Systematic Theology - Sin

Sin as a Political Asset

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 09

Dictation Name: 09 – Sin as a Political Asset

Year: 1980

[Dead Air] … come to Thee in a time of trouble and distress and the heathen rage and the ungodly they counsel together against Thee. But Thou, or Lord, has declared in Thy Word that Thou who sittest on the circle of Heaven does laugh. Thou doest hold them in derision. Teach us to walk, our Father, in faith in Thy holy government, and Thine absolute sovereignty, that acting in terms of Thy truth and righteousness, we may with a full boldness, be more than conquerors in the face of all things, that we might do that which Thou wouldst have us to do. And having done all, to {?}. Bless us this evening in our studies. In Jesus’ name, amen.

We have been dealing the past few months and will for a while yet with the biblical doctrine of sin. Tonight our concern in the first session is with sin as a political asset. “Sin as a Political Asset.” Our scripture is from II Peter 3[2]:17-19. Our particular concern is with verse 19. II Peter 2:17-19:

“17These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.

18 For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.

19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

Now as Christians, we view sin with horror and dismay. It is to us a personal and social roadblock to God’s Kingdom. It is also for us the very smell of death. But to fallen man, however, sin is a way of life. He sees it as freedom and as pleasure. In spite of that, because all men are created in God’s image and every atom of their being has God’s image written across it, even in their sin they cannot suppress the knowledge of God. Paul tells us in Romans 1: 17 and following, that the ungodly hold the truth (or hold it down literally in the Greek), suppress it in unrighteousness. Because they are created by God, their whole being cries out in a witness to God, but they suppress it. They seek to be their own god, but a sense of guilt pursues them.

Not surprisingly, especially since Freud, guilt has been very openly the main problem that psychotherapy deals with. Now notice the difference. No psychologist, psychiatrist or psychotherapist says, “Your problem is sin.” Rather, he says, “Your problem is guilt, guilt feelings.” And everything is done to explain guilt away. They will not say it is sin; no, it’s something you’ve inherited from your animal past (this is Freud’s reasoning), it’s a guilt trip that was laid upon you by your parents and the church or by society. Guilt, according to psychotherapy, is not real. But all the same, the problem that psychotherapy has to deal with is guilt. It deals with it in one of two ways, either by working with the mind (counseling) or mechanically (that is by shock therapy or chemistry—drugs, tranquilizers and the like). But one has only to read the literature of psychotherapy to realize that they are giving another answer than the Word of God to the problem of guilt. And they will not answer to the question of what causes guilt with any honesty. The Bible says that it is sin.

And so the role of psychotherapy is to try to eliminate guilt without dealing with the problem of sin. Now, not everybody goes to a psychiatrist or to a psychotherapist. A lot of them go for the same thing in drugs, and so you have today the drug culture. The prevalence of drugs is startling. The claim has been maid that there is not a high school in the country that does not have drugs, that is a public high school, and not many junior highs that are not completely saturated with it also. If such there be, it is said, they are out in the sticks. If it isn’t drugs, it’s liquor. If it isn’t drugs and liquor, it’s something else—anything to escape the fact of guilt.

We can understand that. Guilt is a devilating, incapacitating force. Guilt makes men indecisive and impotent. A guilt-ridden society is a past-oriented society. When a man is guilty, his thinking is tied to the past. He’s always rehearsing the past and trying to justify himself. Guilty people keep going over and over and over again the things that they did that were wrong, trying to justify themselves, trying to find an audience. If they sinned against you, they want to bring up the subject always to justify themselves. Guilt makes a person past bound.

One person told me of a problem they had with someone once. The person was used to being dishonest and vicious. But this was particularly uncalled-for because no one had every treated them better than this particular man. So he really crossed a far-out boundary when he defrauded this man. And it troubled him. He knew he’d taken some kind of final step. So what happened? Month after month, year in and year out until one of them finally moved from the area, every time he and any contact with that guilty man, he found a way of dredging that up to explain away his guilt. The offended person had forgotten the details of it. All they knew was that they had more to do than to think about the past. But this was all the man could think about who had committed the sin. Sin makes us past-oriented. If we do something wrong, we go to be and we rehearse endlessly, what we’ve said that was wrong. The sinner is totally past-bound.

