Reformed Thoughts and Gary’s Desk

Dr. Rushdoony’s comments in this article are spot on. We will continue to have run away inflation and rampant over spending by big government and our citizenry as long as we refuse to bow the knee to the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. Because we desire to live for the here and now and leave the future to the next generations we have bankrupt our nation. Our attitude has been for years, to hell with the future eat, drink, and be merry, and it has left us empty and broken. Then you couple that with erroneous environmental policies that cost us millions and millions of dollars and no win wars that go on and on, we should not at all be surprised by America’s seemingly quick demise.

Gary

Chalcedon Blog
Friday, July 04, 2008

Capitalization is the Product of Work and Thrift
By R. J. Rushdoony

Capitalization is the product of work and thrift, the accumulation of wealth and the wise use of accumulated wealth.

This accumulated wealth is invested in effect in progress, because it is made available for the development of natural resources and the marketing of goods and produce.

The thrift which leads to the savings or accumulation of wealth to capitalization is a product of character (Proverbs 6:6-15).

Capitalization is a product in every era of the Puritan disposition, of the willingness to forego present pleasures to accumulate some wealth for future purposes (Proverbs 14:23). Without character, there is no capitalization but rather decapitalization, the steady depletion of wealth.

As a result, capitalism is supremely a product of Christianity, and, in particular, or puritanism which, more than any other faith, has furthered capitalization.

This means that, before decapitalization, either in the form of socialism or inflation can occur, there must be a breakdown of faith and character. Before the United States began its course of socialism and inflation, it had abandoned its historic Christian position. The people had come to see more advantage in wasting capital than in accumulating it, in enjoying superficial pleasures than living in terms of the lasting pleasures of the family, faith, and character.

When socialism and inflation get under way, having begun in the decline of faith and character, they see as their common enemy precisely those people who still have faith and character.

How are we to defend ourselves? And how can we have a return to capitalism? Capitalism can only revive if capitalization revives, and capitalization depends, in its best and clearest form, on that character produced by Biblical Christianity.

This is written by one who believes intensely in orthodox Christianity and in our historic Christian American liberties and heritage. It is my purpose to promote that basic capitalization of society, out of which all else flows, spiritual capital. With the spiritual capital of a God-centered and Biblical faith, we can never become spiritually and materially bankrupt (Proverbs 10:16).

I sincerely hope you take the time to read this entire article. Alan Stang has articulated exactly what is wrong in America today. We have mere men masquerading as gods, thinking they can fix everything. And as long as the church continues to support these little tin dictators who rule in the civil realm and the church America will continue to rot.

Gary

IMPERIAL RELIGION HATES JESUS

by Alan Stang
November 5, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

I was recently dismayed by the sudden realization that there could be pockets of population, however small, whom I have not yet managed to offend. Herewith I hasten to apologize for that discrepancy and to assuage my embarrassment, by explaining the madness that for a century and a half has been dismantling our civilization, camouflaging itself as true Christianity.

The “Abolitionist” movement that provoked Lincoln’s Communist War to Destroy the Union is a good place to start. At this distance it is easy to see that the “Abolitionists” extruded a species of madness, a fanatic mania personified by lunatics like John Brown, who fastened onto Negro slavery as a vehicle to express it.

Had there never been Negro slavery in our country, their madness would have fastened onto something else, and in fact it has, as we shall see. For a taste of what I am talking about, see Otto J. Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (New York, NYT Times Books, 1979), a brilliant exposition of the problem.

The messianic mania these monsters fomented eventually led to the destruction of the federal union the nation’s Founders had bequeathed them. It effectively centralized governmental power and has inspired one horror after another. Today it is close to finishing our system off completely. I said above that it camouflages itself as true Christianity. What is the difference? If it isn’t Christianity, what is it?

You can see an expression of the difference at Manassas. The Yankees literally rode out from Washington to picnic, with refreshments in baskets the ladies had prepared. It would be an afternoon’s entertainment. They would teach the Southerners a lesson and end the rebellious charade. They didn’t know that, at Manassas, Jackson – the Immortal – would stand like a stone wall. They didn’t know the Southerners would send them fleeing in disorder.

