said, and I quote, “The advantages which freedom brings are only shown by length of time, and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. The advantages of equality are instantaneous, and they may constantly be traced from their source.” Tocqueville went on to say that modern man is insistent on saying that equality and freedom are one in the same. But the two are not inseparable. In fact, they are in essence contradictory. As he dealt with the new spirit of Democracy that was sweeping over the Western world, Tocqueville wrote, “I think that Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom. Left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible. They call for equality and freedom. If they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism, but they will not endure aristocracy. This is true at all times and especially true in our own. All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its support.”

Thus, he said, in the modern age, whether a government is democratic or totalitarian, its means to gaining power will be to proclaim equality, and in the name of equality, men will tolerate anything and everything. And as a result, this dominant faith of the age, its religion; equality, will destroy freedom because it does not require it. Now, he said, a basic, a central aspect of this appetite for equality is individualism. It is interesting that when his book was written about 1830, and first published in this country about 1832, it was necessary to have a footnote on the chapter on individualism to explain the meaning of the word. It is a “new” word, only about a 140 years old in English. That seems surprising to us, because we have come to take individualism for granted, but it is a new spirit, a new temper in history. Moreover, individualism means that the person sees himself only as a person, as an individual, as he breaks ties with the past, with the community, and with his family. Children thus feel that they cannot be really an individual unless they defy their parents, and you’ve had a new factor in history; the rebellion of adolescents, something that never existed before. You have also the defiance of the family by the wife; seeking her liberation. And the abdication from family responsibilities by the father, trying to be an individual on his own. Individualism is new, it is essentially anarchistic.

To contrast two Americans of note, George Washington was not an individualist. He was a person who always saw his goals in terms of his Christian faith and in terms of his community. However, someone a generation later, Henry David Thoreau was an individualist. He pushed his individualism to anarchism. He felt the only way he could be an individual was to defy the whole of his community, the whole of his family, the whole of the government and to declare his independence from the United States, and to affirm total anarchism. Thoreau found people like himself who believed very much like he did among his New England Transcendentalists, men like Emerson and others. But he had to declare his independence even with those who agreed with him, because he wanted to be an individual. And of course, what we have today in our student generation, what we saw in the 60’s especially and we’re seeing taking a new form today, is this rampant individualism. Of individualism, Tocqueville wrote, and I quote, “Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellow creatures, and to draw heart with his family and his friends so that after he has there formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Egotism originates in blind instinct. Individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment, more than from depraved feelings. It originates as much in the deficiencies of the mind as in the perversity of the heart. Egotism blights the germ of all virtue. Individualism at first only saps the virtue of public life, but in the long run it attacks and destroys all other and is at last absorbed in downright egotism. Egotism is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than another. Individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same racial as the equality of conditions.”

Now what de Tocqueville had to say was all too true. De Tocqueville was thus concerned about America, because here this temper was very much in evidence. It did not have the background of aristocracy. He said, however, that individualism had not done its work in America because at that time in the 1820’s when he visited, he said the influence of Christianity is so strong in America that it is overcoming the effects of individualism and democracy. But, he said, if and when the influence of Christianity is eroded, then individualism and the democratic urge to equality will move this country, as all of the Western world, into slavery, into totalitarianism of one form or another. The state will take on more and more power. Why? Why will the state grow more powerful and totalitarianism become the end result of individualism? There’s a very good reason for this, which de Tocqueville saw, and in recent years the sociologist Nisbit has reemphasized. If you are individualistic, you lose your ability to tolerate the faults of other people. The individualist will not tolerate the faults of his inferiors, he cuts out those who are socially below him, he finds it difficult to tolerate the faults of those who are his peers and is ready to drop them whenever any trouble develops; you drop trouble people, problem people, and will only tolerate the faults of superiors until he or she is on their level; no toleration. As a result, the individualist constantly moves from group to group. If there’s a problem, pull up and move out; change churches, change clubs, change groups, change your friends. Drop anyone who is a problem. One of the most common remarks in any institution, any kind of organization in the 20th century is said to be this; count me out if blank blank is going to be on the committee, or in the group, or is going to be elected to the club, or what have you. What does this mean? It means that we as a people under the influence of individualism have no willingness to put up with difficult people. And the result is we all become difficult people; all unwilling to live with the faults of others or to change and we become fixed in our ways. And the more individualism flourishes, the more all of us become difficult people, unable to have community, and community is defined then only in terms of perfection.

But Saint Paul in Galatians 6:2 said “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. This love of the brethren, of fellow believers, is emphasized by our Lord in John 13:34, and the Apostle John in 1 John 3:23. It is a mutual burden bearing, putting up with one another’s frailties, physical, mental, and moral. We are told in Matthew 8:17 of Christ that He bear our sicknesses. We do not have the redemptive power of Christ in bearing one another’s burdens, but we can have sanctifying grace and patience.

