Our Threatened Freedom

Is Being Human a Disaster

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 102-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 102

Dictation Name: Vol. H - Part 11 - Is Being Human a Disaster

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is being human a disaster? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

The other day I read a book review which saddened me. The book is by a very able and charming writer, but all his charm cannot conceal his radical emptiness, because he has no faith. The book reviewer, titles the review ‘The Disaster of Being a Human Being’. The author’s basis for such cynicism is stated by a character who says, and I quote, “The atheists are right, there is no justice, no judge, there’s no one ruling the world.” Unquote. What then are we to do? What is the author’s answer? Two sentences sum it up. I quote. “As long as you breathe you must breathe. One should always be joyous.” Unquote. Well this is better counsel than the suicidal verdicts of others, but still none too good. If life has no meaning, and being human is a disaster, why then breathe, and what is there to be joyous about?

I am inclined to think that they who claim that God is dead and life is meaningless are like the modern educators, who, according to C.S. Lewis, geld a man, and then bid him be fruitful. We can also compare it to chopping down a tree and expecting a harvest from it next summer.

As Richard Weaver told us some years ago, ideas have consequences. If we insist that being human is a disaster, we shall certainly make ourselves into walking disasters and the world into a disaster area, which is what we have done. If we declare that God is dead and His moral law dead also, should we be surprised if we are not soon like moral zombies, the living dead? In terms of material benefits, conveniences of living, life expectancy, educational possibilities and much, much more, man has never been better off than we in this country are today.

But in terms of faith, morality and law, we are a disaster.

Even more, all too many people view today and tomorrow with little or no hope. Now hope is one of the greatest psychic nourishments and incitements possible for man, without hope a man has no future. One of our most prolific industries today is the proclamation of hopelessness. Our press, literature and films all too often reek with a sense of hopelessness. Such people are insisting that the world is as small as they are.

A popular book of a few years ago was titled, very wisely, ‘Your God is Too Small’. A sequel could be written as to how small we have made our world, by our thinking.

In the old days of Saturday movie serials, one frequent horror scene had the hero, or heroine, trapped in a cell with spiked walls, which then began to close in on them. Too many of our contemporary authors write as though they were trapped, and all mankind with them, in a narrow cell with the walls closing in to destroy them. But don’t you believe it. This is still God’s world, and freedom under God is our calling.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.