The Yankees call it a “Civil” War. Of course, it was not. Had it been a civil war – a war for control of the “general government” – Jackson would have and easily could have pursued the fleeing rabble back to town, seized it, restored the Union and thrown our first Communist President into jail, where he belonged. Our next President, Robert E. Lee, would have arranged his trial.

But they did not. Instead, Jackson, a true Christian, turned aside. A true Christian is modest; he believes in minding his own business, in live and let live. My speculation is that after Manassas the Southerners hoped and believed that the newly chastened Yankees would share their belief and leave them alone to enjoy their own lives in their own country. Later, after it was too late, when Lee – another Immortal – realized what he had been fighting, he said that, had he known, he would have fought to the last man.

So, what is the difference? It lies in the satanic belief that one can improve upon God, that man can do a better job than Jesus. Scripture tells us Jesus did it “all,” a little word with a big meaning. “All” means everything. It means there is nothing else beside it. You can walk all around all, but you will find nothing hanging out, no loose ends. If Jesus really did it “all,” as scripture says, no one can do any more. If the job requires nailing in the only six nails you have, and someone else has nailed them all in, nothing more can be done.

What did and does Jesus do? He saves. He saved us from our sin by becoming sin Himself. Nothing more need be done or can be done. He gives the blessing of eternal life to those the Father gave Him before the foundation of the world. It’s done before you ever show up. You don’t need to accept. You don’t need to decide. Jesus says He won’t lose even one He has been given. What could you decide? If Jesus says you’re His, you are His. Could you overrule Him? Remember, God is doing all this – created you, me and the universe – for His own pleasure. It’s not about us; it’s about God and His glory.

Yes, you can ruin your life completely in the world. You can never go to church. You can be stupid. You can ruin your health. You can even become a nasty drunk and beat your kids. You probably won’t though, because if God chose you before the foundation of the world, by your fruit will we know you.

Speaking for myself, I was much too stupid to arrange my own salvation, much too stupid to “accept” or “decide.” The thought that I could have done it on my own is preposterous and, frankly, scares the Hell out of me. Had the Lord not done it for me, I would still be doing things “My Way,” still dead in stupidity, and God would not have brought me the Love Priestess. Where do I get all this? I read it in the Book.

But some folks don’t like it. Before he was caught with the wrong sporting woman (not a man, thank God), one celebrity preacher used to call it a “hellish doctrine,” fearing that somebody who loves the Lord may not be chosen, which would be unjust. But remember that without Jesus, you are dead in sin. You can’t choose Him; He chooses you. The fact that you love the Lord proves He put that love there, proves you are one of His. If you want it, you already have it. Look at the ravening atheists presently trying to destroy Christianity. They boast they want no part of it and the Lord takes them at their word. There is no “injustice.”

If you believe this, you know that God gave us the Gospel not to “save souls,” but rather to guide and comfort the children He has chosen, the children He has already saved, and that He chooses preachers to pass the word along. They can save no one. Yes, that means someone who has never cracked the Bible and has never heard of Jesus Christ could still be one of His, if that is His pleasure.

But a celebrity preacher with a national television show once told me proudly, “I save 30,000 souls a month!” Man, that’s a thousand souls a day! If a mere man can save that many souls a day, do we really need Jesus? Needless to say, a man who can save that many souls in just one day is a celebrity, whose name could adorn a ministry, even a meeting hall. On the contrary, a preacher who knows he saves no one, and that the Lord simply called him from the congregation to spread His word is not.

From the ranks of such celebrity preachers – who, however much they pretend otherwise, believe Jesus did not do it all – come men like the “Abolitionists,” with a mission to “improve” upon God. They “improve” upon God in eternity, and they “improve” upon God here, in the Kingdom God gave us while we still inhabit these corruptible, unresurrected bodies.

So it is that the maniacal “Abolitionist” spirit, having washed its hands like Pilate of happily departed Negro slavery, at the cost of more casualties than in any other of our wars, now plunges into every corner of your private life; indeed, into every corner of the world, however remote, to “improve” it. This in part is the origin of the liberaloid frenzy that is presently pulling the nation apart. It is an attempt to “improve” upon God, motivated by the same rebellion that inspires Satan.

