19. Violence as Presumption (Remastered)

Violence as Presumption

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Numbers 15:30-31, and Deuteronomy 17:12-13. Our subject is, Violence as Presumption.

Numbers 15:30-31

“But the soul that doeth ought presumptuously, whether he be born in the land, or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him.”

Deuteronomy 17:12-13

“And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”

These texts speak of presumption, and acting presumptuously, as a capital offence. In the first passage, Numbers 15:30-31, we are told that anyone; whether a foreigner or a native who does ought presumptuously is to be cut off. The second passage makes it clear that ‘cutting off’ means, here, not excommunication, but the death penalty. It has reference to the appeal to the Supreme Court, and in the Hebrew Supreme Court there were not only judges, but a priest of the number of the court and if the man then continued his presumptuous position he was to be executed. 

Now what is the offense that is referred to here? What does it mean to ‘act presumptuously?’ The marginal note probably will inform you that this means acting with a high hand, but it has reference to a denial of law, and a defiance of it. Today we would call it ‘revolutionary violence,’ a revolutionary or an anarchistic position that denies the validity of all law, that says, “We are the law, and we will refuse to obey all law and order that is contrary to our wishes.” This was, of course, the essence of Amalek’s position; a defiance of God, a religious lawlessness, whereby God was challenged and denied. It is acting presumptuously or with a high hand, raising one’s hand in defiance of the Lord, taking aggressive action against God and His Law-order.

One scholar has said of this passage, in particular Deuteronomy, Waller, a church of England scholar of a century ago, that acting presumptuously means: 

“….a proud self-assertion against the law. The penalty of death arises necessarily out of the theocracy. If God is the king of the nation, rebellion against His law is treason, and if it be proud and wilful rebellion, the penalty of death is only what we should expect to see inflicted.” ⁱ

As we saw two weeks ago in analyzing the passage with respect to Amalek, Exodus 17:16, this was Amalek’s position. The marginal reading there brought this out. 

“Because the hand of Amalek is… against… the throne of heaven, therefore the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” 

That is, because Amalek is presumptuous, its hand is against the Lord, therefore God is at war with Amalek in every generation. 

Now, the Amalekites are those, therefore, who raise their hand against all law and order, who deny it in principle, and who seek to undercut the fabric of all law, because they deny in principle that there can be any transcendental law, that is, any Law of God governing them. Today this is increasingly the dominant position of our society. After all, it is taught in the schools. So that, increasingly, this contempt of the idea of law appears on all sides.

In the past month, a rather unusual episode occurred here in this State. An organization was uncovered which has offices, or rather groups, in various countries, and across the United States, in one urban center after another. It is a church which uses narcotics as a part of its religion, and it is also a school; it calls itself the ‘free university movement,’ which teaches courses to further the general approach to life; this total lawlessness which characterizes them. This movement has existed for several years. Apart from one man being picked up in Modesto for ordaining soldiers in this movement, the movement has gone untouched all this time, until it went into one smaller County, that is, smaller in population, here in this State, San Luis Obispo County. To be nearer some of their members who were at Camp Roberts, they located themselves in the Paso Robles area. And of course, this was their mistake. Because, with a conservative County, they were immediately raided. 

It was found that they had a tremendous cache of narcotics, that they had a vast amount of leftist literature; they had a free university catalog that came from one of the major urban and educational areas of the United States, and among the courses listed in this catalog was a course on cannibalism. Let me quote from the course prospectus: 

“The participants in this co-op should be willing to help obtain some freshly killed human flesh and/or prepare it and/or eat it.

We will meet weekly at a communal Sunday evening meal which we will all help prepare together, everyone cooking their own creations until we can obtain some human flesh.

We will first consider the historical and legal status of cannibalism and then go on from there.

