Growing Down

After many years of second-hand quotations I'm finally getting around to reading R.J. Rushdoony's magnum opus, The Institutes of Biblical Law. That study, combined with Matt Redman's musical quotation of Job, "Blessed be the Name," have gotten me to thinking about the modern mindset and its condescending attitude toward the ancients, particularly within the Church.

The common view among both theological liberals and conservatives (which they share with secular humanism, having derived their view from it) is that in the days of the Hebrew commonwealth and Kingdom, men were in their childhood socially and ethically (and, for the liberal, theologically, as their view of religion is evolutionary and not revelatory), compared to the enlightened, or shall we say, "Enlightenmented," view of modern man grown up into his own. The harshness of the Law compared to modern man's humanitarianism is seen generally as primitive and barbaric.

This is exactly backwards. Obedience to the Law leads only to maturity, freedom, and peace. Modern revolutionary permissiveness leads to chaos and sustained childishness. Think about it--your average modern, egalitarian revolutionary is little more than a two-year-old. He wants gratification now or else he will demonstrate, or strong-arm (via the State) those who won't give in into giving him his way.

A man who understands God's way of holiness understands the gravity of such wicked acts as dishonoring parents, undermining authority, blasphemy...all those things which moderns regard as the virtual duty of those seeking "freedom." He sees God's grace in providing true justice which purges a godly society of those things which ultimately lead to its death.