A Word in Season: Messages by R.J. Rushdoony on the Faith for All of Life

I once heard a minister whose entire sermon amounted to blasphemy, complaints about his upbringing, and resentment toward the way God made the world. His grievance was that his parents had “baptized, catechized, and chastised” him meaning they had dedicated him to God, taught him the faith, sent him to excellent schools, and disciplined him for his good. What he condemned was in fact a priceless i...

Old frontier movies and revolutionary films of the 30s and 40s have been replaying for decades, and now their spirit shows up in the streets as shallow, undisciplined youth reenact Hollywood fantasies long-haired “frontiersmen” and ragged “revolutionaries” railing against the Establishment. Empty-headed people, especially undisciplined and faithless youth, are always susceptible to such hypnotic s...

If you want to produce a generation of hippies, the formula is simple: remove God, Scripture, and moral law from schools so children learn that faith is trivial; teach them to fixate on their “rights” rather than their duties so they grow up both demanding and irresponsible; train them to feel entitled to instant paradise so they riot when denied anything; and convince them that the source of evil...

A worried mother went to meet her son’s teacher after receiving a note from the school, fearing her junior-high-aged Eddie already both mature and helpful at home had fallen into serious trouble. Instead, she was told his grades were excellent, but his real “problem” was that he did not “relate” to his peer group: instead of wasting time in childish nonsense, he read, studied, worked, and refused...

When Ben-hadad besieged Samaria, his demand for Ahab’s gold and silver aimed to cripple Israel’s strength, and his demand for the king’s wives intended to humiliate him but his greatest weapon was the demand for Israel’s children, who would be taken, re-educated in an alien faith, and returned as servants of a foreign power. This strategy has been repeated throughout history, from ancient empires...

A century ago, John Swett the architect of California’s public school system openly denied that parents had any rights in government education, insisting that teachers were not accountable to them and that children in public schools were “the children of the State.” Later attempts were even made to prevent parents from sending their children to Christian or private schools without state approval,...

I have before me a treasured book first published in 1875, written by one of America’s great Christian educators. Recently, while lecturing at an Ivy League law school, I met his great-grandson a pleasant young man dressed like a semi-hippie who admitted that he and his brother went to great lengths to conceal their relationship to this remarkable ancestor, a former university president known for...

Twice recently friends asked my opinion of glamorous new “charities” their women’s groups had adopted causes I’ll call the Friends of the Whoopee Indians and the Christian Mission to Ivy League Hopheads. I told them frankly I thought little of either, because real charity begins at home. In nearly every church there are elderly couples needing weekly help with housework, shopping, or caring for a...

Mrs. B___ lives in a lovely home in an elite neighborhood and prides herself on being a “good” liberal parent, insisting her teenagers bring home every sort of troubled classmate. When her house was burglarized clearly by youths who knew exactly what to take she felt no anger, only a sort of thrilled moral superiority. Rather than blame the thieves, she blamed “society,” insisting that we are all...

Some years ago, when a farmhouse caught fire in the middle of the night, the family barely escaped, but the tidy housewife paused in the burning living room just long enough to straighten a crooked picture before running outside. The entire home soon burned to the ground, but at least the picture was straight when it perished. That story comes to mind when I hear certain preachers today: the flame...

In Revelation, Christ condemns those in Thyatira who believed that true Christianity required studying “the depths of Satan” (Rev. 2:24). Many in the early church became obsessed with tracking evil conspiracies, corruption, demons rather than obeying the Great Commission to teach the nations Christ’s commands. Such people drifted into Gnosticism, a movement that claimed spiritual protection came f...

Rev. T. Robert Ingram tells of a Navy commander in WWII who, during his first battle, issued grand orders “Fire one, fire two” only to erupt in panic when the enemy fired back: “The dirty so-and-so is shooting back at me!” Many are like him: bold when attacking others, shocked when the fire is returned. I once knew a woman whose razor tongue made every meeting miserable, yet she collapsed in outra...