The first meeting will be February 16, 1969 at 5:30 p.m. Call the red brook at the mid-peninsula free university… [And it gives the phone number for information - RJR.]” ⁱⁱ

Now, whether or not they actually did this or not is by the way. The significant fact is that this kind of teaching which stresses the fact that our society has no binding law. The total lawlessness, the total contempt for all of the concepts that undergird our culture, this is what is stressed by this movement and many another movement. It could be added this was characteristic of the Cynics and ancient Greeks also, they advocated similar ideas and cannibalism. ⁱⁱⁱ

Most significant is that if twenty-five years ago had such a movement been uncovered, and from the documents seized there at Paso Robles it became apparent that it was in every major city across the United States and outside the United States in other countries, it would have hit the front pages in every newspaper across the country. But, outside of being in the San Luis County papers and in the Santa Maria papers, there was no notice of this anywhere. Which, in itself, is a most remarkable fact. 

But the thing that appears behind the ideas of this group and others is a religious principle; a humanistic concept of liberty. The word ‘liberty’ as well as ‘libertine’ comes from ‘liber’ the Latin ‘free.’ And the concept of ‘freedom’ involved in this new idea of liberty is freedom from God. It is not surprising that these groups are very close to the Marquis de Sade. Basic to the position of the Marquis de Sade was this, his ambition:

“…to be innocent by dint of culpability; to smash what is normal, once and for all, and smash the laws by which he could have been judged.” ^iv

“To be innocent by dint of culpability.” In other words, for everyone to break the law so totally that the only guilt is to be innocent! To smash totally the ideal of what is normal, so that the normal, the godly man, is abnormal, so he is the criminal, as it were. And to smash every law by which such people can be judged, and turn judgement against the moral and the godly. 

Blanchot has commented regarding the Marquis de Sade and his concept of man:

“Sadean man denies man, and this negation is achieved through the intermediary of the notion of God. He temporarily makes himself God, so that before him men are reduced to nothing and discover the nothingness of being before God. ‘It is true, is it not, prince, that you do not love men?’ Juliette asks. ‘I loathe them. Not a moment goes by that my mind is not busy plotting violently to do them harm. Indeed, there is not a race more horrible, more frightful.… How low and scurvy, how vile and disgusting a race it is!’ ‘But,’ Juliette breaks in, ‘you do not really believe that you are to be included among men?… Oh, no, no, when one dominates them with such energy, it is impossible to belong to the same race.’ To which Saint-Fond: ‘Yes, she is right, we are gods.’

Still, the dialectic evolves to further levels: Sade’s man, who has taken unto himself the power to set himself above men—the power which men madly yield to God—never for a moment forgets that this power is completely negative. To be God can have only one meaning: to crush man, to reduce creation to nothing. ‘I should like to be Pandora’s box,’ Saint-Ford says at one point, ‘so that all the evils which escaped from my breast might destroy all mankind individually.’ And Verneuil: ‘And if it were true that a God existed, would we not be his rivals, since we destroy thus what he has made?’” ^v

Thus, the goal of the presumptuous man, of these Amalekites, these violent ones, is total destruction. The violent one loves perversity because it is perverse, they love a lie because it is a lie, their pleasure is power is deception and destruction. 

I recall one time when a person who had been trusted with some responsibility and then been caught in outrageous lies whereby he had done a great deal of damage, when he was confronted with the fact that he had been lying, said with relish and triumph, “I had you all believing it, didn’t I?!” That was the pleasure of the whole thing! To trifle with men, to lead them into illusion. So that, for them, the ultimate victory is to grind down man and to proclaim the death of God.

As de Sade said:

“And if it were true that God existed, would we not be his rivals, since we destroyed thus what he had made?”

So, this is key. The triumph of humanistic God over man, “So you created this whole wonderful universe, God? Well, we’re going to be better than you are; we’ll wipe out what you have made.” Man must be reduced to nothing to prove that the Amalekites, the violent one, is the new ‘god’ supposedly supplanting the dead one. 

Now, Scripture declares, as our text made it emphatically clear, that these violent ones, these anarchists, these lawless ones, are to be executed. 

To deny this law of God and to support the anarchist is to murder the whole of society, then. In other words, God’s Law faces us with an alternative; you either, destroy those who are out to destroy society, or you’re destroyed. You either commit suicide, or you execute, and there is no other alternative. Anarchy denies the principle of transcendental law and therefore God is at war with Amalek in every generation.

Now every Amalekite, every violent one, every anarchist hates God therefore he hates life also. As Proverbs 8:36 declares:

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul:

All they that hate me love death.

