CR101 Radio - Podcast Network

James 4:1 asks a question most Christians apply only to personal quarrels: "From whence come wars and fightings among you?" But what if that same diagnostic — that conflicts are rooted in sinful passions and lusts — applies not just to family disputes but to the wars between nations that have defined the modern era? In this episode of Out of the Question, Andrea Schwartz and Pastor Charles Roberts...

Some people treat faith like a possession something comforting, personal, and safe while others find that faith has taken hold of them and refuses to let go. One faith comforts; the other compels. When faith becomes a living fire within us, it demands obedience, growth, and sacrifice, often making us uncomfortable but always drawing us forward. True faith points beyond ourselves to God’s will and...

Throughout history men have sought a master concept by which to understand all things, yet every key that rests in human reason or material explanation falls short, because it cannot interpret the moral and spiritual meaning of life; Scripture instead provides the true key when it declares, “Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the Lord understand all things” (Prov. 28:5). Understa...

Notes on the Law in Western Society – The early church regarded biblical law as binding on believers, applying Levitical regulations to clergy, observing sabbath and moral law, and enforcing discipline, penance, and restitution (Ancyra, Basil, Gregory Thaumaturgus). Canon law reflected Scripture even while navigating Roman law, bureaucracy, and societal decay. The Theodosian Code and later Justini...

He called himself a coward but history called him brave. When a runaway freight train hurtled down a mountain grade, every confident man jumped off except one: H. C., too afraid to leap. Instead, trembling but clear-headed, he crawled across the boxcars and set handbrakes he’d never used before, saving the train and earning a medal for bravery. True courage, as H. G. Wells said, is doing what you’...

What made St. Patrick great wasn’t superior training, intellect, or strategy but an unshakable trust in God. Surrounded by danger, barbarian invasions, and threats of death, Patrick cast himself entirely on God’s providence, believing not that he would be spared hardship, but that God would bring good no matter the outcome. He preached both judgment and mercy without fear, confronted tyrants, purs...

In *Easy Chair 149* (July 9, 1987), R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott warn that money and debt are not merely “economic” topics but **religious and moral realities**—because a culture’s view of money reveals where its faith rests. Scott argues the modern world has entered an unprecedented situation: *“money”* as true wealth has largely disappeared, replaced by **paper claims backed by nothing—worse th...

Rationalism consistently detaches truth from history, treating abstract ideas and human reasoning as ultimate rather than God’s acts in time. This stands in direct opposition to Christianity, which is grounded in real historical events the Fall, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. Scripture proclaims that the Word became flesh, a claim Greek and modern philosophy reject because it unites truth wit...

In “Relativism,” Rushdoony argues that denying God leads inevitably to the denial of objective meaning, right and wrong, and moral limits, leaving society governed only by interest, power, and the expanding authority of the state. He critiques relativism as a self-blinding faith that mistakes subjective experience for reality, using it to erase moral distinctions and absolutes while claiming intel...

An ancient Roman inscription declared, “To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh that is life,” and it perfectly captured the mindset that led Rome to collapse. When civilizations abandon faith, they stop thinking about responsibility, hope, and the future, and instead live for present pleasure alone. History shows that technology, power, and comfort cannot save a people without belief good plumbing d...

The future is often painted as dark, unstable, and full of hidden dangers but what if that’s not the real problem? While inflation rises and enemies seem to grow stronger, God is still on the throne, and His rule has not weakened with time. Scripture reminds us that history doesn’t spiral out of control because of external threats, but because people abandon God and His ways. When we reject His la...

Isaiah’s striking description of the man of faith as one who “walketh in darkness, and hath no light” confronts our natural desire for clarity, explanations, and visible guidance, for faith does not remove darkness but requires us to trust God within it. We cannot see beyond the present, nor can we fully understand past sorrows or unanswered prayers, and Scripture forbids us from kindling our own...

