Systematic Theology – Work

Government as a Monopoly, or the Policy of Death

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3 of 19

Track: #3

Year:

Dictation Name: 3 Government as a Monopoly, or the Policy of Death.

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

Oh Lord our God whose mercies are new every morning, we give Thee thanks in this blessed season for all the manifold gifts and mercies with which Thou dost daily surround us. Thou art good unto us who so often cannot be good to ourselves, and so we come into Thy presence oh Lord to be nourished again by Thee, to commit ourselves afresh unto Thy word and Thy Spirit, beseeching Thee oh Lord to use us in Thy service and make us strong by Thy word and Spirit. Grant oh Lord that the kingdoms of this world be Thine. Grant that the powers of humanistic statism the world over be overthrown, and that Thy saints triumph and that Thy word resounds to the far corners of this globe. Make us ever instant in prayer concerning Thy work and Thy kingdom, and make us joyful in Thy gifts. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Genesis 11 verses 1-4. Our subject is Government as a Monopoly, or The Policy of Death, a rather long title. We’re dealing with the theology of work, Genesis 11 verse 1-4

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

Genesis 11:11-4 gives us an account of the tower of Babel. This was man’s great early effort at a world state. The tower was to be the governmental center and the builders said “go to, let us make us a name.” Now the word name in the Hebrew is “Shem” When Noah made his prophesy concerning the future he declared that God would manifest Himself, show forth His Messiah, through the seed of Shem. So that the name Shem had a significance in antiquity, it meant the person through whom the great promises were to be manifest. The Messiah was to come through the line of Shem. Here however we have a godless use, a very godless use of this prediction because what they were saying is, “we will make our own prophesy, we will predestine the future rather than God. It will be us who create our Shem, our name.”

Now the word, or expression, “let us make us a name.” Has a meaning today, “Let’s make a reputation for ourselves.” That is derived from the Bible, from this verse. In its original however it didn’t have the same connotation it does now. “Let us make us a Shem, a name, as against God” so it was directed against God. God rightly saw their activity as directed against Himself. The world governmental center represented a rebellion against God and against God’s judgment, and there were two great judgments in the mind of all because they were known to all, one was the fall and the curse, and the other was the flood. These men were living under the shadow of those events; they were reasonably recent history to them. To rebel against God mean to war against His law and His rule, and against all the judgments based upon God’s law and God’s government.

The tower was thus a symbol of defiance, an attempt to veto God’s judgment on humanity. It was an attempt, comparable to what fiat money is today, because fiat money, the word comes from, fiat, from the vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible, in the seven days of creation God says “fiat, let us, fiat looks {?}” “let there be light.” So fiat “let there be money, fiat money.” So we have today the whole of the same mentality, a war against God’s judgment. What men are saying with fiat money and fiat laws is simply this, “we can create an order that will roll back God’s judgments, which will prevent the flood of God’s wrath against us so that we will issue our own fiats, we will make us a name, a Shem. We will create our own Messianic order in defiance of God.”

The tower represented a scientific mastery of building and engineering. It was a governmental center, it was also a stepped pyramid so that the base was huge, the second story recessed, the third recessed more, until on the top story there was a single room. Looking at the tower from any and every direction one would see a ladder reaching up into heaven. Freemasonry has always claimed that it has been descended from the builders of the towers of Babel. The stepped pyramids have been common in various parts of the world, there’s a great one near Mexico City. The whole purpose of the tower was thus a symbol of man’s assent to power and deity. Man’s attempt to supplant God’s governing power.

Now the fact of government is a very important one. God alone is Lord or Sovereign, He is the governor of all things and His law word gives us rules for under government, and self government under God. We have dealt on various occasions with the areas of society which constitute government. The self-government of the Christian man, the family also as a government, the church, the school, these are all governments; our vocation is a government, society governs us by its attitudes and opinions and judgments, and civil government is one government among many, and all these are to be under God. Moreover, each of these areas has a variety of levels of authority so that there is not only a decentralization of government on the human sphere into various areas, but each area has its own decentralization.

Take for example the family. We are told in Ephesians 5:23 that the husband is the head, not the sole governor, emphatically not, and there’s a difference. Moreover in I Peter 3:6 we find that the model wife is declared to be Sarah. Now Sarah was anything but the radically meek and submissive women that some people today feel represents Godly wifehood. As a matter of fact she, we are told in Genesis, gave an ultimatum to her husband concerning Hagar, and God told Abraham “and all that Sarah hath said unto thee, harken unto her voice.” In all that Sarah did, today most churches that feel themselves to be Bible believers, would have Sarah up on charges before the governing board of the church. So the family is an area of government, but there’s not one governor in the family, there are decentralizations in every sphere, and delegations. Children too have a governing power, how? They are assigned duties, and hence powers are delegated to them. Work under God is a form of government. To have a responsible child is to have one capable of working and therefore governing in his or her sphere, and growing up into greater self-government, and government into any sphere. This is why the old saying, going back to Old Testament times among the Israelites, and then the Jews was that anyone who did not teach his child a law and a vocation, taught him to be a thief.