This hatred of life colors all living with humanistic man. It manifests itself in every area, and the thing we must recognize today is that the humanistic civilization around us, while it talks about loving and about loving man, hates life and hates man! 

Listen to the commercials sometime. For example, there’s a baby oil commercial that repeats this sentence over and over again. “It isn’t easy being a baby. It isn’t easy being a baby.” Now, analyze the mentality behind that commercial. If it isn’t easy to be a baby, what a horrible thing it is to be a teenager facing a world of responsibility, and how much more horrible to be an adult with responsibility! And if it isn’t easy being a baby, then aren’t you justified, going into a tantrum of being young facing maturity, to tear everything down because before long you’re going to have to go out and work and face responsibility and face a world that says you can’t have your own way?

Now, a generation that listens to that kind of clap trap, to give it a polite term, is certainly headed for trouble! If it isn’t easy to be a baby, and people listen to that and are conditioned by it day after day and they get it in education today! What a hard, cruel world. It isn’t easy being a baby. How hard it is being a kindergartener, or a first grader, or for a junior high or a senior high student, why, it’s probably traumatic! And a generation that accepts this idea as it is being accepted today, is a generation geared for revolution. It’s going to destroy, because it will not accept a world where there are any responsibilities, where work is required of man. Thus, violence is bred into our culture today with this kind of philosophy. 

It is also bred into our generation by the churches. A week ago yesterday, someone reported to me a statement made in a Bible study group, a women’s Bible class, in what is supposedly an ultra-fundamentalist group, and it was baldly stated that human needs come before God’s Law. Human needs come before God’s Law. Now, if you grant that, then you have granted everything the Marxist and the anarchists hold to! So, if you have a group which claims to be ultra-fundamental in teaching the Word of God affirm this, what’s left for the anarchists and the Marxists to teach?!

We might as well turn the world over to them because, after all, if we believe that in the church, then we had better join the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx and Bakunin. 

Our text says that those who are guilty of presumptuous sin must die. When they take the law and declare that it is no law, when they feel that they have the right to be above and beyond the law, either the society exacts the death penalty, or God will exact the death penalty, finally, on that society. You cannot allow total revolution against God and man and survive. 

Moreover, Scripture tells us all who are guilty of presumption are hated by God. For example, Proverbs 8:13 declares:

The fear of the Lord is to hate evil:

Pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way,

And the froward [deceitful or perverse- RJR] mouth, do I hate. 

God says emphatically that He hates the evil, and He expects us to hate them. The fear of God is to hate evil, Proverbs tells us. To love evil, therefore, is to hate God. The humanistic mind today tries to be wiser than God and is going to save everybody by loving everyone, and it views the God of Scripture as rather nasty because He talks about hating the evil. Well, He very emphatically does. And in Proverbs 1:24-33 God declares:

Because I have called, and ye refused;

I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;

But ye have set at nought all my counsel,

And would none of my reproof:

I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when your fear cometh;

When your fear cometh as desolation,

And your destruction cometh as a whirlwind;

When distress and anguish cometh upon you.

Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer;

They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:

For that they hated knowledge,

And did not choose the fear of the Lord:

They would none of my counsel:

They despised all my reproof.

Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way,

And be filled with their own devices.

For the turning away of the simple shall slay them,

And the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely,

And shall be quiet from fear of evil.

From this passage, finally, certain things are apparent. God not only hates evil, He laughs at the downfall of the wicked. Now, the humanist would say that that’s very nasty of God, but I prefer God to the humanist. 

Second, God says that when these people call upon Him, He will not answer. God says, “I refuse to be used as an insurance policy or a spare tire!” Now, an insurance policy is something we keep just for an emergency, a spare tire just the same way, a spare in the trunk that we hope we never have to use. Very unpleasant to use a spare tire. And many people feel that way about God, “He’s a spare tire, and I’m better off if I never have to call upon him at all, but if I have to, okay, I’ll just carry him along as a spare tire.” And God says, “No, I will not be so used. They will call upon me then, and I will not hear them.” And finally, 

But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely,

And shall be quiet from fear of evil.

Proverbs 1:33.