This session contends that economics rises or falls with the strength of the trustee family, not with state policy or abstract theory, exposing the Enlightenment myth that “reason” and social order exist only apart from God as ideological nonsense designed to justify hostility toward any institution not created by human fiat. Drawing on Zimmerman and Unwin, the argument shows that civilizations fl...

A once-successful man plunged into gambling, then into theft first from his company, then from his own wife in the vain hope that a “lucky break” would undo his mounting sins, proving again the folly Scripture condemns: “Let us do evil, that good may come.” His life illustrated the truth that a bad business cannot have a good ending, and yet such moral confusion is now praised as “realistic” even...

This passage argues that the public is often misled about budget cuts. Media and politicians claim that cuts primarily harm the poor and elderly, but in reality, budgets are frequently still increasing, and cuts usually apply only to proposed increases. Meanwhile, overgrown bureaucracies and legislators’ own expenditures remain untouched. Ordinary citizens, facing rising taxes and aggressive colle...

In “Moral Force,” Rushdoony argues that all lasting authority rests not on brute power but on moral force rooted in faith, and that when societies abandon moral absolutes they inevitably replace persuasion, law, and justice with coercion, bribery, violence, and aestheticized destruction. He traces how relativism leads first to cynicism, then to the worship of power—whether through revolutionary vi...

God's love is not unconditional, and pretending otherwise has gutted the church. Andrea Schwartz sits down with Mark Rushdoony to trace how the modern gospel of unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness collapses into antinomianism, manipulative altar calls, and a Christianity with no kingdom and no game plan. They press into covenant as a relationship on God's terms, the abandoned doctrine...

This session exposes inflation as a moral disease before it is an economic one, rooted in fiat money, statist power, and a humanistic belief that value can be created by decree rather than by work, thrift, and godly character. When money is severed from real wealth, it becomes a tool of theft, rewarding debtors, punishing the faithful, and financing cultural decay—from foreign Marxist regimes to d...

An old French proverb says, “The more things change, the more they are the same,” a truth many rediscover whenever election hopes collapse into the familiar reality of corruption, taxes, and disappointment. No matter the promises, yesterday’s rascals soon look little different from today’s reformers, because changing the names without changing the character of the men in office can never produce a...

Rationalism claims to prove God by human reason, but the “god” it produces is only a product of fallen imagination acceptable to man but not the living God of Scripture. By ignoring the Fall and its corruption of the human mind, rationalism assumes reason is neutral and pure, when in fact sin has radically warped man’s thinking. Because fallen man resists a God who judges him, he reshapes truth to...

People often boast, “I know people,” but such confidence usually appears just before they make a serious mistake about someone. The truth is, as Solomon said, no man fully understands even his own way, for people change some grow stronger under pressure, others falter; some old men mature, while some young men refuse to grow at all. Over time, many we trust will disappoint us, and others will surp...

A foreign visitor once marveled that Americans will sit at a red light at 2:00 a.m. with no car in sight an unconscious habit inherited from Puritan forebears who lived with the deep awareness that God’s eye is always upon us. Early Americans obeyed even in solitude because they knew there is no escaping God: He sees every sin, but also every need and every faithful act unnoticed by men. Though ma...

Peace in the biblical sense is the wholeness, prosperity, and well-being that flow from reconciliation with God and restoration under His order. It is more than the absence of conflict; it encompasses peace with God, with oneself, with others, and with creation, reflecting the Edenic harmony lost in the Fall and progressively restored through Christ. Messianic prophecies, such as living under one’...

God’s declaration in Amos 9:9 that He will sift His people “as grain is sifted in a sieve” teaches a hard but necessary truth: the Christian life necessarily involves shaking, breaking, and tribulation, not as punishment but as purification, so that the chaff may be separated from the wheat. Scripture consistently affirms this principle through much tribulation we enter the Kingdom, and God remove...

A grieving friend recently told how she has faced her sorrows by trusting that whenever God closes a door, He also opens another an outlook rooted in the promise that all things work together for good to those who love Him. The real danger comes when people fixate on a closed door, living in the past, refusing God’s providence, and becoming blind to any future; one acquaintance, who spent fifteen...