Theft and Debt

In our day, there is much talk about social responsibility as a good thing, perhaps because there is so little of it. We see instead a growing lack of family and personal responsibility in the world around us. In a world in which elitist ideals prevail, responsibility is replaced by egoism and self-promotion.

Our Lord equates elitism with death. Let us consider the implications of elitism. Proverbs 8:36 declares that those who sin against God do violence to their own soul and, in hating God, love death. The culture of death is hostile to responsibility and to work. It prefers instead theft and debt. We can expect, therefore, that theft and debt will become increasingly prevalent in humanistic societies as social policies.

In our world today, theft and debt are not social by-products. They are central aspects of humanistic social policy. Not surprisingly, such a society becomes increasingly anxious, disorderly, and evil. If social policy relies on theft and debt to create a new world, it will create instead hell on earth. Elitism is a divisive concept, if men at the top see themselves as an elite, separate and above men, the prevailing temper in all society will be anti-work and anti-community. All will seek to "do their own thing."

This is not to say that humanism is indifferent to the need for community. On the contrary, studies of the concept have been common for more than two centuries. The humanistic version of community is usually coercive, i.e., imposed from above by the state. Such a perspective is the antithesis of community; statism is not community.

Moreover, coercion by the state is hostile to the growth of community because it replaces work and charity with theft and debt, and theft and debt are divisive and destructive to society.

For example, Proverbs 14:23 tells us, "In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury." The latter half of this verse is rendered by the Berkeley Version as, "mere talk leads only to want." The society of theft and debt works to hinder the profit of work, and to slander it.

Proverbs 13:11 says, "Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase." The Berkeley Version of Proverbs 16:26 tells us a blunt fact about man: "A worker's appetite works for him, for his mouth urges him on." The elitist denies the realities of God's world and thus creates a welfare state; he uses theft and debt to try to counteract the unhappy fact of need, and only aggravates the problem. 

The difference between the two perspectives, hierarchical and elitist, can be seen in the current views of architecture. It was once held that architecture was an expression of the life and faith of a people. In recent years, it has been held that, "by altering a society's architecture one can alter its whole character and  outlook."[1] Where God's rule prevails, man's faith is at work to exercise dominion in every sphere of life and thought. Where elitism prevails, elitist man seeks to impose a new creation from above to replace God's handiwork. The Lord God is content to allow man to work towards an understanding of God's plan and then its development in history. Only in terms of God's way can man prosper and flourish. Then, in our Lord's words, "and, behold, all things are clean unto you."

The word clean is in the Greek katharos, as in the English catharsis. It means free from impurities, spotless, and without blemish. A clean society cannot be built on theft and debt. It requires faith, the clean heart, with the work and charity of faith, to cleanse the man and society and to heal the divisions of man. The clean society is the work of God through man's life and work.

{Excerpted from R. J. Rushdoony, “The Clean Society,” the “Theology of Work,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 1068-69.}

[1]Norris, Kelly Smith: Frank Lloyd Wright, A Study in Architectural Content. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J..: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p.2