We live in a world of presumptuous men, violent men, who with a high hand seek to destroy all law and order. But in the face of this, our security is the Lord.

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy Word. We thank thee that as we face a world of Amalekites, of violent men who seek to destroy all law and order, that thou art our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Make us strong in thee, fill us with holy laughter when the time of destruction comes. And make us ever mindful, our Father, that thy destruction has as its purpose to prepare the way for thy Word, thy kingdom, thy holy government. Make us ever mindful that thou art on the throne. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now with respect to our lesson first of all.

Yes?

[Audience member] What does ‘presumption’ mean in this context? ^vi

[Rushdoony] ‘Presumption’ here means to act with a high hand against God and His Law-order, to deny it. In the Scripture an example is not cited, we just have these two passages which cite this, but it refers to the kind of thing we have today with revolutionary violence, revolutionary anarchism. 

[Audience member] Is it a case of breaking the law? ^vii

[Rushdoony] No, it’s more than breaking the law because all of us at some point break the law. If we exceed the speed limit, for example, we have broken the law. But ‘presumption’ means to say, “There is no law that binds me; I deny that there can be any law except my will.” It is revolutionary hostility and violence against all law and order and a denial of it in principle, a religious denial of it. Thus, a man can commit murder, but he still believes that murder is wrong and he accepts the death penalty. But the presumptuous man denies that there is any law that can govern him. 

This was the point that Dostoyevsky brought out in his Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, the hero, is a revolutionary anarchist and he denies that there is any law. And so, he sets out to commit a murder, and he picks a person of complete insignificance to murder, just to prove that man can do as he pleases with the law and with life because there is no God. 

And of course, the whole story is of course the fact that he finds that Sonya, who was so contemptible and so stupid by comparison to him because she as a sinner prostitute, knows that she is a sinner, is morally superior to him because she knows she is breaking God’s Law, and he denies that there is any law, but she has more stability and moral strength because at least she knows that she’s a sinner.

Yes?

[Audience member] Doesn’t it say in Scripture that Jesus is greater than the Sabbath? ^viii

Yes. So, our Lord makes it clear that it is He who is greater than the Sabbath and we, man, redeemed man in Christ who is greater than the Sabbath because the purpose of the Sabbath is to indicate our rest in Christ. So that the meaning of the Sabbath, He was saying, is “not in your pharisaic revelations but in me and in my redemption.”

Yes?

[Audience member] Is it presumption to be grateful to be born in happy circumstances? ^ix

[Rushdoony] That is not presumption because you’re grateful to God rather than acting against God. Presumption simply means to deny God’s Law in principle and to set yourself as God above the law. It is philosophical and religious anarchism.

Any other questions?

Yes? 

[Audience member] Inaudible comment.

[Rushdoony] Very well put. And you see, that’s why it’s successful. That’s why that commercial succeeds, because everybody has already accepted it. “It isn’t easy being a baby.” “How hard it is to be alive.” It’s a joyless generation! And therefore, being a baby is hard because life is hard. Our age is basically suicidal, and that’s why it is so busy committing suicide!

Yes?

[Audience member] Inaudible comment.

[Rushdoony] That is Mormonism, basically, because Mormonism does not believe in any absolute transcendental God, gods are simply men who have gone into the other world. To be made in the image of God is to be made knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and with dominion over the creatures. 

Yes.

[Audience member] Were the judges only priests and Levites, then? ^x

[Rushdoony] Well there were judges appointed, you remember, by Moses, together with Jethro at Jethro’s council. But the priest was a member of the court so that there would be religious council in the court and guidance in the decisions; but they were not priests only, or Levites, they were from all sides. 

Our time is just about up, and I’d like to share a couple of things with you.

First, this Wednesday, as I was driving home, I was listening to a news broadcast and heard in the course of the news a little episode about a woman who I think must be just about the perfect wife! I think it was a broadcast from the Longhope station. At any rate, according to this news broadcast, some thief presented himself as a gas company repairman checking appliances and knocked at this door and asked to check the appliances. The woman allowed him to come in, and then he tried to hold her up and demand her money, but she was so panicky she started to scream at the top of her voice, and he became frightened and ran away. She then called the police, and when they came, and she made her report and gave a description of the man, she concluded by saying, “It’s a good thing for that rascal that my husband wasn’t home when this happened!” The woman in question is 93 and her husband is 100. 

