Law and Life

Community and Crime

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 15 of 39

Track: 126

Dictation Name: RR156H15

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in Him; that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up. Let us pray.

According to Thy Word, our Father, we come unto Thee, having confidence that Thou dost hear us, and that Thou dost give that which we ask according to Thy will. And so our Father, we come into Thy presence to commit unto Thee all our hopes concerning our loved ones, ourselves, our country, Thy church. O Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou art able and that Thy purpose for us and for our loved ones and for all these things is a glorious purpose in and through Jesus Christ. We pray for our troubled times, grant us Thy peace O Lord and Thy victory, and grant that the kingdoms of this world might indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our Scripture is from the book of Deuteronomy, the 21st chapter, verses 1 through 9, and our subject Community and Crime. Deuteronomy 21:1-9. “If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain: and it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke; and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer's neck there in the valley: and the priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the LORD thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried: and all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley: and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the LORD.”

On two previous occasions, we analyzed the significance of state and community first and then the community of the atonement. And we saw that in the modern world since Rousseau, the state has been at war against the idea of community, and Jean Jacques Rousseau emphatically said that man cannot be free until every form of community: the family, the church, the independent school, private associations, are destroyed and man is put totally under the government of the state. He therefore defined totalitarianism as freedom. And basic to his purpose was to free man from Christ, this was Rousseau’s declared purpose. As against this, we then saw that with His atoning death and resurrection, Jesus Christ established the community of the atonement, a supernatural community with tremendous functions as it faces the world, to replace the old order with the new; the community of the atonement. Today we shall analyze the relationship of community and crime. As we have seen, the totalitarian state wages war against the idea of community because community is a powerful rival government and therefore the totalitarian state and the welfare state and every modern state works to weaken the community, to work to weaken every aspect of community, every form of community; the family, the church, and vocations, in order to strengthen its own power.

Now this has repercussions. As it suppresses other forms of community or nullifies them, and tries to be the only form of government, there are reactions. Every community exercises government and coercion. Its government is a form of coercion. For example, a community (let us say a small town) which is prejudiced against outsiders will exercise a very real government. There is, for example, one community (there are several like it) in the state of California which represents almost entirely one Northern European group. They stress their national origin, they stress their customs, their type of architecture, their type of foods and so on, so that the community is well known as a tourist attraction, representing a particular national background. People who have lived there say that if you’re not of that particular Northern European country (a small country) it’s a very hard and a lonely place to be. You’re frozen out of everything. That’s government. It is government directed against everyone who is not of that particular origin, and there is coercion in that they are cut out of things, they are eliminated, and so on.

Now, the state intervenes very often to break this kind of prejudice in a community. What happens when civil government interferes to break down the barriers of a community, which can be racial prejudice, which can be sexual prejudice, which can be also doctrinal prejudice, it not only strikes at the weakness but also at the strength, at the very life of these communities. Moreover, the state is no more immune to sins and shortcomings than any community. We can never say of any civil government in the world that it has a particular immunity to sin. So that if you go from the community to the state, you’ve eliminated the possibility of sin, far from it. When sin is made into law at the national, at the federal, at the state level, it has a far more devastating effect than if it’s in a small town from which you can move to another community more to your liking or in a church, and you can go to another, or to any community from which you have some recourse and escape.

Moreover, the state lacks a great virtue which the family, the community, and every natural form of society possess. We belong to a family, we do not belong to a state; we join it. We become citizens thereof. It is a legal act, not a natural fact. Now this makes all the difference in the world. Where we belong to something naturally, our loyalties, our patience, our forbearance are far greater. We can both be angrier with our husband or our wife or our children and at the same time more loyal and patient and long-suffering. We belong to one another, we put up with more. And so there is more community and more ability to adjust, to deal with problems without destroying everything. Now in an artificial community this is not possible. One disagreement and the relationship is ended. But in the natural community, you can be very, very angry with your parents, your husband or wife, or your children, angrier than you ever are with anyone outside, and in a week the whole thing can be forgotten and you’re working together harmoniously. Where you belong, in other words, there are ties that hold you together, there is genuine community. And where there is genuine community there is the ability to work out problems. Where people belong, there is a vitality and an ability to cope with problems. You can see then what happens to the world when the state becomes more and more oppressive and works, as the modern state has for the last century and a half, to destroy community.

