Depravity

The accent for this day in these Pages has been on mankind’s condition as generated from an ancient time period in which we have limited reflective communication about God and morality except through Scripture.  According to Scripture the recognition that mankind, in both male and female, partly through choice and partly through disguise, became imperfect in both physical and spiritual life.  The penalty for the choice was physical suffering and death seen especially in physical labor to pain from childbirth and ultimate decline to physical death.  Spiritually the penalty was found in the incompetency of the fallen (imperfect) person to meet the standards of God so to inherit his rejection – if there is no repair.  The only recourse for solution was in the forgiveness of God in a redemptive plan of rescue and recovery. That is where we find ourselves, and that has extended from time past to us, and will continue until God makes some other context for mankind.  The implication is that mankind will continue to exist, even in a renewed creative gesture.  God will not be put off by the parenthesis of a negative context in the application of holiness to his creation.  Continuance is an argument for the belief that God’s plans will not be thwarted by any person or power outside of his permission.  If at one time he determined to form a perfect creation of self-conscious beings with freedom to express his nature beyond the devotion of angels, he will have that creation.  The nature of that rescued creation will not betray him.  God will not be thwarted at any point.

Our problem is spiritual lostness in the race of mankind.  We do not manage really well.  We seem to be wandering around, perhaps to become a disposable experiment, and the reintroduction of first things to God’s kingdom purposes.  Our understanding is to begin at the beginning so to acknowledge what is known of the race, and proceed through God’s recovery (redemptive) plan to restoration and recall to a context that came from the nature of God.  God’s nature will not change, and the only way mankind can gain fellowship with God is to follow the order of Scripture to solution.  Those who followed it intently have witnessed in many millions of converts how well it worked for them.  The problem begins with persuading persons that they have a need that only God can address.  That need is summarized in the word depravity.  It seems to the informed Christian that the condition is proved in rather persuasive evidence from taking home paper from the office, to nudging a ball with a golf club, to urging an illegal procedure in a client, to padding a resume, to hatred, perhaps to murder.  (A resume lie cost a school principal his job on the first day he took office in Minnesota in August, 2013.  Would we be comfortable having that teacher guiding the education of our children?  I would but only if adequate moral repair were demonstrated.)

We here deal with only one context, and take cue from a book published several years ago entitled: The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, by Dan Ariely.  I quote from a book report published by Bloomberg News.  The following quote appears after the author has shown how widely dishonesty has been practiced so many in society.  It also appears after the authors have shown that: Very few people steal to a maximal degree.  Those at the maximal degree are the ones we read about in the news.  Ariely and his colleagues explored these behaviors in experiments that offered students a chance to earning cash by filling out a mathematical worksheet.  The more problems they solved, the more money they got.  Though the experimenters did encounter some aggressive cheaters, it was the little chiselers who cost the most.  Because there are so many of them, we lost thousands and thousands of dollars to them – much more than we lost to the aggressive cheaters. Would an experiment of that sort suggest that human beings are flawed before holy God with what might be termed depravity?  What better-liked word would serve effectively? This morning I spent an hour with one of my great-grandsons, with whom I have been engaged for the last year in his preparations for college.  There are several issues of mutual concern, and he felt there might be a difference of opinion between us, so he had a well-prepared outline of the issues and his approach to them.  We both work at the business of honesty recognizing the human tendency to silence, or distortion rather than truthful negotiation to solve a possible problem.  He wanted to be sure we were on the same page, so went out of his way to make sure there was no misunderstanding (dishonesty) in our exchanges.  Bravo!