Systematic Theology - Sin
Sin as Deprivation
?Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Systematic Theology
Lesson: Government
Genre: Speech
Track: 04
Dictation Name: 01 The Origin of Sin
Year: 1960’s – 1970’s
[Crowd noise]
In this, our second session, our subject will be “Sin as Deprivation?” A very powerful and influential interpretation of the doctrine of sin in our day says that sin is not due to an evil will but to deprivation. Thus, we are told that children are delinquent because they’ve been deprived of love and of a good environment. We are told moreover that the criminal is a product of deprivation. Every social problem that we face has a like answer. It’s not an evil heart, not a depraved heart but simply that this or that person has been deprived of certain things.
One of the great problems of our day is that this concept of sin as deprivation has influenced the modern world to a tremendous degree. Most of our legislation today on the local, the state and the federal level is based on the premise that sin is really deprivation, not an evil will.
The result of this particular doctrine has been the destruction of every good thing in our society. We see a growing lawlessness because our law today penalizes the godly citizen and blames him for all the social problems because supposedly, he is the guilty party because he is depriving other people of the kind of housing they should have, the kind of advantages they should have and so on. And the result is that people today are brought up to believe that they are being deprived if they are without certain things. And so they have a hostility to everyone who has anything.
I’ve talked to public school teachers who worked in ghetto areas and they state quietly that the children there at a very early age have already picked up the idea from television, from movies and from their schooling that they are entitled to the best homes in the community, that they have been deprived by other people in the society and that it’s an evil and ugly society because they don’t’ have the best homes. The teacher, one teacher who told me this said that the children, fourth graders and third graders said that they were entitled to the best homes in San Marino. Those of you who know Southern California will know what that means.
This is of course, Environmentalism. This is what Adam and Eve used when they faced God. They didn’t say we have sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight, no, Lord, it’s not me, the woman Thou gavest to be with me, she did give me and I did eat. He was the victim. And Eve’s answer was the same. The serpent did give me and I did eat.
Marxism, of course, sees sin as deprivation. Behaviorism, welfare economics, you name it—everywhere you turn today, this is the kind of teaching we face. It is important for Christians to see the evil in this doctrine and to separate themselves from it.
Now our concern this evening is with the roots of this doctrine. There are very many Christians or church members who deny the social doctrine of sin as deprivation, but they still hold to it in the personal realm where they themselves are concerned. If you ask them what makes them happy, they’ll tell you a number of things which add up to one fact: they feel deprived of certain things. Now if I only had this, then everything would be well with me. I’m not asking for much from God, but my problem is that I don’t have this or that thing. And so we ourselves pollute our lives by seeing our problem as deprivation. If only we had certain things, then all would be well.
But very few will say that the root of their unhappiness is sin, that their discontent is sin. Now there is a fact which marks all sinners. They are very sensitive people. They pride themselves on being sensitive people. They’re sensitive where their feelings are concerned, not where your feelings are concerned, nor where God’s Word is at stake. The sinner is totally sensitive to his needs, totally insensitive to the requirements of God and man. What sensitivity means is a finely-tuned Egoism. As a result, the sensitive person, the Egoist, is always thinking in every situation, did I make the right impression? Did I look right? Did I say the right thing? They’re not enjoying the fellowship. They’re thinking about their impact. Such a feeling ensures isolation. Isolation means a failure to communicate and this of course is basic to our world of today, to the world of Existentialism and of sin.
In the world of fallen man, every man is his own god. Hence every man expects the whole world to see how important he is. He demands that his father or mother, wife or husband, recognize how important he is, and so they build a wall between themselves and the world, a wall of Egoism, and they say in effect to people, world, look at us. Enjoy us. Serve us forever.
I was interested recently in reading a symposium put out by a number of psychiatrists, when one of them, a Dr. C.T. Sager said that increasingly, he was finding some very strange factors in the discontent, the unhappiness of people. And he cited one case of a woman who was unwilling to enjoy her marital relations or any sexual relations with any man (because she was not a faithful woman), because she was afraid that if she did, the other party might have a hold on her, that love would establish a bond. And he commented on the fact today this modern mood of Existentialism, of Egoism, regards even love as bondage because if you love someone, you feel tied to them and they want no such bonds. To experience joy with others means that you’re dependent on them, because you love them. And if men hate dependence because they want to play god, they’re going to be hostile to love.
There is also a hatred of godliness and a love of sin; a fretfulness with marriage, because it means a bond. You see, to be a creature means that we are dependent no only upon God but upon the world around us and upon other people. Alexander the Great, by the way, did not like falling in love with any woman. He did not like eating and drinking because it reminded him that he was a creature. And so as far as possible, he’d avoid women. As far as possible, he ate just enough to keep himself physically fit. He did not want to enjoy food because to enjoy food would be to acknowledge that I want something, I’m dependent upon it. I need it. This is how far the sinner goes in trying to be as god. Alexander the Great actually killed his best friend because he resented the fact that the friend was not only telling him certain things, but making clear to him how much he (Alexander) depended on him. That was intolerable!
