Miscellaneous

The Meaning of Life and Death; Capital Punishment & Human Life (Actually Rushdoony 80th Birthday Introductions)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 8-18

Genre: Lecture

Track: 22

Dictation Name: RR271A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

[Audience Leader] Thank you all for coming and joining us in this conference of Christian Reconstruction being held here in San Jose; and the 80th birthday party for Mr.R.J., Reverend R.J. Rushdoony. I recognize and realized that as Andrea and the other people helped put this together, that for many of you coming here was a tremendous effort, it meant organizing your schedules around this event months and months in advance, having this be your vacation period, it meant a substantial investment in terms of funds just to fly here or in some cases drive here from another country, Canada, it is a tremendous honor to be able to stand in front of all of you and to host this. A tremendous honor. Welcome to you all!

I’d like to start by asking Reverend Mark Rushdoony to come up and lead us in prayer.

[Mark Rushdoony] Let us pray. Our most good and gracious heavenly father, it is so good for you to bring us all here together. We thank you first of all for all of those who have done so much to aid the ministry of my father and the work of Chalcedon, and the work of the kingdom our Lord Jesus Christ. As they have been mindful of the needs of Thy kingdom, we pray that Thou wouldst be mindful of them. As we have received of the benefit of Thy generosity, we pray that they would receive of the benefit of Thy goodness. We thank you for the purpose and meaning that your Son Jesus Christ gives to our life. The direction that it provides us in time and in history, and in all of eternity. We pray that Thou wouldst enrich us in this assembly, we pray that it would encourage us and instruct us, we pray that we would be filled with a renewed sense of faithfulness to your word, we pray that you would teach us to love your commandments and to hold fast to your promises. We pray that you would expand the laborers in your kingdom. We pray most of all for Thy grace that we might do the will of our master and our heavenly Father Jesus Christ, in His name we pray, amen.

[Audience Leader] Well now I have the pleasure of introducing somebody who is probably the reason why most of you are here. Of course I am speaking of Reverend Rushdoony. He has been called the father of the homeschool movement, he is certainly the Father of Christian Reconstruction, along with being the founder and president of Chalcedon foundation. Probably each one of you in this room, probably through his books if that is the only way you have known him, or other publications, or having heard some of his tape ministry, have your own personal anecdotes or reasons in the way in which he has touched your lives. Over the past 11 years the way in which he has touched my family’s life is something that is impossible to fully convey or even to begin to convey except to say that he has touched my life, he has given me legs to my faith, shortly after my conversion I was having a conversation, my wife and I were with someone who was a little more savvy than we were, and we were attempting to instruct this person in the faith, and the fellow looked at us, and in the most direct possible way said: “You are a couple of idiots. The only chance you have if you want to do this at all seriously is to get some instruction from somebody who knows something.” Now mind you we had invited him to our house for dinner. He gave me a little booklist of people to read, this guy Calvin, I am sure somebody here has heard of him was on it, there was another name, and then there was someone called Rushdoony and something called the Institutes of Biblical Law.

Well, we searched to try and find this guy Rushdoony and these Institutes of Biblical Law and along with reading the other people on the list we read him, my wife who if none of you have known her is not exactly reticent to pick up a telephone and call people, suddenly had us directly in touch with this fellow who I was sure was living somewhere in the clouds and couldn’t possibly be a real human being, well he turned out he was a very real human being, and over the years, has spent hours, and believe me I needed them, hours and hours of time of his own personal time answering my questions, theological questions, guiding me as somebody who was trying to get my act together; and guiding me in terms of what it would be to be a father in a society that was a barbaric society, attempting to live by Biblical principles, guiding me in terms of situations that would come up in my work, in my profession, and guiding my family. So there is no way on earth, and I sincerely mean that, to in anyway convey my gratitude to this man.

Now adding to that, I have the honor of saying for all of you, some of you who came to him and weren’t idiots, came to him and did know something and were still instructed, it is a tremendous honor to be able to at this time and to this group introduce Reverend R.J. Rushdoony.

[Applause]

[Rushdoony] A few minutes ago some friends of many years standing, the Duscans from Indiana, handed me a present, I haven’t opened it, but the wrapping was a delight. It reads: “Happy Birthday, ancient one.” Well, at 80 the thing that comes to mind is a line from Fiddler on the Roof. If you saw it you remember when Tevye turned to his wife at the wedding of their daughter and said: “I don’t remember growing older.” But I realize that as 80, and my memory goes back to World War 1; I have a good memory about almost everything except what my wife told me 5 minutes ago. But it is a sobering thought to realize that over half the population of the world has been born since 1950, and if you go back to 1940, the overwhelming majority of the present world was not yet born.

Well, it’s a very, very different world. In the world of those days most people even in cities did not lock their doors. Crime was very limited. Even in Chicago with the Capone mob, the killings in a whole year, regarded as sensational the world over, sometimes are surpassed there in a single month without much notice. It was a much safer world. In those days, daily papers reported on the front page each Monday a sermon preached in one of the churches the day before. This year, the Los Angeles Times pulled the B.C. comic strip because it spoke about the atonement. The world has changed. Well, by God’s grace, we are going to change it to something better than it has ever been.

Over the years, I have been very often interviewed by reporters and magazine writers, and the results have been uniformly bad. I am going to begin in a minute by telling you what I tell each of them when I begin, and no one has ever reported it. In fact, a major American Newspaper called me about 10 days ago, and I corrected them on what their opinion of Christian Reconstruction was, and I explained what I am about to tell you. And the Reporter exclaimed: “That’s very radical, it is too far out!” He still did not include it. Maybe he thought he was being kindly to me. What was it I told him? Something I have told writer after writer, and they refused to begin with that as my starting point. It is simply this: That in our culture today, in this century in particular, the word government has changed its meaning drastically. When you say government today you mean the state, and that is altogether wrong.