A famous actress of the 1930s was known for her motto, “I want to be alone,” and she remained an unhappy woman to the end, proving that neither crowds nor solitude can produce happiness. True joy is not found by avoiding people or by chasing them, but by living responsibly before God and in community. As an old French saying observes, “All things can be learned in solitude except character,” for w...

Some people are simply too spiritually sleepy to hear anything, and writing to them is like talking to a drowsy friend who pretends to listen but is nearly unconscious. I recently heard a farmer dismiss every moral and social crisis Chavez, crime, riots, lawlessness because none of it touched him personally; but let a tire blow out and suddenly the whole world is conspiring against him. Everything...

We all know the frustration of speaking to someone who refuses to hear, like a young man I recently met who raged against his capable, long-suffering parents while living off their money, rejecting work, and screaming abuse whenever anyone suggested he reform himself. I’ve seen the same spirit in a minister who preached “love” while seething with hatred, attacking his congregation and exploding at...

A country pastor once caught his dozing congregation’s full attention by telling an obvious lie about a sow that gave birth to green pigs, then rebuked them: while he preached God’s life-giving truth they slept, but when he told nonsense they were all ears. His point remains strikingly true far too often even Christians respond more eagerly to gossip, slander, and foolish talk than to the Word of...

My daughter once called home distressed because a classmate claimed George Washington had fathered fourteen illegitimate children and died of venereal disease pure slander without a shred of evidence. I reminded her that such lies arise because depraved people delight in dragging the righteous down to their own level, just as Solomon said, “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to h...

Just as some people obsess over their physical health, religious hypochondriacs obsess over their spiritual health constantly taking their “spiritual temperature,” fretting about imagined sins, and becoming so absorbed with themselves that they accomplish little in obedience. Like the man who carries a thermometer or the woman who neglects her household while brooding over her faults, they focus m...

The word hypocrite comes from the Greek term for an actor one who wore a mask and played a part and the meaning has not changed: a hypocrite pretends to be something he is not. Today’s hypocrite hides behind moral postures, claiming to champion equality while believing himself superior, preaching charity with other people’s money, professing Christianity only when it is socially convenient. Our Lo...

Articles claiming we are in a “new sexual revolution” forget a simple truth: none of this is new. Every generation of sinners treats immorality as a fresh discovery and imagines it will bring freedom, just as Adam and Eve did only to find that sin is the same old slavery. From the 19th century to Mencken’s day to now, the supposed “revolution” has been mostly talk, promoted by those eager to make...

Many people today cry out for justice when they ought to plead for mercy. They focus on wrongs done to them while ignoring the wrongs done by them. As the saying goes, “He who lies down with dogs rises with fleas.” If we break God’s laws, we eventually break ourselves. Solomon puts it plainly: “Whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him” (Eccl. 10:8). In ancient Israel, hedge-fences sheltere...

A rookie basketball player earning $104,000 a year is praised, and entertainers making hundreds of thousands are admired. Yet let a small farmer earn $20–30,000 by hard work, or a businessman earn $50,000 by skill, and he is denounced as an exploiter. Why applaud one man’s success but hate another’s? Scripture answers: “Envy is the rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30). Envy drives people to desp...

Proverbs 27:21 teaches that “a man is tested by what he praises.” One man recently praised hippies as society’s most intelligent class, universities for destroying old ideas of liberty, and humanism as the path of progress while calling Biblical faith an obstacle. He thought he was judging the world; in reality, he was revealing himself, for fools must praise folly to justify their guilt. Yet this...

Almost daily someone repeats the claim that abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and similar sins are “perfectly all right,” and that Christians have no right to impose their moral standards on others. I recently saw the same argument in New York Magazine, where an advertising executive insisted that even colored toilet seats are a matter of ultimate importance, and that anyone who denies this is...

A friend was once troubled when accused of “intolerance” for opposing sexual sins until he realized that his accuser was fiercely intolerant as well, only intolerant of Christianity. The truth is simple: intolerance is inescapable. If we love God and submit to His Word, we will necessarily be intolerant of murder, theft, adultery, false witness, and every assault on God’s order; such things violat...