Now one reason, as I indicated, for the growth of totalitarianism as a product of individualism is that the absence of community gives a great deal of freedom. If we live very private lives, if we drop difficult people, if we don’t get involved in groups, the thing that happens to us is we less and less govern one another and then are less and less governed by other people; we pull off to ourselves. Now there’s a tremendous policing power in community. I read the other day about the so-called sky rocketing of wife beating and child beating. Actually, there is no increase. But there is technically an increase in police statistics. Why? What’s the reason for the police statistics? Forty and fifty years ago, we had in towns, small cities, and big cities everywhere people of very weak and bad character who would be abusive towards their children or towards their wife, and I’m not talking about an exceptional case, I’m talking about people who were drunken brutes and would regularly beat their wife or their children. What happened? The neighbors would not tolerate it. Employers would not tolerate it. A generation ago, if anything like that happened in a neighborhood, something would be done by the neighbors to make the person toe the line or an employer would hear about it and say if I hear about that sort of thing once more you’re fired.

In fact, I can recall as a boy when one man persisted in such behavior in a small town, and he had to move out, he couldn’t live there any longer because he wasn’t changing. Now, of course, he can live day after day and the neighbors never care, unless the kids cry too loudly and then they’ll call the police. You see, what was once effectively kept in line by public opinion because there was a sense of community now becomes a police matter because the sense of community is gone. The policing that the community did is no longer there, no one care unless it disturbs their peace. The consequence is a drastic decay, a decline, because the community policing is gone. Now the absence of that community policing means a great deal more freedom. You can do as you please as long as you don’t disturb your neighbors. Your neighbors once, a generation ago, would have been very upset if when your wife or your husband were away, you had someone of the opposite sex in overnight, they would have known about it, they would have said something about it, they would have acted. Who cares today? The result is you have more freedom as an anarchistic sort, and people like this anarchistic, antinomian freedom. Now whenever a people like that, the result is totalitarianism, because the state of necessity must do more policing. The state of necessity must step in and take care of situations that once the community did automatically. Where there were a strong sense of community your freedom in certain areas was restricted. The community standards kept you in line. But under totalitarianism, you don’t have that. This is why many people are so wrong when they feel that people under a totalitarian regime feel oppressed. They gripe indeed about things that limit them, but by and large they enjoy the freedom of an amoral, anarchistic, antinomian sort. They thrive on it. This is what they wanted. So in effect, we have a choice, we either have community in Christ, and we learn to live one with another, and put up with problems, and exercise community one with another, or we become very private people who are not interested in other people’s problems, and we don’t want anyone to know about our problems, and we end up with totalitarianism. It’s that simple. When the Christian community disappears, the totalitarian state appears.

Moreover, the rise of Darwinism has furthered all of this development into totalitarianism because Darwinism has given us an impersonal universe, blind chance, evolving and creating that which we have, so that things are all impersonal instead of a totally personal world with a totally personal God behind everything, and this impersonalism has furthered the destruction of community and the development of this anarchistic temper that prevails in our time. This antinomian idea of freedom; we’re all infected by it, we’ve all grown up under it, so that all of us find the old idea of community as a rather restrictive thing, and we fail to realize that this country was really free when it had the restrictions of the old sense of community. That when the community really governed you, never in your life did you have any contact with Washington DC, or London, or Berlin, or wherever you lived. You didn’t even have a direct tax on you in those days by the central government. You were barely aware, except at election time, that there was far away a central government that really provided the unity of the country, because the basic unity, the basic government came from community.

Now all of this is basic to any understanding to what our Scripture is talking about. Our text is a very lovely, a very beautiful Psalm. It is read so commonly in churches, it’s very often given to children in Sunday School to memorize because it’s a beautiful and a short Psalm. But how seldom do people stop to think about its meaning? “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” The Old Testament scholar {?}, in commenting, “The Spirit’s blessings thrive so much more richly when brotherly unity prevails; it is so much more difficult to enjoy these blessings when discord tears men apart and sets them at variance one with another. Just as heavy dews refresh and invigorate plant life, so the blessing of unity descend alike on all those that are within the Church, and all godly virtues thrive and flourish. Discord disrupts, destroys, and kills all the finer things that could grow under the blessing of true unity.” But let’s go a little further. {?} has indicated something of the meaning. The precious ointment, this is what unity is compared to; the ointment which anointed Aaron as high priest, and which signified the Holy Spirit. And just as the ointment, poured upon Aaron, trickled down from the top of his head down to his feet, so where there is unity, the Psalm says, the blessing of the Holy Spirit descends and trickles down to every aspect of the community, from top to bottom, from above to below. Moreover, this Psalms says it is the dwelling together in unity, not in peace, that is goodly in the sight of God, and that’s an important distinction. The Bible knows us, God knows that we are sinners, saved by grace, that in this life we are not perfect. Our sanctification is far from complete, and therefore there is much growth necessary. And therefore there is not going to be peace. Show me a family that always has peace and I’ll show you a family that is either dead and buried in a cemetery, or else the husband or the wife is so cowed by the other that they’re afraid to open their mouth. Any normal family, because it is made up of two sinful people, however much they love the Lord, still they are sinners, though saved by grace, is going to have its troubles and its tensions, its disagreements. And one or the other is going to be stinky off and on. In fact, both are. Now, difficult as it may be to think of ourselves as being the stinky one or the sinner, it is barely possible, if we meditate on it now and then, that sometimes we are. And so, our relationship with our husband or our wife, or with our parents, or with our children, is not going to be always a peaceful one.