To be a creature means to be dependent upon God and upon man and upon the world around us. Sin seeks an independence. Sin does not want dependency on anyone and it culminates in the insane position of Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet of the last century who actually wrote, “What you do, God, when I die/When I, your broken pitcher lie/When I, your drink go stale or dry/I am your guard the trade you ply/You lose your meaning, losing me.”
The rejection of dependence means the rejection of friendship. We then demand that other people bow down and be our servants, not our friends, because friendship means interdependence and the realization of our creaturliness. We cannot demand perfection of people without trying to play god and saying you have to be accountable to me.
Now today, we have a society in which men as sinners each believe that they are their own gods, determining good and evil. And because each on is playing god, he is at war with everyone else. And when men see themselves as gods, it leads to Equalitarianism because they will not tolerate anyone greater than themselves. Some of the first champions of equality in the Western world were very open as to their reason for demanding equality. They could not bear that anyone be higher than themselves, that all be leveled, that all be equal. And then in that equality, they would assert an elitism. Some of you are familiar with George Orwell’s Animal Farm in which the motto is that some pigs are more equal than others. That’s the kind of equality that they finally end up with.
But the Bible does not allow us to forget our creaturehood, our dependence upon others. There’s a very interesting word in the Bible for bondage or slavery. It means very literally in the Greek actual, chains or bonds. And yet that word is used over and over again to indicate our relationship to Christ, and our relationship to our fellow believers, a word that literally means to be chained. Paul says, using that word in Ephesians 4:3 that Christians must work to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now in this case, the word bondage has added to it ‘sun’ meaning together, so that Christians are together bound, chained together. That’s what it means to be in the Spirit.
Again, Paul uses this word repeatedly in Colossians 3:14 and Colossians 2:19 and so on. You see, as creatures, we can never escape bonds, dependency. If we refuse to be dependent upon God and in God to be dependent upon our fellow men, we will be bound by sin. We will be in bondage to sin. Our true freedom is from sin. It is from death and to the bonds of Christ and of righteousness as we are told in Galatians 5:1, John 8:31,32, in II Corinthians 3:17 and in James 1:25. It is the service of God, scripture declares, that is our freedom.
But man, being a sinner, sees sin as freedom and pleasure. Now, the idea of sin as freedom means freedom from God. The sinner knows what his sin leads to. The sinner knows that his drinking leads to problems; that his promiscuity leads to problems, very grievous problems, but the pleasure in it is that he is breaking God’s Law. He wants freedom from God and he is ready to pay any price (and sin always exacts a price) to be freed from God. This is the pleasure of sin. Forbidden fruit, we are told, is sweeter, by which they mean, is free from God and His Law. The sinner does not want to be deprived of his right to play god. The saying has it, I’ve gotta be free. I’ve gotta be me. [0:18.15.8]
Now the Garden of Eden was a place of work, emphatically a working society. All you have to do to realize what the Garden of Eden was like, it was a sinless place, but it was not a perfect place, because the work perfect in the Bible means fully mature, fully grown. Now, Eden was anything but a fully mature society. Consider what Adam faced. He was created; he was told go out and till the garden and keep it. Prune it. Take care of it. Cultivate it, without a single tool. That was work! Now one of the first things Adam had to do was to fence off the vegetable part of the Garden of Eden, after all, even though the lion and the lamb were lying down together, maybe they were lying on Adam’s vegetables. [Laughter] And then consider this. We are told in Genesis 2, that instead of a rain, in those days, there was a heavy dew every night that watered the face of the earth. Well here you are, newly-made, without a stitch of clothes and no house! It wasn’t a perfect society. Sinless, but not perfect. There was a lot of work to be done. And then, naming, that is classifying and understanding all the animal creations, a scientific task, then somewhere along the line much later, Eve came into the picture. Well, I’m sure that added to Adam’s work, because he no doubt built a little lean-to as a shelter while he worked to develop that garden and now Eve was not satisfied with that—it had to have better housing.
So, you see, what scripture requires of us, beginning with the Garden of Eden is a recognition that we are creatures. Even in a sinless place, there was work—hard work and a necessity to grow and a recognition by Adam that if I’m going to have any food I’m going to have to work for it. It doesn’t come to me automatically. It’s going to require care of those vegetables, care of those trees and a pruning of those trees. From the very first day of his creation, Adam had to know his dependence upon God, on the world around him, and upon Eve when she was created because they had to work together. And his sin was to say I shall be as God. I’m going to be independent. I’m not going to be dependent upon God and the world. I can determine all things for myself. That’s a good idea. God is trying to keep you, said the tempter, from realizing your own potential. Yea hath God said? You mean you believe what He says? Ye shall not surely die. You listen to me and you can be free. Declare your independence.