One of the great instruments towards destroying community was the public school; its purpose was to destroy community, to enable the state to take over the child and shatter the fabric of community life, to destroy the old loyalties in the mind of the child, to make him rootless. The whole of modern educational psychology is derived from John Locke and the idea of the blank piece of paper, the rootless person as the hope of the future. And so the moderns state works to destroy true community. But the more it destroys true community, the more an illicit community arises. Long ago, Saint Augustine observed that when the state becomes a band of robbers, rather than ministers of justice, then only bands of robbers can function in the state. And he was right. Because we have seen over and over again through the centuries whenever this kind of situation prevails, then you have illicit, illegal communities, secret societies, criminal societies that then function. For centuries the only effective government in China was secret societies. For a number of centuries in Germany, the {?} was a secret underground government that ruled and was finally eliminated about the beginning of the last century. For centuries to the present in Sicily and in Southern Italy the mafia has ruled. And in this country increasingly as the power of the state grows, a criminal community, the criminal syndicate provides a new form of community, a new form of government. I’ve actually heard business men say that they prefer to deal with the mafia than with the federal government; they can depend on it more. And they find it sometimes the only way to do business effectively. But the criminal community is really at war with true community and is a parasite. The difference between the state (one band of robbers) and the criminal society (another band of robbers) is basically this; the state works to destroy community, the criminal group works to become a parasite on community, it does not want to destroy it, it wants to feed on it. And the result is that life begins to fall apart.

One of the things that the state accomplishes through the public schools is to destroy the unity of the family, and Saint Augustine said “If, then, home, the natural refuge from the ills of life, is itself not safe, what shall we say of the city, which, as it is larger, is so much the more filled with lawsuits civil and criminal, and is never free from the fear, if sometimes from the actual outbreak, of disturbing and bloody insurrections and civil wars?” But this is not all. As you have this destruction of community by the state and then the parasitic sucking of the life of the community by criminal societies, then you have also another attack on true community. Revolutionary groups which are more radical in their hatred of the community than the state begin to take over. They begin to act and they strike at the family. Now consider the Hurst kidnapping. What in essence was it? The girl was either kidnapped and brainwashed or is very likely cooperated. And the gist of the whole thing was to strike at a family in a dramatic and a national way, to command the attention not only of the United States and the whole world, and to reduce the life of the family to nonsense, to make a father look completely impotent and ridiculous, and to make family life all the more ridiculous by having a girl take insults to her parents and especially her father that were going to be in every newspaper and on television and on radio. To strike at the life of the family. And of course at the same time to expose its weakness, because the father in that case refused to exercise godly discipline much earlier and to show any stand in saying that she was not his child if she refused to speak in terms of his standards, and to refuse to bow to any alien government. This he did not do. And this of course is the end of the road. First the schools shatter the character and strength of the family and then revolutionary groups hold it up to ridicule. Over and over again in the last century, and we shall return to this in subsequent weeks, the revolutionaries made a statement that seems surprising at first glance, but they were wiser than too many godly people. They said that true democracy requires the death of the father. And they went on to say it meant the death of the Father and the holy family above and His death, His obliteration, His destruction in the earthly family. To shatter authority and to reduce the family merely to sentimental ties and to deny the authority of the father because it constituted a government that could not be tolerated.

