… to the purified, you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous. (Ps 18:26)
This blog is a continuation of last week’s introduction to the doctrine of depravity.
To some people, the Christian doctrine of depravity smells rotten. They want God to be good and loving, and they think God must be a tyrant if He condemns people for sin they cannot escape. To them God loses the right to judge if people are born sinful. It makes no sense to them for us to be objects of God’s wrath by nature (Eph 2:3). If we naturally sin, then why blame us for being what we naturally are?
Do I wrestle with this question? Yes. And yet no. I mean … I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but some things I do understand, and I’m OK saying, “I know this much, but I don’t know everything.” Science takes this approach all the time. The raw data in science is almost always messy. Research may yield a block of data that seems to fit well together, but then there is this other data, and the scientist says, “Well. . .What do we do with that?” The good scientists do not kick out data because they have difficulty putting it together. They have to work with reality and not with the scenario they would like to have. They cannot change the data to make it easy to deal with, and neither can I change depravity to make things easy to understand.
For me, my own heart is part of the raw data. When I am honest with myself, I have to admit that my heart is sinful. I see in myself a heart focused on me. I don’t like it, but there it is. My own depravity is as obvious to me as the law of gravity. I look at history, and I see an unmitigated stream of greed, cruelty and brutality. I look at my own culture, and I see the glorification of self-centered indulgence. I see depravity in my wife, in my friends, in my parents, in my children, in my neighbors and in my church. I see it in my government, in Hollywood, in the music industry, in corporate America, in the education system, and in the military. I then look in the Scriptures, and I see it there, too. Everywhere I look, I see my own heart confirmed. Any attempt to deny depravity comes across to me as somewhat naïve. Depravity is not a quaint theory that needs to be proven. It is an obvious fact that I must build around. I believe in depravity because I have eyes.
Now if I have any sense of justice, I must conclude that God punishes sin. People cannot do as they please and enjoy impunity, even if what they please comes quite naturally.
Some time ago, we came home to find trash scattered all over our living room and kitchen. Our dog Gage had gotten into the trashcan and had himself a little field day. When I saw what he had done, I stuck his nose in the trashcan, smacked him on the nose and said harshly, “No!” Obviously, I was trying to train him. Let’s suppose, however, that Gage does not heed my training. Let’s say that he gets into the trash constantly, chews up our couch pillows and uses the carpet for his personal toilet. Let’s say we let him outside and he keeps barking at night, and then a neighbor stops by and he bites the neighbor. Let’s say we keep training him, but he persists in his ways. If we then get rid of him, no one will question our justice. We are not being cruel. We are being realistic.
Something like this is going on between God and us. Sin and holiness do not mix. We have much less right to dwell with God than Gage has to dwell in my home. We may be wired to sin just as Gage may be wired to bark at the opossums at night. The fact that our behavior is natural does not mean we have a right to dwell with God. This is not cruel or unjust. It is simply realistic. We behave like humans; dogs behave like dogs. In both cases, the behavior is in our nature.
The natural question then seems to be why God would create such a system as this. Why make humans in such a way that they sin by nature and then punish them for that sin? In the beginning, of course, that is not what God did. He created a sinless world with sinless people and gave them a choice. They chose to sin, and once sin entered the equation, God was no longer starting from scratch. Instead, He was dealing with the realities on the ground. The system we have is a corruption of the system God made, and God did not do the corrupting. We did. Nonetheless, after we freely chose to sin, God allowed that sin to make its home in us. He was not being unjust, for sin was the very thing we chose. God simply tied us to our choice a little more deeply than we might like. He was not being unjust. He was giving us what we chose.
But I believe that God’s allowing our sin to rest in our hearts has another purpose as well. Scripture is quite clear about a principle of judgment. To whom much is given, much shall be expected (Lk 12:48). Jesus said that the wicked cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom would be better off in the judgment than the Jewish towns of Chorazin and Capernaum (Mt 11: 20-24). All of these cities rejected God, but Chorazin and Capernaum were given so much more, and they shall be held accountable for what they saw.
This seems to indicate that the judgment contains degrees of severity, and that the severity of judgment we receive depends on what we do with the knowledge and abilities we have. Dante’s levels of hell are not in the Bible, but the idea that inspired them is.
The less ability we humans have, the more mercy God can justly show us when we fall. Hell will be an awful place for all who dwell there, but it will be more awful for some than for others. The more we are given, the more severe our judgment will be when we fall. That is why Dante has popes in his deepest levels of hell.
God’s mercy exists even in His judgment. Many people will certainly experience the reality of hell, but the hell they will experience is nothing compared to what it would be if they were more “noble.” The people who want the human race to be “good” do not know what they are asking for. What they are asking for is a more severe judgment when they sin. And they would certainly sin. God already had made an innocent couple and placed them in a sinless environment, and that couple had rebelled. What makes us think that we would have improved upon that example now that our environment is tainted and our parents are sinful? In the end, our spiritual weakness is to our advantage.
The irony of this is that the very principle people appeal to in order to criticize depravity — God should show more mercy to the helpless — is the very principle God uses by allowing depravity to overtake us. It’s just that the situation looks different from another angle. It’s as if the critic has wielded a board to beat God with, but God has snatched the board and used it to build a house.
This has been brief. I am not giving a philosophical treatise, nor am I trying to answer every question. I don’t believe I can. I know that I have raised new questions in your mind, and I’ve not answered them. That’s OK. What I am trying to do is show that there is more than one way to think through these issues, and that the reality is more complex than we sometimes wish to admit.
Ultimately, however, the issue of depravity is not a philosophical question but a personal one. You are either naturally drawn to sin or you are not. You either naturally exhibit sinful attitudes or you do not. If you look at your own heart and find that it is often drawn to sin, any debate about depravity comes across as rather shallow. If you truly see such a heart in yourself, then the real question is not “Am I a helpless sinner?” That is obvious. The real question is “What can be done about it?”
If, however, you look at yourself and you find no sin, then Jesus has nothing to offer you. You can stop reading these blogs. Nothing else I say will make any sense. Jesus came for the sick, not for those who think they are well.
