Community
For us as Christians, because we are God’s creatures, we have a creaturely need for one another, and, supremely, we need the Lord. Man was not made to live alone.
- R. J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 265:8 (Nov. 15, 1986), p. 21.
In 1963, in his lectures at Yale Law School on “The Morality of Law,” L. L. Fuller spoke of Karl Marx’s great dislike for interdependence. Marx’s hatred for interdependence led him to reject capitalism for a social order in which all men would supposedly have the equal capacity to do everything and could thus have no need for one another. Fuller described Marx’s position as one of “fundamental aversion to interdependence.”
This aversion is common to fallen men, whose desire it is to be their own god and to determine good and evil for themselves (Gen. 3:5).
For us as Christians, because we are God’s creatures, we have a creaturely need for one another, and, supremely, we need the Lord. Man was not made to live alone (Gen. 2:18). Loneliness is a form of death, and solitary confinement is a severe form of punishment.
We are, moreover, commanded not only to love one another, but to be “members one of another” (Eph. 4:25). We have a duty to our family, our fellow believers, and to all men to live with them according to God’s law and, as far as possible, in peace and harmony.
This man can only do by faithful living in Christ. To be outside of Christ is to be at war with God and man, as well as oneself. Instead of peace, we then have a human situation that reflects man’s conflict with God and with himself. Marx’s outlook reflected the logic of his anti-Christian faith and life, and that hatred of mankind he manifested has worked only evil ever since.
It is ironic that Marx, who hated communion and community, called his concept of social warfare “communism.” What he had in mind, of course, was a communion of property, not a communion of peoples. We have today many like him; they talk of peace but breathe war; they speak of love and reveal hatred. All men outside of Christ will manifest this contradiction.
Only by a total communion with God in Christ can we have community with one another.
- 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.