And since today’s “Abolitionists” are motivated by Satan and are not God – many have tried, like Tiberius, to be God, but only God can handle it – their “improvements” of the Kingdom turn out to be satanic horrors. Look at their fruit. They have killed many more babies than all our casualties in all our wars. By killing all these babies, they are “improving” the lot of women.

They are incapable of minding their own business. Everywhere you look, they are minding yours or someone else’s. They invade other nations for their own good to impose a form of government the natives don’t want, however many of our own men they kill and maim in the process. They utterly pervert the Christianity in which they claim to believe. They want to know everything you do and control it.

They are as fanatical as the jihadists they oppose. They illegally insert women into combat. They already are desperately short of experienced military personnel. When they hit Iran, they will certainly resurrect the military draft, including women, which will be the next installment in their campaign to destroy the family and collapse our civilization on the way to world government, their version of the Kingdom.

It is an intriguing historical fact that many of the new-fangled denominations founded to “improve” the original Bible message were started for that purpose around the middle of the Nineteenth Century, which also saw the beginning of the Communist horror that also claims to do a better job in the Kingdom than God. The Federal, National and World Councils of Churches were also in bed with the Reds.

Remember that God used to rule directly, through His judges. The children rebelled and offended Him, demanding an earthly King, so they could be like everyone else. God warned them what earthly government would do, but they insisted, so God graciously stepped aside and gave them Saul. Government was their punishment for rebelling against God. And Guess what? It all worked out as God had said. Amazing! How could God know?

Liberaloids in the church are still in rebellion. Their names adorn their ministries where they compete to “save souls,” and they love big government, the bigger the better, because government is the weapon they employ to “improve” the Kingdom, to “improve” upon God. That is why they applaud as government graduates illiterate drug zombies from the nation’s Communist schools and destroys our privacy. They worship el presidente Jorge W. Boosh, because Jorge – they think – is the king God appointed.

Completely ignoring scripture from beginning to end, they teach that Romans 13 says we must obey government no matter what it does; no matter how much government itself disobeys the mandate assigned it by God, no matter what He did to Jezebel. In Nazi Germany, they even wore black Nazi uniforms and heiled Hitler at big church meetings. Today they say in effect that God is a Nazi, or that He is maybe George Bush.

“All” is not lost. More and more Christian parents are joining an Exodus from the Communist government schools. I suggest that celebrity Christian leaders either find other work or return to the church, start worshipping Jesus and defend our inalienable right to mind our own business.

© 2007 – Alan Stang –

Here is a good reason why all Christian parents need to take their children out of public schools, “Synagogues of Satan”, and put them in Christ centered Christian schools or home school them. Then, as you will see at the end of this article, you need to send your young adults, ages 15-24, to the West Coast Christian World View Conference so they can learn to take God’s word and apply it to all areas of life.

Gary

CHRISTIAN KIDS ARE TOO GENTLE TO LIVE AMONGST THE WOLVES

By Marsha West
April 15, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
Churches are doing children a great disservice in not teaching them sound doctrine. Here’s a sobering fact the Church must come to grips with: Even children who are “churched” are woefully unprepared to “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). This is a front-line issue, yet Church leaders and parents just don’t “get” how important it is to teach the younger generation how to defend their faith.

In the early Church the Apostle Paul faced this issue head on. He warns, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). All of the Apostles had to deal with false teaching, Gnosticism in particular. For them getting it right was important!

What exactly is Church doctrine? It’s a set of core principles to be upheld by professing Christians. Doctrine both describes and teaches the will of God.

