“Beyond Today”
If the world disappoints us or cripples us, our hope is not ended. The outcome of our lives is not here but over the lofty mountains of time and in eternity. We must live beyond today.
- R. J. Rushdoony
January 19, 1954
Good morning, friends. Sunday night, when I went home, I felt certain that nothing could keep me from going to bed and getting some much needed rest and sleep. I made the mistake, however, of picking up a small book, and, as a result, it was very much later, and only when the book had been read from cover to cover, that I got to bed.
I can’t say that I enjoyed the book. Actually, it left me feeling more than a little ashamed of myself. The book is an autobiography, just recently translated from the Norwegian. Its author is Rolf Thomassen, the title, Beyond Today. Rolf Thomassen is a cripple, a spastic. Neither his feet, hands, nor his tongue are under his control. He cannot walk a step or bring a spoon to his mouth. His speech can be understood only with difficulty by strangers, and he spends his days in a specially designed chair, which is almost a trap, to hold him up and prevent him from falling out of it. Rolf Thomassen was born in October of 1902, and is now fifty-one years old. His life is and has been a hard one since the day he was born into a humble but gifted family, the twelfth of thirteen children. He entered life with only a helpless body, but his heart and faith have been strong. Rolf Thomassen learned to read, and then, by having a special collar strapped to his chin, with a small rod attached to the collar, learned to peck out words on a typewriter. His brilliant mind thirsted for self-expression, and, by holding a paintbrush between his teeth, he learned to paint, took lessons, and finally reached the point where he could support himself, and a maid to care for him, with the proceeds from the sale of his pictures. Musically inclined, he took a paintbrush, cut off the hairs, and used it to pluck at a zither, the brush held in his mouth, until he became a competent musician.
Rolf Thomassen frankly admits that these accomplishments tend to leave him more frustrated. When he paints or plays, he is tormented by the thought of the music and the pictures he would like to express if only his body were not so limited. He is not happy about his affliction. In fact, he is clearly rebellious against it, hates it, and feels like a caged eagle. He is saddened by the knowledge that so much of life can never be his. And yet a friend of his can write, “It may sound like an exaggeration, but I believe I can truthfully say that Rolf Thomassen is one of the happiest persons I have met.”
Rolf Thomassen himself says, concerning his affliction, that he feels the truth of the psalmist’s statement, “by my God have I leaped over a wall” (Ps. 18:29): that he has clearly done. It would be a great day if each of us could surmount our barriers with as much faith and courage as this man. His parents could not give their afflicted son a sound body, but they did give him a sound faith, and the results have been great accordingly. To understand Rolf Thomassen’s faith more clearly, let’s look at the title of his autobiography: Beyond Today, in the English translation, Over the Lofty Mountain, in the Norwegian. As he himself says, on the last page of his book, “My future is light and long, it goes beyond the boundaries of time.”
What makes his life more livable, gives him happiness in the midst of a hateful affliction, and confidence in the face of the long, hard years, is this: his life is beyond today, beyond this world, over the lofty mountains of time and into eternity. His life is hid with Christ in God.
We get so completely involved, sometimes, with the details of today, we identify our lives so intricately with the odds and ends of the daily grind that God finds it necessary to remind us through a man like Rolf Thomassen that our life is beyond today. If the world disappoints us or cripples us, our hope is not ended. The outcome of our lives is not here but over the lofty mountains of time and in eternity. The man to be truly pitied is not Rolf Thomassen but the man who lives only for today. It is he who loses his life and is left desolate and crippled in the end. Listen to these words of the man who lives beyond today, written after a hospital experience which failed to produce the greatly hoped for cure. He writes:
Why was I lying here grieving? What was I lacking? No, “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” What was everything in the world compared to the fact of being saved? Before I knew it, I was lying there jubilant, giving thanks for “the salvation, full and free,” and the more I gave thanks, the more I was able to understand the depths of His finished work for me at Calvary…
I had to ask myself, “Why art thou so cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.”1
1. Rolf Thomassen, trans. by Torgrim and Linda Hannas, Beyond Today (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1953), 89–90.
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.