And so, we have the planned destruction of the community. The idea then is to make the state the true community with Nazism it was the blood tie, all those of the same race. With most socialists it is the tie of humanity; the blood tie again, the whole race, the family of man and the religion of humanity. Of this movement, the one world brotherhood of man, religion of humanity idea that a one world state will then provide true community with the state ruling everything, a scholar Vanderloo has observed, and I quote, “This religion of humanity however, has scarcely enjoyed any cult development in our secularized era. All the more powerfully, nonetheless, does the magic of humanity still operate, it is the sole entity it is held, worthy of worship that remained to thousands after the fierce conflagration of potencies in the 19th century. At one time virtuous, as for the Age of Enlightenment, he who delights not in such teachings deserves not to be a man it was held. (This was Mozart’s statement) At another time, realistically as in {?} sense, for all human failings, pure humanity atones. Again romantically, it has been held, every mother is a virgin Mary, than as reverence for life it has persisted to our time especially in its woes. And there at long last it found cult forms also. Under the arch of triumph in France burns the eternal flame from the grave of the unknown soldier, who in his anonymity represents the whole of vast suffering humanity, and before whom the nations bow. Humanity then is the sole community that can vie with the church in catholicity. But it lacks the head which constitutes the church a living organism nor has it any mission, and it is precisely in its mission that the paradoxical character of the church is revealed. The given people, which simultaneously is the spiritual community never existent in fact, the community that both is and is not, that is the church, and it embraces the world. On the other hand humanity is far too existent, we all belong to it and for us there remain no possibilities. This is the poverty of humanity as community."

However, more than poverty there is the fact of division, the fall divides man from man, and man from himself, and so there is no possibility apart from Christ of bringing man together with man. The natural communities are elapsing, only supernatural community can exist. But the goal especially of the modern state is the death of community natural and especially supernatural, and this is injustice, and it makes the state an antinomian body; in the name of law the modern state legislates against law, and the courts become instruments of injustice and you have then a partnership of crime and state against the community. Both have a vested interested in destroying supernatural society. But they create anarchy; every man his own god, and the result is neither community nor state becomes progressively possible. But the Bible tells us that crime must be dealt with, and that the basic government is not the state but the community, beginning with the family. And it gives us the key to the problem of community and crime, and this is the whole point of our text. The community of the atonement is portrayed as it deals with Christ, and the principle is that all crime must be atoned for; every crime, every sin is an offense against God’s order, and then secondarily against man’s order or against the natural order, and it requires atonement and restitution. Here we have, as we do throughout the law, case law; a particular instance selected to set forth a principle. A man, found dead in a field. If in a city, then the problem is very obvious. If in a field, then it has to be the responsibility of the nearest community, the nearest town. They then, if there can be no solution to the crime, if the murderer cannot be found and executed, and the same is true of a theft (because this is case law) and the thief cannot be found and required to make restitution, the community nearest to the point of the crime has the responsibility. And they must then go through this service of atonement. First, making clear their innocence, but also their responsibility for God’s order within their realm, and because the crime has been committed within their domain, their community, they must wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded there in the valley and they shall answer and say our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven.

In other words, every community has the responsibility to apprehend the guilty party in a crime and require restitution or if this is not possible, the community of the atonement makes restitution to the individual and makes atonement with respect to God. God’s order must, in other words, be established, and God’s order requires that the responsibility be placed in the local community. It was not the judges of Israel that had the responsibility here but the elders of the local community. The basic government is placed on a local level and there can be no unatoned for crime in a community. Thus we must declare that the modern state is antinomian, that it is godless, that it is anti-Christian, and we have a duty to declare the regenerating power of God through His son Jesus Christ and to summon all men to faith, and we must work to establish the community of the atonement; to reestablish God’s order within the family and then to move out from the family into the church and the school, and then into other communities, and finally to establish it in civil government itself. God’s order. And this is not beyond our reach, because within the hands of all of us is the greatest power of all; the family, the basic unit of government, the basic power which we saw earlier in any society the key to power in any social order and hence the hatred of it by the modern state. It is here that we begin. We shall see on subsequent occasions some of the other ramifications of community. Community is much the concern of the modern world, but when they talk about community, they mean the family of man; a statist idea of community. For us, true community is only possible with regeneration, and then the regenerate people must, under God, develop the supernatural communities which God requires of us. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy Word. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us and made us a supernatural community in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee our Father, that Thou hast given us the assurance that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Make us ever mindful, our Lord, how strong and great we are in Christ, more than conquerors in Him, who loved us and died for us that we might be kings, priests, and prophets unto Thee in Him. Our God, we praise Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now first of all with reference to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] I have questions answered and {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a very interesting point. Pilot was very obviously familiar, as Roman governors were required to be, of Biblical customs, because they knew they had a ticklish situation there, they did not want to aggravate the people of Israel and thereby create a rebellion or revolution. And so, when he washed his hands, it was in deliberate, self conscious mimicry of Biblical customs. But it was futile because he could not wash his hands of the guilt. He was still responsible. He was afraid of his job, that was the real reason, he was afraid that if he refused to give in there would be complaints filed against him in Rome. He’d had trouble already with the people and therefore he was unwilling to risk a demotion. Yes?