Now consider what this does to a society where men are predominantly sinners. That society is incapable of dealing with its problems because it’s too busy trying to justify the past, trying to make excuses for what happened yesterday or a year ago or ten years ago. And as a result, men and nations become chained to the past.

The Christian on the other hand, can sin but he has this assurance which makes him future-oriented, not past-bound. Paul tells us in Romans 8:28, “…for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” So that God, when we are saved, takes our very blunders and He makes them work together for good. So we’re not chained to the past, we’re given a vision of the future.

Peter tells us the ungodly, the evil-doers, promise them (those whom they delude), liberty while they themselves are the servants (or literally) slaves of corruption. For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. A man is a slave of whatever masters him. Our Lord put it very bluntly in John 8:31-36 when He said, “whosoever committeth sin is the servant (or slave) of sin.” And He went on to say that no one is freed from the slavery of sin except by Himself.

Now the goal of the political process, with very rare exceptions in all of history has been the enslavement of men. Here our thinking tends to be very naïve. We have grown up in what used to be a Christian country where the goal was freedom for every member of society. But throughout almost all of history, the purpose of civil government has been to enslave the people. Today our leadership is not Christian. Our country has been moving into another religion—Humanism and its goal, too, is the enslavement of the people.

Now of course, every social order that seeks to enslave the people covers it with all kinds of noble verbiage. It speaks about noble ideals such as justice, peace, law, order, democracy, public welfare, redistribution of wealth, and so on. Whether it’s a Marxist country or a Democratic country they’re always doing things for the people which always wind up as the enslavement of the people. We are today being enslaved in the name of being helped.

Now how do you attain this goal of enslavement? How can you best enslave a people? By making them feel guilty. Guilty men, the Bible tells us, are slaves. Guilty men are slaves. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant or slave of sin. Now politicians know that there’s no better way to enslave men then to make the m feel guilty. And if they’re not Christians, they feel guilty anyway. Just aggravate that sense of guilt! Make men feel guilty for living well when others are in want. Don’t you hear this often enough? Oh, how can you live so well when all those people out there have so little?

Now we have the Liberation Theology people, who are Marxists, but they have taken over the modernist churches and now they’re taking over virtually every seminary in the country, whether it calls itself Reformed or Arminian, all the fundamentalist seminaries and all the others, and they’re calling for the redistribution of wealth. In one of the tracts that they’re passing out now (and they have training courses for ministers in all your big urban centers) they’re saying private charity is wrong. In other words, it’s a sin for the deacons to help a needy elderly person in the congregation. This should be done through the State and then it isn’t demeaning. That’s what they’re saying! And so we are made to feel guilty because we are living so well.

There are books now being written by supposed bible believers and well, the most popular in the country right now in such circles is Rich Christians in a Hungry World by Ronald J. Sider. And one chapter he’s titled, “Is God a Marxist?” And he never says no. The whole idea is to say that what horrible people we are because we live in good, comfortable homes. We eat well. We have electricity. We have flush toilets. Didn’t you know that was a sin, to live well when a lot of people don’t have that?

What’s the idea of that kind of talk? To make you feel guilty. And if they make you feel guilty, they can enslave you. We’re told to feel guilty concerning people in prison. Lay a guilt trip on the people for anything and everything. Make them feel guilty for being white, for being black, for being anything. Make them feel guilty. Guilty men are not free men. They are slaves, and slavery makes political power easier.

In the Soviet Union, they do everything to lay a guilt trip on the people. That’s how you keep a population in line. One of the problems that people who’ve been protesters, who fought against the Soviet regime have when they come out here (I know because I have a couple of hundred books by various people who’ve fled from the Soviet Union), they come out and they see a market full of food and they feel, what a sin that people can have so much. Takes them a while to get over that kind of thinking because the Soviet government has consistently laid a guilt trip on them, and this is exactly what they are doing to us.