But, it can be a living together in unity in spite of that. Some years ago a very interesting study was made of the fact that the easier divorce laws are made, so that it’s just a matter of a revolving door type of divorce, the more regrets there are after divorce, because it makes it easier to quarrel and to split up, whereas if this is not too possible, to readily possible, unity is readily reestablished. And of course this is the problem with organizations, with churches, with communities. It’s so easy to walk away from others instead of staying and living with a problem, or resolving it with patience and with loving kindness. We put up with problems in our husband or wife because we have to, but we don’t feel we have to with anyone else, and so community is sundered, and it becomes more and more restricted to the family and one or two others, and it becomes more and more difficult to maintain, because we continue the trend of becoming more and more individualistic. Notice also in our text the context of the promised blessing. The Lord commanded the blessing, even like forevermore. Where? Upon the mountains of Zion, that is, the Promised Land. Now the reference here is to several passages in the Law. The people, of faith, living in the land of promise in terms of the law word of God, are promised in Deuteronomy 28 long life and blessing, the prospering hand of God in terms of covenantal obedience. So the reference is very clearly to Deuteronomy 28. It is also to Deuteronomy 6:2, and it hearkens to the song of Moses. “See I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” Mount Hermon and the mountains of Zion are identified for us again in Deuteronomy 4:48. The dew of Mount Hermon is the blessing of the Holy Spirit, of God’s kingdom upon His covenant people.

So we are very emphatically told, that His people live together in unity, not in peace. God recognizes there will be tensions and quarrels and problems, but as the live together in unity, the blessing of the Holy Spirit will flow upon them, even as that oil of anointing poured upon Aaron, trickled down and gave its fragrance to all. This is not the only place in Scripture where we are told that living in unity leads to God’s blessing. In 1st Peter 3:7, we are told that if husband and wife dwell together in mutual forbearance and unity, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, then their prayers are not hindered. They are heard of God and blessed. The outpouring of the Spirit, in other words, is not a solitary thing, it is not to monks and nuns, to people who withdraw from the world and problems, not to people who run away from a difficult situation or from problem people. There are times indeed when we must break; times when the law requires us to because then we are tolerating evil. But so often when we are required to bear one another’s burdens in forbearance, the outpouring of the Spirit is to life in community, in family, in the church, wherever we are. But life in community involves problems. And the generation that does not like problems, and runs away from them, will have totalitarianism. But if, whether we like problems or not, and I don’t expect that any of us will, if we face them in the Lord, there the Holy Spirit will also be with us. Problems, life in a community, involve a yoke. Scriptures speaks of marriage as a yoke, because it does involve a mutual burden bearing. Discipleship is also a yoke, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, our Lord said. Community is a yoke, but the easy yoke of Christ, when it is avoided, leads to the heavy yoke of the totalitarian state. His yoke gives grace and freedom, the yoke of the state gives slavery and damnation. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy healing Word. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us to be a community. And we pray, our Father, that each of us might be mindful of our sins and shortcomings, and might seek in every area of our life to abide by Thy Word, to obey Thy law, to bear one another’s burdens in mutual forbearance, and to make this country again Thy community, where Thy law word prevails and where Thy kingdom is manifest in every area of life. Use us and bless us, O Lord, to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good question. Now, we have had in the last century increasing urbanization. The urbanization has led to the destruction of community life to a great degree. The interesting fact is that this tremendous concentration into urban centers came precisely when it was least necessary. Why? Prior to the invention of the railroad, urban centralization was necessary for commerce. If you were in any kind of manufacturing, you had to be in a center like New York, or London, where you had a good port and therefore could ship readily, so there would be a concentration of manufacturing in certain centers. But with the railroads, going back and forth across continents and across countries, it was possible then to build anywhere, and you could be near your raw materials. But it was precisely when centralization was least necessary that it developed. Why? Because people wanted the impersonalism of a big urban center. Now there have been studies by some liberals, like Lewis Mumford, of the big cities of a few centuries ago, which were sometimes about as large as our own, a few big cities. And yet there was a strong sense of community, precisely because there was more of a Christian temperament prevailing. Now, the absence of community is notable in the big cities, but it’s increasingly notable in small towns. There is less and less community in the areas that you would think, well it is inescapable that they would know each other and they would have it. But they don’t want to be involved in each other, in the big city or in the small town. So it makes no difference, you see. It isn’t the urbanization, because there was a time when the strongest community spirit was in urban centers. Today it is absent everywhere, and it’s because of a different temperament entirely. Now there are evidences that people are beginning to be distressed and upset by the impersonalism of life, it’s becoming so destructive. In the 1950’s, there was a tremendous amount of moving back and forth across country as executives were promoted from one place to another. This is now ending, in the last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that executives now will quit a company rather than be moved, even though it’s a big promotion. In other words, they want to stay put. There is very definitely now a hungering for community. It’s still a non-Christian hunger but it is important. Does that help answer your question?