Thus it is essential that work become a part of a child’s training. Work is not identical with government and dominion, but it is inseparable from work and dominion. Any society which separates work from government and dominion is in trouble, and the result is that government is indulging in the politics of death. The politics of death seeks dominion by means of government without work, it has separated dominion and government from work, it seeks then a monopoly of government control over every sphere of life and over all persons, families, churches, vocations, society. That Civil government seeks to make itself the God of that order, this is what the USSR, Red China, and other Marxists states represent. This is also what all the Western democracies and virtually every civil government in the world, to some degree, represents; an attempt at a monopoly of power and the separation of work from government and dominion.

The result is that work and responsibility are {?} and penalized. Now the image of God in man requires work and responsibility, it requires self-government under God. It is man, not the state, that is created in the image of God. It is therefore man and not the state that is the primary governing power. For the state to usurp the governing functions beyond its appointed place is to attempt to play God. In every case of such an usurpation the result sooner or later is resentment and then rebellion against that state. The state is not a person. The state is not a responsible, conscious agency or person, it is an institution; when it seeks to supplant men it cuts itself off from men and humanity to become anti-human. Thus the humanistic state leads to an anti-human order. Instead of Godly work as the means to dominion in the modern state, the power state, in the politics of death, coercion takes the place of work and coercion leads to the repression of freedom and responsibility, and it leads finally to death itself. Hence we must call statism the politics of death. It is the politics of death because it seeks government as a monopoly, total control over every sphere of government supplanting every other kind of government, and then government breaks down because it has moved from the responsible agency, the person, to an institution. And whether that shift takes place in church or state the result is deadly.

Hence it is the politics of death. The Bible requires for offenses against certain aspects of God’s justice, the death penalty. The humanistic state also has the death penalty, and the more humanistic it becomes, the greater the number of penalties which are capital, as in red China and the Soviet Union. But the difference is this, the death penalty in the humanistic state is not for a violation of God’s law, but of the state’s law. In the one instance you have a violation of God’s justice, in the other you have a violation of a state’s rules, its fiat rules which are not grounded in justice. Moreover, in the politics of death, death becomes the final solution to all problems, the first step being statist coercion. Thus instead of work, coercion and death become the means to accomplishing something in the politics of death wherever you have government as a statist monopoly; and this is why you have slave labor camps. It’s the only way that work can be produced in a state where the politics of death prevails.

In 1971 testifying before a U.S. senate committee, a mafia defector, Michael Ramon said, and I quote: “You cannot exist in a society where the ultimate solution to everything is to kill somebody, which is the answer of organized crime to any problem.” Now of course this makes understandable why defectors from the Soviet Union say that the state there is the mafia, it has the mafia solution to all problems, death. We in this country are in the first stages, or well advanced in the early stages, of the same solution, coercion. Regulations that are coercive as the means to gaining every desired result. Death thus replaces work as the means of government and dominion, and the result is that most repressive societies have problems producing food and material goods. After all the politics of death is not productive.

We see today God’s judgment beginning upon the Babel’s of the world and just as God’s judgment upon Babel of old was a blessing, it was a means of restoring the priority of work as against the politics of death by breaking up the planned monopoly of all government by the state. So too God’s judgment in our day, and in every age, will move to the same goal. Court decisions today manifest that the politics of death is well underway in the United States. I have mentioned to some of you what happened very recently at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. An attempt was made by homosexuals to organize a homosexual club on campus. The University immediately forbade it, they were taken to court, the judge ruled in their favor with a big questions mark stating that “given the Bob Jones University decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which established homosexuality, or uh, public policy as the governing law in the United States, stating that public policy shall always prevail over any other rights, including the first amendment. The judge left the door open indicating that if homosexuality is the public policy in the United States then Georgetown University has no case, the homosexual can be established. So the door has been left open for an appeal, and the case did establish that public policy must prevail, its only question was “is homosexuality already the public policy?” Behind such a decision is the trend today to make the state God so that the will of the state cannot be contradicted, it means that coercion and finally death are replacing work.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were in paradise, but there was work in paradise, there was responsibility. They finally grew weary of work and responsibility and listened to the temptation that they could also be as God, every man his own God. That their fiat word could accomplish whatever they chose to make it do, and the result was the fall and curse, curse even upon work as well as the earth, and upon man, and upon human relations. But ever since men have continuously tried, as before the flood, after the flood with the tower of Babel, and in every modern state, and most states in between to establish man’s fiat word as the power supplanting work. Hence the goal is to make government a statist monopoly, to use the politics of coercion or death, and to accomplish paradise by that means.