We’re not only having a guilt trip laid on us for our use of energy, but everything is being done to curtail the available amount of energy and to make us feel as though it’s our fault because we have used too much. We’re living too well.

But the substance of freedom is simply this, according to the Bible: if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. As a result, no religion has more political significance than our faith. No other religion can make men free. Every other religion only accentuates the slavery of man because it lays a guilt trip on them and increases their slavery. It’s no wonder Buddhism was popular wherever it went with rulers. Buddhism does a phenomenal amount to increase man’s guilt trip.

The sad fact is, too many churches have false preaching. What’s the point of false preaching? To make the people out there feel that they’re crud. What terrible sinners you all are! That kind of preaching is wicked. When we come to the Lord, when we are saved, then indeed we confess we are sinners. But when we get up we are saved sinners who are now saints. And we are not to be told endlessly that we are sinners, but that we are men now moving in terms of sanctification, in terms of growth in the Lord to go out and to conquer, to be more than conquerors, and so the point of preaching is not to stress and increase the guilt trip of men, but to give them the word of power so that they can go out and they can be more than conquerors.

To atone means to cover. When Adam and Eve were confronted by God in the Garden, they sought to cover themselves. And the world has been full of all kinds of false coverings for sin since then. And it is the essence of nonChristian politics both to increase the sense of guilt and to pretend to cover it.

We have seen a great deal of this of late. Last month, May 1980 we had the race riots in Miami. And what happened? Immediately we had blacks and whites on the television to tell us that it was our fault. What terrible people we are! And to threaten us with more riots unless we change our ways. Well how about the rioters changing their ways? Granted that what happened in the courtroom was lawless. Is lawlessness in the streets the answer to lawlessness in the courts? The sinner is always the building block of political tyranny, and tyrants like guilty people. They encourage sin. This is why every time in history you’ve had the growth of tyranny, of dictatorship, you’ve had the encouragement for a sexual revolution. In Ancient Greece, in Ancient Rome, throughout history, you had the encouragement of various perversions. You’ve had the emphasis on how terrible the people are because they lived well or because they do this and that; one way or another—to lay a guilt trip on them. The guilty man is the building block of political tyranny because guilt means controls, and there is no remedy to the problem of sin and guilt except Jesus Christ. Except the Son of Man make you free, you shall not be free. And only the Son of Man can make us free.

Are there any questions now?

Yes…

[Audience] {?} first work on…. Let’s work a couple ways in this thinking, just in terms of what happened in Miami, you know, the blacks are being made to feel guilty, or the people, or the… are being made to feel guilty since that {?} being made to feel inculpable for what they do. Yet they’re the ones slaves, they’re more slaves than people who are there trying to be made to feel guilty, with federal programs, and assistance.

[Rushdoony] They are slaves and most whites are slaves now because they’re not in Christ.

[Audience] Yeah, but see, there’s nothing less we can do, there’s a way in which the government can {?} and {?}

[Rushdoony] Of course. They want everybody to be slaves in Washington. Why not? If you want power over people, you want them to be slaves. Slaves grumble a lot, but they cannot create a free social order.

[Audience] We have one program disfavored being made to feel guilty {?} program that favors, being made to serve {?}

[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments? Yes…

[Audience] I was wondering the same thing here ties in here with our tax system, doesn’t it? the entire tax structure in this country, seems to me.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. The tax structure; well every year according to a man, a tax lawyer, who left the IRS recently, the IRS plants stories in the press, the gist of which is that we are to be made to feel guilty. By making us feel guilty and by overstressing their power, they ensure the fact that people are going to cough up every penny they’re supposed to and maybe a little more. It’s done deliberately. Someone who’s in Washington, D.C. in the headquarters of IRS has written that up in a recent book.

Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not we’ll have a 10 or 15-minute recess and then... [Tape ends]