Systematic Theology - Sin

Sin and Fantasy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 13

Dictation Name: 13 – Sin and Fantasy

Year: 1980

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that as we face this troubled world, we do not face it alone. We thank Thee that Jesus Christ is closer to us that we are to ourselves; that He is our life, our redeemer, our priest, prophet and king and that in His name we shall conquer. Bless us this night as we give ourselves to the study of Thy Word. Strengthen us in Thy service. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Our scripture is from Luke 1. Luke 1:46-55, the Magnificat of Mary.

“46And Mary said, my soul doth magnify the Lord,

47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

54 He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.”

Our subject this evening in the first session is “Sin and Fantasy.” “Sin and Fantasy.” And we are particularly concerned with verse 51. The second half of that verse reads, “He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

The word that is translated from the Greek as proud or imagination means a thinking over, used here as a sense of independent reasoning, a reasoning, a thinking, a planning, without God. All such reasoning the Bible calls imagination. Nowhere in the Bible is anything good said about imagination. Some of the texts which speak of the evil character of imagination are Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, Deuteronomy 29:19, Deuteronomy 31:21. Also, Jeremiah 23:17, I Chronicles 28:9, Romans 1:21 and II Chronicles [II Corinthians] 10:5. The Bible speaks of imagination as evil.

I have on several previous occasions, spoken about the love of modern man for fiction. In two or three of my books, The Word of Flux and I believe also Revolt Against Maturity, as well as in a forthcoming work, I have called attention to the fact that in no other age of history has man spent more of his time filling his mind with imagination. Films, fiction, television, periodicals, and the routine everyday thinking of people is marked by this will to fiction. It is schooled in us from early years. Education being humanistic fosters the growth of imagination in people, the will to fiction, the love of fantasy. Imagination thus is very important to modern man.

Now, men who will not be governed by the Will of God, by the Word of God, will not be governed by reality because reality is not of their making. As one modern author cried out concerning the world, it’s a world I never made! That was his great indictment of this world—he did not make it. God, having created all things, reality reflects the mind of God, not the mind of man. As a result, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God’s Law world.

The problem therefore is a very urgent and also a very practical one. Every facet of modern man’s life is governed by imagination. This is basic to Humanism, to all who are borne of Adam. Genesis 6:5 says that God saw that the imagination of man’s heart was only evil continually. Education, as I said, today stresses the imagination, and imagination replaces reality. It does more. It seeks to govern reality.

One of the things that has concerned me greatly in the last few years is the fact that in a very large number of cases involving very young married men in their 20s and 30s, an impotence sets in; sometimes almost after marriage. They find that unless they fantasize, they are incapable of any sexual relationship with their wife. Why? In many cases, the wife in question has been dramatically beautiful. Why the preference for fantasy? The reason for it is that in imagination, the person created by fantasy is totally the creature of man, whereas the real person is the creature of almighty God. And that’s the key.

Modern man prefers a world, however lesser in which he with his imagination creates the world. And the real world to him always has this offense—it’s a world he never made. As a result, in one area after another of modern life, man is in flight from reality because reality is God-made, not man-made.

To illustrate further, one of the very common facts today is the playboy myth, the idea of the gay bachelor. Well, an exceptionally fine study of this was made by George Gilder, entitled Naked Nomads. What George Gilder showed in that study was that the bachelor instead of being the gay creature that Playboy and popular fantasy portrays him as being, is a person who is neurotic, has all kinds of mental and emotional problems and hang-ups, is more likely to be an alcoholic or on drugs, and to have serious mental problems and quirks. He has more serious health problems. He is more likely to be in trouble with the law. He is in short, a social misfit. He is anything but the gay blade that the Playboy image creates.

But of course, it’s not Gilder’s careful report and analysis that is popular, it’s the Playboy Magazine. Man prefers fantasy to reality. Or to cite still another case: the myth of the happy hooker. A recent study in San Francisco of all places had this to say, and I cite only a fraction of the report. “A federally-funded study of one hundred San Francisco prostitutes had revealed that half are under the age of sixteen and most are whites, middle class and unhappy. More than half the women were victims of incest or sexual abuse between the ages of three and sixteen and came from families with excessive amounts of problems. One young prostitute, she (Silbert) was only eleven years old and came from an upper-middle class family. She told the researcher in a taped interview, you know when you’re beaten by pimps and tricks and raped by strangers, it’s easier to take because you know they’re not supposed to care. But when you’re beaten by your parents and raped by your father, it’s much harder because they are the people who are supposed to care and don’t.”