[Audience member] So you think that we still have to {?} urban centers {?}?

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely. Very definitely. Yes?

[Audience member] We were seeing this subject this morning with individualism, and I wonder {?} determine for ourselves what is good and what is evil are basically making ourselves as god.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well individualism does lead to that you see. Individualism is a product of original sin. Man isolates himself more and more, to be his own god, to be his own universe, to live unto himself, and then he has the worst problem of all; living with himself, and that’s hell. In hell people have to live with themselves throughout all eternity, there is no community with anyone.

[Audience member] And I have one other point, toward the end of your {?} you said something about everyone having {?}. Paul said I glory in tribulation, {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes, because they work patience. That’s in Romans. Yes. And the result is that we become stronger for it. Now it isn’t that he enjoys the tribulation, he enjoys the result of it. Romans 5:3, “and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is showed abroad by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” So you see, our lives through the tribulation, gain a hope ultimately, a hope that maketh not ashamed. We are strengthened in the faith, we are strengthened in our ability to meet the problems of life, in our ability to live with anything, including ourselves. Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Where what?

[Audience member] Truth.

[Rushdoony] Truth.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right. And that’s why I mentioned the law word as central and it speaks of the mountains of Zion and the references here, the whole Psalm is an echo of Deuteronomy, of phrases from Deuteronomy. So it very definitely says that unity is to be in terms of the truth of God.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well of course what they want is a unity without truth and in defiance of the truth, these modernist churches. To Christians. Now I’m going to be dealing with the fact of the modern church as we develop community and unity and how their idea is not community at all. It is the antithesis of it. So we’ll touch on that later, but that’s a very necessary point, so I’m glad you brought it up, because clearly our idea of unity is not that of the modernist churches. They have no idea of community, and theirs is not unity but union. You see there’s a difference. Unity is spiritual, union is staying all together, putting everybody together.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is an extent to which we cannot have the fullness of community with all our neighbors, but in the old tradition whereby, as I mentioned, the child beaters were governed by the community because there was a responsibility in the minds of everyone for one another and for what went on in their community. So in this sense community is possible with the ungodly, we do police them, we do make clear what our standards are.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh you do. Of course. This is one reason why the old type community disappeared, because it was a problem. You were always involved in this or that in the community and now the attitude is that that’s being a busy body. Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is a defiance of established norms, you see. One way of saying I’m an individual, I don’t have to listen to my parents or to the community that disapproves of a youth of fifteen, or sixteen, or eighteen drinking. So, it’s a way of breaking with community and asserting independence. Yes?

[Audience member] I’ve been hearing arguments about capital punishment and {?} people are usually against it, they say that it’s not {?} where do they get, they quote it like everybody knows it {?} where do they get it?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, it’s been more than once demonstrated that you can use statistics just about any way you want, and so the opponents of capital punishment regularly come forth with statistics that supposedly prove that capital punishment is not a deterrent. But look at it this way, there’s no one who’s ever been executed for murder, who committed another murder. It’s been an effective deterrent.

[Audience laughter]

[Audience member] Does the value of it get rid of murderers, or to keep potential murderers from doing it.

[Rushdoony] The basic thing in punishment is, the guilty party is given the punishment God requires. Now if it has a good effect on you and me, so we think twice before we murder someone, that’s a good side effect. But that’s not important really. The important thing is God says who so shedeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. That’s required. So there are no repeaters when that happens. And so many of our murders today are by repeaters. Professional hoodlums, criminals. Well our time is up, I would like to remind you of the fact that we have these notices on the lectern on the back of our Chalcedon economic seminar, Saturday April the 6th, a week from this Saturday, from 7 to 10 pm, in San Marino. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction. 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.

[End of tape]