You ask, “Why should anyone care if doctrine’s being taught in the 21st Century contemporary Church?” The reason teaching doctrine is important is that liberal Christians think it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you label it Christianity. Mike Gendron explains that today the only test for becoming a Christian is “a simple acceptance of Jesus as a historical figure. In our postmodern church, doctrine is out and tolerance is in. We are told that for the sake of unity, doctrine should not be tested or contested. We are not supposed to draw any definitive lines or declare any absolutes. Doctrinal and moral issues which were once painted black and white, are now seen as gray. The state of the church is now in a state of confusion.”[1]

There’s nothing wrong with black and white thinking, especially when it comes to issues of faith. But the PC police bully people of faith into remaining in our gray toned comfort zones so that we don’t make waves or cause controversy. One of the biggest controversy avoiders on the planet is “evangelism’s hottest rising star” Joel Osteen. Prosperity preacher Osteen goes to great lengths to avoid controversial subjects like sin, judgment and hell. For a real eye-opener on this popular prevaricator, check out his interview with Larry King. Read it and weep.[2]

But I digress.

In order to discern false teaching (like Osteen’s) kids must be taught sound doctrine. For children to lead good moral lives they must have a firm grasp on what they believe about their faith and why they believe it. Those who aren’t prepared to answer hard questions experience personal doubt. Which is why, “Nothing is more important than seeding deep within the heart and mind of a child core Christian convictions like Jesus is God; The reasons we know Jesus Christ rose from the dead, why we should be convinced the Bible is a true and accurate revelation from beginning to end and the absolute truth that Jesus is the only way to God. Unless our children know these and other key doctrines revealed in the Bible, they will not be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”[3]

Sadly, kids who don’t know what they believe in often slip through the cracks and fall in with the me-focused-intent-only-on-pleasure land of the liberals. Incidentally, liberalism must be out and out rejected by serious Christians for the simple reason that proclaiming man’s self-sufficiency in the moral and social order denies God. Plus liberalism encourages freedom from all restraint in both speech and action, while Christianity encourages restraint in both speech and action. Because of its self-centered worldview, liberalism is incompatible with historic orthodox Christianity. (One can’t help but wonder why people of faith sat around twiddling their thumbs while a small number of secular progressives (SP’s) led our nation down the thorny path of materialism, decadence, and moral depravity.)

Speaking of people of faith, Christian parents are either ignorant of what the Bible teaches about morality, or they know perfectly well what the Bible says and they choose to imitate ungodly behavior and allow their children to do the same. Is it any wonder unbelievers call Christians hypocrites? Some Christians deserve that title! Jesus was not impressed with the hypocrites of His day. He called them “whitewashed tombs…full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean” (Mat. 23:27). Ouch!

Our government is in shambles. The Church is a dead mess. Parents are living for themselves instead of for their children, and children are suffering for it. Kids are battling the world, the flesh and the devil on all fronts. This is nothing new, of course. The battle for children’s minds has been raging since the beginning of time. Which is why the Bible warns parents to, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Prov. 22:6). What is new, though, is that kids in Christian homes do not have both feet firmly planted in a biblical worldview. Their feet are planted in quicksand! Sorry to point the finger moms and dads, but YOU have dropped the ball. YOU have become negligent in preparing your kids for a life of service to God. And it’s not the Church’s fault. YOU are to blame.

With virtually no protection, kids are thrown to the wolves in sheep’s clothing that are teaching in liberal government schools. Yet these same parents would never allow their precious little ones on roller blades or skateboards without a helmet and protective padding.

May I have your attention, please! Christian children are too gentle to live amongst the wolves. We’re no longer living in the 50s – and we can’t go back there either. In light of that sad fact, God’s kids must be armed and ready for battle! (Read Ephesians 6:10-20

Christian kids attending government schools are at the mercy of agenda-driven educators that are firmly established in classrooms all across America. As a result, youngster’s impressionable minds are regularly conditioned with virulent anti-Christian propaganda. Facts are hard to ignore. A 2005 survey established that 72 percent of college faculty admits that they’re liberal.[4] So we shouldn’t be surprised when we hear that two-thirds of “born again” Christians who enter college emerge committed liberals and leave the Church.

SP’s have impacted society in ways no one would have thought possible fifty years ago. Who are these people? Mostly Marxists and socialists who would like to see America go the way of Western Europe. The SP movement is anti-God and wants religion out of the public square. They oppose traditional values. They loathe conservatives. The SP ideology supports the radical gay agenda (which includes same-sex marriage), abortion on demand, euthanasia, legalized drugs, and is openly hostile to any forms of Christianity. Is it any wonder that the younger generation has lost its moral compass? (Read Spring heartbreak [5]) SP’s have got their fingers in every pie. Their bony digits are in our educational system, the news media and every aspect of entertainment. Even mainline churches have adopted their social and political agenda.

