Cultural Reformation

Rushdoony says in so many words that the long term answer is to produce a complete Christian culture - a reformation of culture that provides a true alternative to the institutionalized love of death culture of the public schools and humanism, a culture where everything is oriented around Christ and His LawWord.

This cultural reformation should have the following characteristics or points:

1. Ridicule Darwin et al - evolution, survival of the fittest (fittest defined as those who survive), spontaneous order and self-creation of matter, and man as predestinator. Whatever we do we must stop taking these fools so seriously.

2. Re-establish the doctrine of creation - nature shows that show the order, beauty, and complexity of God's creation and the effect of the curse due to sin. Creation appreciation imbibed into us all the time as the order of the day. This also includes assuming and building on the ownership by God of all creation, including time.

3. The Bible as Law - changing legislatures back in to administrators of God's Law-Word. Throwing out all existing laws and replacing them with the Bible in the hands of judges with all rules and regulations having a Biblical justification or also being thrown out.

4. Education as per the Philosophy of Christian Education course/book that Rushdoony gave.

5. Marriage:

a) Patriarchy - includes reconciling ourselves to the patriarchs of the Old Testament and no longer criticizing them where Scripture does not

b) Patriarchal responsibility for the disposition of sons and daughters in marriage - Duet. 7:3

c) Bride Price [3 years wages paid by the man to the father of the virgin bride to add to her Dowry except in case of severe poverty in which case the father can use it to support the family and the bride is a concubine and her children do not inherit since their mother did not help capitalize the marriage.]

d) One Flesh nature of marriage - the disestablishment of the state and the church in marriage - Duet. 24

e) Jealousy as the mark of a true man as God names himself Jealous - thus we do not share our wives or our children with anyone else - we are not to be jealous of God but share him freely with fellow believers.

6. Tithing - God's funding mechanism for His society. This would mean the re-establishment of the concept of Tithe Agencies which would address needs as they arose as they did in Americas past. 10% Health, education, and ecclesiastical for 6 years out of 7. 10% poor tithe for widows and orphans for years 1,3, and 5 out of 7. 10% celebratory tithe for years 2,4, and 6 out of 7 for celebrating before the Lord with strong drink and lots of food. And a sabbatical (see below) for the seventh year - its not just for college professors any more. Tithing and Dominion by Edward A. Powell and R.J. Rushdoony

7. Sabbath - the goal and reality of God being the creator, owner, sovereign, predestinator, and guarantor of His Kingdom providentially working through history to manifest His will. This would also involve the replacement of the concept of retirement with that of the sabbatical - one year out of every seven to "take hands off your life" and put yourself into the hands of God. Ultimately we need to re-establish the calendar on the basis of lunar months, restore the Biblical feast days, and dispose of the names of pagan gods in the naming of our months and weekdays.

These 7 goals for cultural reformation need to be fleshed out and communicated and some strong demons need to be exorcised to bring this about but this cultural reformation is the goal. People with a vision for one or more of these points are needed to pray for, fund, and work to accomplish them.

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There is no salvation without judgment. God will honor a prayer for salvation through judgment. That type of prayer is rare but necessary. A prayer for salvation without judgment will break us.  We must be broken in order to be remade.

Asking for easy answers without cost is to invoke the judgment of God.

A choice bit from Rushdoony on the Exodus series tape 14:

Question from audience member: Should we fight the influence of the homosexual community as they beg for government help to fight AIDs? What should be the Christian response?

Rushdoony: I don't think its worth bothering with. First of all, the people, as they are now, are going to vote in anything they want. The homosexual community, because it is unmarried, has more money and uses it heavily in the political spheres, something very few Christians do. Very few Christians ever give to a politician. So they don't get much. They don't elect anybody.

Alright. So you have to say there are some things that you are not going to change. What can you change? You can begin now to build for the future.

You can say realistically there is judgment and AIDs is going to eliminate a great many people. And at a time such as this, over and over again in history, there are frequently there are more than one epidemics that come along. So that there will be other disasters, other ways that there will be judgment. So we need to look beyond this and say, "This present era is finished, its judged. What are we doing to rebuild. What are we doing to create new institutions. What are we doing to create a new people.

In other words, you can do more if you build one new Christian school or add one or two new students to an existing school than you can by trying to combat something where there isn't any likelihood of altering the situation until people wake up. And right now they are much happier to leave things alone. In fact, they don't like those who call attention to these things. The man or the church who does is asking for rejection.

People don't want to wake up. Well, until God wakes them up nothing will. And some of them never will. Let the dead bury the dead our Lord says.

So if we are trying to save a generation that is surely lost and is willfully, gleefully, heading for destruction we are very foolish.

One of the saddest experiences I ever had was when a very, very fine man, a man who gave a gift of money to help start Chalcedon, but said he would give nothing more. Because he was pouring millions, untold millions, into trying to turn this country around by winning elections. He remembered what a marvelous country it was when he had grown up as a boy. How law abiding it was and godly and he wanted to restore that by winning elections.

When he was elderly and very feeble and all the control of his millions had passed into the hands of trustees for the children and grandchildren, he called me in. And he said, "When we first met you told me I'd be better off putting my money into the Christian school movement. And I know you where right. I just wanted you to know."

He recognized that you couldn't turn around people who set in their ways, who were not going to learn. But that if you worked with the younger generation and began to educate them you had a future.

So we have to think in terms of the future. And build in term of the future. Too often we are fighting the battles of the past, and that is a sure way to defeat.

RJ Rushdoony.