In such a society, as the Soviet Union makes very clear, work is then relegated to slaves and government is separated from it. The result is the USSR today is radically dependent in its economy on the slave labor camps. Escapees and defectors have indicated that without the slave labor camps the economy would collapse. But when you have slavery in any society men’s work, men’s production is survival oriented, not dominion oriented, and a state which depends upon slave labor, on coerced labor, has no good future. In ever age God confounds all towers of Babel. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we pray that as we face the growing tower of Babel in this country and the world over that we may stand fast in Thy word so that when Thy judgment, Thy confounding smites the nations we may be among those who are builders and makers of Thy kingdom, and who will stand amidst the ruins to produce something far better, Thy kingdom. Give us grace therefore to do our work in the knowledge that Thou hast called us to there to, and that by our Godly work we are exercising dominion. We are separating ourselves from the politics of death. Make us therefore in Jesus Christ more than conquerors, in His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Have any of these governments defined the type of paradise that they’re trying to create?

[Rushdoony] Yes, you had since Graham Wallace about the great society, and John Dewey dealt with the great community, and Linden Johnson gave several speeches about it to congress and to the public, some definitions of it. They’re going to create a world without poverty, without sickness or disease, and some of them have, with a more scientific background, talked about a world without death. They’re going to conquer every problem. Of course they’ve only created more. Genetic engineering talks a great deal about its goal for the future.

Yes?

[Audience member] I read your story about the, with that article in the paper down in Southern California about the people who were frozen, and they were going to be frozen until there was a cure for the disease.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, what is it cryonics, or something like that?

[Audience member] Cryogenics.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Their planning to be brought back to life in the future when there is a cure for their particular disease. Of course they’ve had problems with one or two of those storage places, they’ve gone bankrupt. [Laughter.]

[Audience member] The story was they couldn’t pay the, the relatives couldn’t pay the bill, and so the owner of the freezing place pulled the plug. [Laughter.]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Yes?

[Audience member] But these kind of governments create a wide-scale problem because they produce conditioned populations. I understand that the Soviet Jews who did go to Israel created a

lot of trouble in Israel because they keep demanding that the Israeli government do things for them that their accustomed to having governments do for them, they get very indignant when they’re told that there are limits to what the government can do.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s very true. Israel has had a problem with Soviet Jews and I recall reading of one refuge from the Soviet Union came to this country and was horrified by the waste in grocery stores, super markets. All that food piled up there. Rationing was the logical solution. So even as they rebel against its tyranny, unless they have a faith in something better they have no solution except to go back to the same

Yes?

[Audience member] Would you care to make a comment on the movie The Day After as far as, would that be possible to happen and if it did happen would that mean enslavement for mankind, after let’s say a total disaster, or would that be a chance, let’s say for Christians, at that time to take dominion of the world?

[Rushdoony] Well first of all I did not see the film. I was conscientious objector [General laughter in audience]. Second, as Dr. Peter Beckmann {?} has demonstrated again and again in his writing the idea that these nuclear missiles and weapons are so destructive is ridiculous. Their radius is not a hundred times more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but at best four times, and the area of devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not total, it was very limited. So that if such a missile should hit San Francisco, most of San Francisco would stand, it would affect a very limited area.

As a result there’s a great deal of dishonesty and misrepresentation, not only with regard to the extent of immediate devastation, but the extent of the radiation. What these people are doing is to confuse what man could do with God’s last judgment. They somehow believe that man is capable of destroying the world totally, and I don’t believe that’s possible. The scientists who have analyzed the affect of these bombs make clear that it is not possible. So we are being softened up for surrender, really.

Last Sunday afternoon I was called by someone who was going to write an editorial about the film and wanted a lead. He knew there was something wrong, and he asked me if I had any suggestions; and I threw out the fact that this was a pseudo last judgment, that it was a humanistic version, setting forth man as omnipotent and capable of destroying the earth and he liked that and he said “I’ll do something with it.” And he said “by the way, we already have over the wires, in advance of the showing of the film, press releases concerning the public reaction to the film.” That was a few hours before it was shown. So we are being set-up, we are propagandized and so on.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Well they’re really being particularly sneaky about it in this film because ABC had a disclaimer that came on the screen, claiming that they took no particular position on it and that this was simply a portrayal of the facts. [General muttering/laughter in the audience]

[Another Audience Member] Well the National Educational Association promoted the school children nationwide to watch a propaganda film, and yet CBS, or whoever it was that was showing the film Tora! Tora! Tora! requested that parents not let their children see it and it was historically accurate, and not propaganda.

[Rushdoony] I believe that this propaganda has had a great deal of effect, but I also wonder if it isn’t creating a counter-productive reaction. In other words are not people perhaps being satiated? The reaction to the Grenada invasion on the part of the American public was startling. With all this propaganda against any kind of military involvement in anything, they were so overwhelmingly favorable that the press was flabbergasted by it. So it may be overkill on their part.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy mercies and for Thy blessings. We thank Thee that Thou in Thy providence, grace, and mercy, doest send sun and rain, storm and cloud, in their due seasons. Give us grace therefore to take all things from Thy hands to know that Thy hand is upon Thy people, Thy church for good and therefore we may work in the confidence that our labor in Thee is never in vain. Bless us to this end we beseech Thee, in Jesus name amen.