News flash! A Christian’s worldview should come from the Bible not from Hollywood! Authentic evangelical Christianity contends that “absolute moral truth exists; such truth is defined in the Bible; God is the all-knowing and all-powerful creator and ruler of the universe; faith in Jesus Christ is the only means to salvation; Satan is a real being; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and all of the principles taught in the Bible are true and accurate.”[6]

Evangelicals should be getting their marching orders from the King of Kings, not from the unprincipled liberal media – and certainly not from the morally bankrupt Hellywood elite!

The number of professed Christians that know little or nothing about their Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, or about the Bible – or even how God wants His people to conduct their lives – is staggering! God expects believers to obey Him. Obeying Christ’s commands is a must do. He is the Master of your soul. You are not.

Anyone who is not sure what Christ wants from them should take a few minutes to read through the pages of 1 John. The Apostle lays out God’s plan in a no holds barred fashion – and he leaves no wiggle room. 1 John 2:3-6 says, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” Further, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:5-7). See? No wiggle room.

Make no mistake about it. God has set down rules (as all fathers should) for His children to take to heart. And Father God can be mighty strict! He cannot be manipulated, so forget about trying. He doesn’t compromise either.

It should be easy to tell Christian kids from the unsaved, but it’s not. This is an indictment on moms and dads who have botched the job. More and more parents are leaving God’s admonition to “train a child in the way he should go” up to Sunday school teachers, youth pastors, even grandparents. According to a recently released study on raising children that was conducted by the Barna Group, some parents “take the path of the least resistance.” In this approach, “parents do whatever comes naturally to the parent, as influenced by cultural norms and traditions. The objective is to keep everyone – parent, child, and others – as happy as possible, without having the process of parenting dominate other important or prioritized aspects of the parent’s life.”[7]

Hence kids are headed the wrong way down a dangerous one-way street. Kids need direction – and they need supervision!

There’s also trial-and-error parenting, which Barna says is a common alternative. “This approach is based on the notion that every parent is an amateur at raising children, there are no absolute guidelines to follow, and that the best that parents can do is to experiment, observe outcomes, and improve based upon their successes and failures in child rearing. In this incremental approach, the goals of parenting are to continually improve and to perform better than most other parents.”

This is the “no backbone” approach to parenting.

In his survey Barna found that “revolutionary parenting” was the least common approach. “Such nurturing requires the parent to take God’s words on life and family at face value, and to apply those words faithfully and consistently.”

The key to successful parenting is to be “consistent.” In other words, follow through with your threats/promises. Parents must say what they mean and mean what they say. The Bible does not encourage wishy-washy parenting. Love means never having to say, “OK, you win!” to your offspring.

Children have excellent minds, an enormous potential for learning, and soak up information like sponges. Kids want to learn new things! Sadly, most parents are under the misconception that their children really don’t want to learn about the Bible. My question is this: if they’re not learning Scripture, how are they supposed to identify error when they come across it? Paul says Christians are to, “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Can you demolish arguments? How is your thought life? Having a little trouble with obeying Christ? Been to church lately? Your children are watching…

Biblical illiteracy is a huge problem, and parents need solutions. Author and speaker for Summit Ministries, Chuck Edwards, offers this advice: “Teach students that Christianity is a comprehensive world and life view. This means explaining the reality of God’s truth in every area: from philosophy and science, ethics and economics, to psychology, sociology, law and, yes, even politics. In this way, no matter what course a student takes, he or she will be able to discern when the professor is presenting an anti-biblical bias.”[8]

There are all sorts of Christian organizations that offer conferences that equip young people for the challenges they will face. Consider…

The West Coast Christian World View Conference held the week of July 30-August 4 at The University of California at Santa Cruz. There are 8 hours of lectures a day on such topics as The Mind of America in 1776; The Canonization of Scripture; The False Gospels; Sex, Marriage, and Divorce; Overcoming The World; God’s Strategy For Dominion, and Why We Have Failed; What Does God Really Promise In Our Personal Relationships. This is the conference if you are looking for young people like yourself dedicated to a life focused on Christ. Join us for intellectual stimulation, fun, and fellowship. Call Pastor Wagner at 408-866-5607.