Then in the Saturday Review for March 15, 1969, I ran across a little bit of satire which I thought was very amusing. You know, this is the day of the ‘theater of involvement’ where the actors try to involve the audience in what’s going on? Well, this one is titled “Blow Up Tight: a play for total audience involvement.”

“As last member of audience takes seat, doors are slammed shut, and hammers are heard nailing them closed from the outside, audience titters nervously. Lights go down until the theater’s dark, whereupon members of the cast dressed only in fluorescent green paint begin crawling across the customers laps, whispering, 

Put it altogether, it spells mother.

I can take my clothes off but it’s no fun.

My draft card will not burn, bend, fold, or staple.

What will the pigs do to us next?

Didn’t I meet you at a Molotov cocktail party?

I wish I only hated myself in the morning.

Get rid of your filthy lousy money before it’s too late, now.

Audience titters nervously, many put their wallets or purses into the ghastly green hand. Lights go up just enough to reveal other members of the cast dressed as storm troopers bringing barbed wire around the seating section. The fluorescent crawlers file out through the last gap just before the barbed wire enclosure is completed. Spotlight reveals leader, front and center. 

Leader: Life, Shakespeare said, used every man after his dessert and who should escape whipping? 

Storm troopers unfold long bullwhips and lash across the wire barricade at the audience. 

Loud reports from whips cracking a few inches above most customers heads. 

Loud reports from customers whose heads were a few inches higher than most. 

Leader: Any complaints? Anybody don’t begin to feel, like, involved?

Audience titters nervously. 

Leader: I get the feeling like somehow you still don’t feel really in it, like, you think this is a play and we’re playing games. And like you could get out and go back to your stinking crummy homes, right?

A murmur of assent from audience. 

Leader: Well that’s not what theater’s all about, see! It’s not make believe, it’s part of this blankety blank cruddy world you pigs made. We don’t tell it as it is, we give you is, see?!

Spotlight reveals firing squad ranged on both sides of leader with rifles leveled at audience. 

Leader to firing squad: shave off the top of the seats! 

Customers hit the floor as a volley grazes the top of the seats. 

Leader: Okay, you pigs have got your lousy, stinking money’s worth. Anybody still feel like they're not having a real theatrical experience? We can afford one more round, even for a matinee crowd.

White handkerchiefs flutter here and there above seat tops. 

Leader: It figures. Pigs, afraid to live. Pigs, afraid to die. Well, there’s a half ton of dynamite under the floor you’re crawling on, and in exactly twenty seconds we’re going to blow this place up.

Wails of dismay up front. 

Leader: You’ll go down in history as the first totally involved audience. We let you leave this place alive; you griped we sold you your lousy tickets under false pretenses, we could lose our license. See you in hell, pigs.

Panic out front. 

Leader: Sorry we can’t join you, but the show must go on, know what I mean? 

Entire cast ducks dexterously behind blast proof curtains as explosion demolishes audience section and audience.”

Now that, I think, is the logical conclusion of the modern theater, and maybe before too long, at the rate the movies are going to, we’re going have the same kind of froth in the movies. 

And with that happy note, we are adjourned.

i. C.H. Waller, “Deuteronomy,” in Ellicott, II, 51

ii. Doris Olsen, “ ‘Free University’ Taught Cannibalism,” in Santa Maria, California Times, Friday, April 25, 1969, p. 1. See also Gene Cowles, “Dope-‘Church’ Ring Vast Operation?” in Paso Robles, California, The Daily Press, Friday, April 25, 1969, pp. 1, 8.

iii. See Philip Merlan, “Minor Socrates,” in Vergilius Ferm, editor, Encyclopedia of Morals (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 333–339.

iv. Maurice Blanchot, “Sade,” in Richard Seaver and Sustryn Wainhouse, compilers, translators, The Marquis de’Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and other writings (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 71.

v. Maurice Blanchot, “Sade,” in Richard Seaver and Sustryn Wainhouse, compilers, translators, The Marquis de’Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and other writings (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 59.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.