Rottenness in the Bones

The tenth commandment forbids covetousness, and envy is repeatedly condemned in Scripture. Unfortunately, what the Bible teaches and what today’s politicians and preachers teach are two different things.

Men today are being taught to covet and to envy. Are you a worker? Then be envious of what your shop owner or factory owner has, and resent it with all your heart. Are you a farm laborer? Then believe that the farmer holds what he has by defrauding you, and that he is an ugly brute who has made his money at your expense. Are you a member of a minority group? Then demand your “rights” and declare everything in America is evil because you are not in possession of it.

Preachers and politicians seem to believe in a new beatitude of their own making: “Blessed are the envious, for they shall inherit the earth.” They are out to make it come true or else destroy the country if they cannot.

But let us take our text from the Bible, not from these preachers and politicians. “A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30).

A sound heart means a regenerated heart, a converted man who lives by the word of the Lord, not by envy; and envy is the rottenness, the decay, of the bones.

A man’s bones are the structure of his body: he cannot stand without them. Some people, with rare diseases of the bones, are scarcely able to stand or move, because their spinal column may crumble. The bones make possible man’s ability to function.

Now a society with rottenness of the bones is a society ready to crumble, ready to collapse; it cannot stand. A society which is dedicated to envy as a way of life, a society whose political and religious leaders promote the evil of envy as the great virtue and cure-all, has about as much future as a man bent on drinking poison to cure his hiccups.


Taken from A Word in Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 4 (Ross House Books; Vallecito: CA,  2012), 8. Available from Nordskog Publishing here on Jerry’s Bookshelf.

 

Rev. R. J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) was the founder of Chalcedon Foundation and a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical Law to society.

© 2015 Used by Permission

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