For any of you who have not read Dr. Rushdoony here is a good place to begin, by learning how to read him. And to be truly reformed you need a good dose of Rush. For those of you who have read a bit of Rush this will encourage you to read more. Thanks to Chris Ortiz of The Chalcedon Foundation for writing the article.

Gary

Chalcedon Blog
Thursday, December 21, 2006

How to Read Rushdoony
Tackling the extensive library of R. J. Rushdoony can appear a daunting task. Not only is the page count enormous, but his work is replete with obscure references from historians, philosophers, theologians, and dime store novels. Rushdoony read broadly, and that expansive reading is present throughout all of his books.

You might be somewhat familiar with Christian Reconstruction, or theonomy, but that doesn’t make the trek through Rushdoony necessarily simpler. There are great differences between Rushdoony and some of the other theonomic writers. For example, the divergence between Rushdoony and Gary North regarding ecclesiology (doctrine of the church) has fantastic implications for much of what they both write. In addition, Rushdoony’s hermenuetic (method of interpretation) is unique to himself as his idealism provides him a masterful tool for gleaning truth.

However, for the serious Christian, reading Rushdoony is sure to be one of the most unique literary experiences you’ll ever have. It’s not for the faint of heart. You’ll perpetually be challenged with the ultimatum, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.”

Rushdoony’s Writing Style

Rushdoony’s distinguished himself through his writing style. He reads much like the puritans, or Calvin, with a confident prose absent of insecure syntax. He meant what he wrote, and he wrote what he meant. You won’t find words like “maybe” or “if.” Everything is in the affirmative.

Rushdoony’s thesis is also persuasive. He does not seek to inform his reader of facts. His approach to facts is that they are God-created and God-determined. Therefore, Rushdoony is apologetic (defender of the faith) in his approach. He does not waste paper providing you with what can easily be lifted from an encyclopedia.

How Rushdoony Wrote His Books

A most important point to remember is how Rushdoony put together the majority of his books. Most of them are topical compilations of essays and sermons. Why is this important? Because most academic books present the reader with a basic thesis which the author then seeks to establish in the subsequent pages. Each chapter builds from the previous one, and at the end there is usually some sort of summary to recap the entire the discussion. Most of Rushdoony’s books are NOT written this way.

Only a few of his books are written in the standard academic fashion. Most of them are “studies” within a certain discipline. It’s not that the individual chapters are unrelated. They do not, however, necessarily lead into one another. The chapters are self-contained and can often be read alone with great benefit.

The Reading Method

A now famous volume given to most college students is Adler and Van Doren’s How to Read a Book. It is a most helpful discussion on the details of tackling difficult books, and I recommend it to anyone who’d like to become a better reader. The sage advice of Adler and Van Doren when inspecting a book for the first time is to peruse the entirety of a book spending no more than a few seconds per page. This is after reading the title, back cover blurb, table of contents and index. The objective is to familiarize yourself with a book so that the initial reading is not completely unfamiliar territory. For very difficult books, Adler and Van Doren recommend the following:
In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away. Pay attention to what you can understand and do not be stopped by what you cannot immediately grasp. Go right on reading past the point where you have difficulties in understanding, and you will soon come to things you do understand. Concentrate on these. Keep on in this way. Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost. In most cases, you will not be able to puzzle the thing out by sticking to it. You will have a much better chance of understanding it on a second reading, but that requires you to have read the book through at least once. (Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, p. 36f)
Most of us will need these principles in order to best learn from Rushdoony’s books. The only difference is that since most of his books are studies, I recommend the same approach, only instead of reading through the entire book, I suggest rereading the individual chapters. For example, you would first go through the chapter reading only the first sentence of each paragraph. This will take a few minutes. Then you will read through the entire chapter in the manner Adler and Van Doren suggest. You don’t stop to ponder, you just keep reading. After that, read the chapter again more carefully with a pencil and straightedge in hand. What you want to do is highlight the pertinent elements of his discussion.