Now there was nothing new in this report. As a matter of fact, there are reports of like character that go back a century and a half. Have people learned from it? On the contrary. They go on perpetuating the myth of the happy hooker. Why? Because fantasy, imagination, appeals to them more than reality. And in their fantasies, sin has to be successful. It has to be happy. And hence the myth of the gay bachelor and the happy hooker.

Imagination also rules in law and in politics. It rules in economics. After all, we should know by now that departures from the gold standard are a failure. They’ve always led to disaster, but that has not restrained the entire world from believing that because this time, we in our fantasy, in our imagination (or as they say, in our planning), are wiser than the men of the past. We will make it work. This is the foolishness of man’s imagination. We see in politics, Marxism and the Western democracies imagining that they can create a way of life, of politics and of law, in contempt of the Word of God. And somehow, because they are the noble people of creation, what they have imagined and what they have taken counsel together to create will stand.

But the Virgin Mary says all these fantasies are doomed. He has showed strength with His arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. Mary rejoices in a glorious historical process which over and over again has led to the scattering of the proud in the imagination of their hearts. And now, will climax in the last age, in the age of Christ with a total destruction finally of all the imaginations of men

The proud are the arrogant. Proverbs 16:18 says pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Pride has no sense of reality. Hence it is as doomed as a blind man on a strange mountain pass. It will fall.

Now Paganism exalted pride. In Greek culture, although we do find that Sophocles condemned hubris (pride), most Greek thinkers praised it. Aristotle said pride was the mark of the great-souled man. The stoics saw that as a cardinal virtue. But our Lord condemned pride as evil and declared in Mark 7:22 that it was the outworking of a depraved heart.

Some generations ago, the scholar, Robert Baker Girdlestone, in commenting on the meaning of the word torah (law), wrote as follows. “In II Samuel 1:7, there is recorded first the promise of God to keep an unfailing covenant with the seed of David, whose throne should be established forever, and secondly, David’s expression of thankfulness on account of this promise. In the opening of his psalm of praise, he says, who am I oh Lord? And what is my house that Thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing in Thy sight, oh Lord God, that Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant’s house for a great while to come and is this the manner of man, oh Lord God? The parallel passage, I Chronicles 17:17, runs thus: for Thou hast also spoken of Thy servant’s house for a great while to come and hast regarded me according to the estate of a man of high degree. The word translated manner in the one passage and estate in the other is torah, which is generally rendered law. The first passage might be rendered and this is the law or order of the man and the second, Thou hast regarded me according to the law or order of the man from on high.” In other words, what David is saying is that the law, order, manner and estate of man is Jesus Christ and His prophetic Law Word.

Reality is not from man, but God. Reality is set forth in the incarnate Word and His written Word. Jesus Christ orders life in terms of God’s reality, whereas man’s imagination seeks to order life in terms of man’s evil fantasies, fantasies of man as God. Now because man’s fantasies are private, men fail to see their dangerous implications. But private fantasies become the public acts and polices of tomorrow and unreality then governs life. In any society, where unreality, where fantasy governs life, judgment is inescapable.

The world is on a collision course with reality, and that collision course is inescapable for individuals, for groups, for institutions, for churches and nations. The world was not made by man and it will never serve man’s fantasies. The fantasies of men are sin.

Are there any questions now?

Yes…

[Audience] I was wondering in a, would you consider that, say when humanistic psychologists talk about psychoses, or something like that, are you just, better, is it better to say rather than an illness, it’s {?} of imaginations?

[Rushdoony] Yes, very well put. The neuroses and psychoses stem from imagination. They change from age to age as a particular type is exploded and no longer workable. They have a cultural context. Dr. Thomas Szasz, a humanistic psychiatrist, has done some remarkable work here and has written on the myth of mental illness. He regards it as a form of play acting which people indulge in because they know people are going to buy it, and it’s a way they have of escaping from responsibility.

Yes…

[Audience] When you were discussing the happy {?} way with a four-step plan, was, is that plan from the writings of the humanists, or from history, or how were those four steps arrived on {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, perhaps I should not have cited the four-step plan of the humanists with regard to controlling Christianity, but the source of it is from within Washington, from someone who does know what is going on and is letting us know.

[Audience] What is it, some form of conspiracy or something?

[Rushdoony] No, I think instead of seeing it as conspiracy we need to see it as humanistic missionary zeal. They know what they want. It’s time Christians knew what God requires of them.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not, we’ll take a 10-minute break.