[Audience member] Is the community bypassed when, if a crime is committed the police come in and start the investigation and then if the person who did it were taken to court, jury trial and something happens and then the community, they {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the community today is not bypassed if the police do their work and the courts do their work. But our law today has no reference to the fact of sin. Increasingly, it’s purely statute law, and since Holmes it has emphatically been affirmed that there is no right or wrong in any law. Some of the statements by Holmes in his private correspondence of the absurdity of the idea of right and wrong even with respect to murder, are so far reaching that it makes us realize to what extent our law is meaningless today in any Christian sense; the courts, holding the Holmesian type of legal positivism and pragmatism, simply do not see any right and wrong, it’s just statute law; you enforce it, but increasingly to a very weak degree.

This last week, Chief Davis released figures on how few men who were guilty of peddling narcotics or of theft or very serious crimes actually serve time for it today; a very small percentage, very small. Yes?

[Audience member] Should the Christian take their surety of salvation from the belief or that they do according to what God says?

[Rushdoony] It has to be both. The Christian life is one of believing and obeying. By their fruits shall ye know them. First they have to be a good tree and second they have to bring forth fruit. Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount gave the test, and James, the brother of our Lord in his epistle, emphasized it. First of all, a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit, but second a good tree either brings forth good fruit or it is not a good tree. So life is a unity. Now, theologically we can analyze and separated aspects of life and formulate doctrine, but in life we cannot say that there is a distinction you see. Justification produces sanctification, and you cannot find justification apart from sanctification.

[Audience member] But what are the consequences of a Christian going overboard so to speak in their belief part and say that they’re mean.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well let me give you a practical example of that right now. One of the most remarkable men of our day as a performer is a motorcycle rider, Evel Knievel, whose performances are really staggering. He claims to be a Christian, he says he prays before every performance. He’s very happy that his wife takes his children to church and Sunday School, but he is very, very open about the fact that he will sleep with any woman he wants to, and he says no one makes my moral laws for me, I make my own. Now, what can you see for a profession of faith like that? What he believes in really is good luck, and he wants someone up there to be good to him when he performs. Now that is not faith. Faith is not something subjective, it is objective, and too much of what passes for faith today is a purely subjective emotional thing. It is not the power of God unto salvation.

[Audience member] It seems when people put away God’s law they don’t really have anything to judge what {?} to base it on {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you see, the modern idea of faith is purely subjective, emotional, it is a feeling. The Reformation idea of faith is that it is the working of the Holy Spirit within us, it’s an objective fact, it has nothing to do with our feelings, it is that we have been regenerated and there is something now in us, a principle. There’s a world of difference between the two ideas, but they’ve been totally confused in modern thought. Yes?

[Audience member] In your Institutes of Biblical Law, you seem to equate moralism with legalism. I would think that moral law would be concerned with sin and right and wrong.

[Rushdoony] I didn’t get that last part.

[Audience member] I would think that moralism would be concerned with sin and right and wrong.

[Rushdoony] No. Legalism is the attempt of man to either work out his salvation by works of law. (Socialism is a form of legalism, Phariseeism is a form of legalism) It can use God’s law, but ultimately in every form, including Phariseeism, it substitutes man’s law for God’s law. And moralism is the trust in man’s works, man’s ways, man’s self-righteousness. And our trust is never in our works but in the righteousness of God unto salvation, His atonement. We do good works, but that’s not our trust. Our trust is in the work of Christ, and moralism puts its trust in man’s self-righteousness.

Well if there are no further questions we will continue with this on our subsequent occasions and one of the things we shall consider that is related to what we were dealing with today is the basic impact of the sexual revolution on the idea of the family. It is a planned destruction of the family and it is very important for us to understand what these people have in mind because it’s a highly organized, a very powerful movement in our time, and it is anti-Christian to the core. It’s hatred of the Word of God is enormous, and there is a legal assault on every level on the remains of Christian law in our society. Let us 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.

[End of tape]