Now, Adam’s world in the Garden of Eden was a service society. He had to serve God. He had to serve Eve and she had to serve him. They had to serve, so to speak, the trees because they had to care for them. But what does sin do? It does not say we want to serve a society. We want to demand society, a demand society. And it says we will work to rebuild the world in terms of our demand society. People marry in terms of demands. Education in modern society is in terms of enabling us to make demands. The function of the Church in the eyes of many people is to make demands. What are you doing for the young people, for the old people? Not what can we do together to glorify God and to serve Him? And as for civil government today, all our legislation is in terms of a demand society. Every group going to the law and saying let’s pass this and that law, demanding certain things. A demand society is a suicidal society. It destroys itself because it works to destroy work. And today productivity is diminishing steadily in this country.
All you have to do is to look at what’s happening to every kind of service that we have. If you haven’t had any problems with the mails lately then it’s because you don’t do much mailing and get as much mail as we do. I have to think every week in terms of writing letters because problems have developed with the mails and things haven’t arrived or have gotten lost.
I was talking on the plane the day before yesterday from providence, Rhode Island to Chicago to my seat-mate who is in the paper business and he says, we’re having a problem. We’re just barely supplying the newspapers of this country with newsprint. What’s the problem? It’s production. We’re ceasing to be a work society. We’re becoming a demand society and the demand society frustrates, hinders, and by legislation, makes work more and more difficult.
The doctrine of sin as deprivation rather than a fallen, evil heart leads to a demand society. Demands are made supposedly to alleviate deprivation, so that the answers of a demand society are let’s remedy the lack. But of a godly society, the problem is sin and it calls for salvation and then godly righteousness in the redeemed. The two worlds thus are very different. The godly society, which is a service society, the society of interdependence and the demand society which is a society rooted and grounded in sin and in the belief that man suffers not from an evil heart but from deprivation.
Are there any questions now?
Yes…
[Audience] You said earlier that the problem with the unbeliever and the sinner is {?}
[Rushdoony] What was that?
[Audience] You said earlier that the problem with the unbeliever and the sinner is that the {?} in that, the saying is that if only I had something more I’d be better off. I had to say I was a little convicted with that. I find myself sometimes thinking that too. What is the attitude of a believer towards wanting more or better, situation and not for more? …suggest, what is the attitude?
[Rushdoony] There is no sin in wanting more if we work for it and we are not discontented. You see, there is a difference between godly contentment with work and initiative and drive and a chronic discontent and a demand of God that He give us these things. But when we work for them and we say it’s still in the Will of God, it may be that God in His wisdom feels that we are not to have these things. But if we are to have them, then we are, with godly work to strive for them. That’s the difference.
Yes…
[Audience] Because with a discontented spirit, they’re not happy even if they get more.
[Rushdoony] Exactly!
[Audience] Because they always want more. And like a person says, when do you have enough, as Rockefeller, I guess it was, when is enough? A little bit more. A little bit more—that’s the spirit of discontent.
[Rushdoony] Yes. The spirit of discontent is never satisfied.
[Audience] How do we distinguish between covetousness, discontent and man’s dominion drive?
[Rushdoony] How do we distinguish between covetousness, discontent and man’s dominion drive?
Now, discontentment is being unhappiness, is being unhappy with our God-given lot. Discontentment does not go well with work. The discontented by and large are demanding, not working.
Covetousness means to desire and work to secure fraudulently that which belongs to another; to secure lawlessly.
Now, dominion has a radically different characteristic. Dominion, godly dominion, is to bring every area of life and thought into captivity to Jesus Christ and to function as His stewards and as His vicegerent toward that end of bringing things into captivity.
Wycliffe made the point that only the Christina can have dominion because God is the true Lord and we are His servants. The ungodly can have power, lawless power, but only the Christian can have true dominion, because true dominion means to extend Christ’s kingship not only in our lives, but over everything that we touch.
[Audience] I was just thinking that dominion, would that be implied, who had dominion over our lives? Would that be implied in that too? Are we dominant, in dominion, dominice over our state? I mean self-dominion?
[Rushdoony] Yes. Well-
[Audience] Or God have dominion over us, submitting that God, instead of submitting to self.
[Rushdoony] It’s both. God has absolute dominion over all things, but God tells us in Genesis 1:26-28 to have dominion over all the earth and over all things therein under Him. Now, our Lord said that the Gentiles love to exercise dominion or to lord it over people in an ungodly way, to show their power. But He said it shall not be so with you, that—how do we show our dominion? By being servants one of another so there is a radical difference between the two ideas.
Any other questions or comments?
Yes..
[Audience] {?} for many years, I’ve heard you speak of the Christian as being a vicegerent of the Lord. What is the difference between the vicegerent and the vice regent?
[Rushdoony] A vicegerent and a vice regent, they’re both essentially the same thing.
[Audience] Well, I thought that might be—
[Rushdoony] Different terms, but the same thing.
[Audience] Um-hm. Thank you.
[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments?
Well if not, let us bow our heads then in prayer.
Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for our fellowship one with another. We thank Thee for the joy of salvation and the blessedness of being Thy people and of having the privilege of serving Thee. Give us grace to have victory day by day over the sin within us, to live in terms of Christ, the new center of our lives, and to be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.