(At the recommendation of Adler and Van Doren, I read with a pointer, or pencil, in order to increase my reading speed. Our eyes have a tendency to jump around and often miss the next line and such. This can really slow you down after a while. By allowing your eye to follow the pointer you can both stay on track and increase your speed. Try to make your eye keep up as you accelerate the speed the pointer is moving across each line.)

Once you finish marking the chapter I encourage you to write a brief summary of the chapter in the space left over at the end of the chapter. If there is no space, you can use a piece of paper instead. The goal is to comprehend the content, and this is best achieved by writing down what you perceive to be the thrust of Rushdoony’s discussion in your own words. A further advantage to this is that you can come back to the book at a later date and quickly read your summaries to refresh your mind on the subject.

I realize this is asking a lot of yourself when reading an individual writer. After all, it’s not like Rushdoony’s books are equal to the Bible. My advice is for those who desire to learn the system of teaching that Rushdoony presented. Although critics of Rushdoony scream “anathema,” I believe Rushdoony is one of the most important Protestant thinkers since Dabney and Warfield. I would include Van Til in this lineage, but Rushdoony is just Van Til sharpened to a point.

What you’ll enjoy most is that regardless of your previous education a proper method of reading will help you better comprehend books you might otherwise avoid. As the first president of Harvard once said, “you can get a world class education from a shelf of books five feet long.” I hope this is helpful advice to you.
posted by Chris Ortiz at 5:15 PM

Here is a great article by Chris Ortiz editor of “Faith For All Of Life” that should dispel any misconceptions about the agenda of Christian Reconstructionists, such as myself.

Gary

Not since the 1960s has America been beset with so many social crises. The relative calm of the 1990s has given way to a train of national handicaps such as war, immigration, natural disasters, and rising fuel prices. People are frustrated. They are concerned about the state of a country that appears to be fading under the intense rays of national tribulation.

The political climate is unusually tense. A disappointing Republican performance is even turning many conservatives away from the Grand Old Party. The population is realizing that the Left/Right political paradigm is limited and senior politicians on both political aisles are virtually the same. After twelve presidents since FDR there has been no genuine change in national policy. Government is bigger, the cost of living is higher, and personal liberties are under threat. For all of the “Christian” presidents we’ve had since Roe v. Wade, the slaughter of the unborn continues, and a Nazi-like scientism euphemistically refers to abortion now as “reproductive rights.” Please read further

Think on this commentary as we enter into resurrection Sunday.

By Chuck Baldwin
April 13, 2006

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead separates our Lord
from all the world’s messiahs and separates Christianity from all
the world’s religions. In addition, the resurrection of Christ Jesus
also separates the United States of America from every other
nation on earth.

Therefore, it is no accident that the Easter story (along with the
Christmas story) incurs the wrath and revulsion of Christ-rejecters
as no other. The “god of this world” is relentless in his attacks
against all those who even remotely seek to honor the work of
Christ on the cross and His subsequent resurrection from the grave.

Furthermore, the hatred and animosity against the Gospel reveals
deeper motives within the hearts of those who attempt to attack the
founding principles of our beloved republic. Yes, Martha, you will
find that the same people who hate our Christ also hate our
country!

After all, the United States of America was a nation established in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for His glory. The founders
of this country were emphatic about that! Therefore, the imprint
and influence of the Savior are seen and felt throughout the length
and breadth of this nation. And it is that same imprint and
influence that the secularists are feverishly attempting to expunge.

However, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead also seals the
doom of God’s enemies! Try as they will, they are a defeated foe!
The empty tomb has secured their fate.

Therefore, if America wishes to remain a free and independent
republic, if this nation truly desires future peace and prosperity,
and if we genuinely aspire to remain a blessed and protected land,
we must quickly throw off this foolish infatuation with
multiculturalism, which is nothing more than an attempt to de-
Christianize our country, and humbly return to the God of our
fathers!

After all, it wasn’t a dead and deteriorated false god upon which
America received its vision and hope; it was the crucified and
resurrected God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ!