"The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.
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- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Now and then one of thse souses over at the Tusky Mug sobers up long enough to write something cogent. Check out Jim's latest post. It is reprinted in full below, probably breaking at least a few of the 400 or so "rules" of the BHT. Que sera, sera.
There are two fundamental errors we need to be careful to avoid.
The first, and more obvious one, is to disbelieve the reality of depravity.
The second, and more insidious, is to believe that "total" depravity is "utter" depravity.
It is, in my view, a fundamental error to believe that depravity means that everyone is essentially selfish to the point of disregard for other people or for the rest of creation in every circumstance. This error is seen in contemporary American politics on a daily basis; the result of it is that flawed people like Bill Clinton aren't seen as just flawed people, they become monstrous predators; flawed people like George Bush aren't seen as flawed people, they become tree-eating baby killers. Dick Cheney can't just be a guy who had a hunting accident, he has to be the center of a vast duck-winged conspiracy to kill lawyers with birdshot. It never occurs to anyone anymore that those on "the other side" of the aisle, or of the question of the moment, are merely wrong, they must be either evil, or stupid, or both. (Cf. Krauthammer's observation.)
It's a fallacy to believe that any government action necessarily will turn out bad. It's a fallacy to believe that corporations are only governed by greed and self-interest. Both may be true in many cases, but neither are a forgone conclusion.
It's silly, in a free-market system where most large corporations are publicly held and traded, not to apply the same "logic of democracy" to corporations as a recent post here applied to the government. There is no they in the boardrooms of corporate America, for the most part. When CEOs and executives "get away with" actions and decisions that hurt the environment, by and large, they do so because the people to whom they are accountable - stockholders - i.e., anyone with an IRA or a 401K - let them get away with it, because it serves our interest to do so. The same is true for government. You don't like the president? Vote for someone else. You don't like what the Very Big Corporation of America is doing to the environment, the job market, the quality of workmanship, the economy, or what ever? Well, stop buying their products - or better buy some of their stock, and vote for someone else.
It's not a perfect system. We're not perfect people. But it's a pretty good one under the circumstances. Our system has produced some duds, and a few scoundrels. The alternative systems have, from my perspective, done a lot worse: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, ...
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Comments on "A BHT Home Run":
2. De
- 02/16/2006 12:21 am CST
Thanks for the clarification, David. I was being sloppy.
I don't want the meaning of the BHT post to get clouded, though, because of the final toss-off sentence in my post. :-) - I'm going to delete that sentence now :-)
3. Clay
- 02/16/2006 5:42 am CST
Good post. Didn't quite follow his entire argument, but it was thought-worthy.
In relation to God, depravity is total--there is zero tolerance of sin by the perfect and holy Creator. It's none or all. That's why we need a Savior. In relation to this world, though, no one is ever as depraved as he or she could be. Thank God for the institutions that restrain our depravity (government, church, marriage), whether we are redeemed or unredeemed!
If there is "will" enough to respond to God, as I believe there is, then there is will enough to choose good. That's why so many non-believers can do so much good for the world and for mankind, even though it comes from an unredeemed heart. That relative good will gain absolutely no favor with the holy God, but it is still good works. "Totally depraved" people can do good things, but just not for the right reasons.
I agree with the author--the doctrine of "total depravity" should not be taken to mean "total worthlessness." Even unredeemed people can express the image of God that is within them, even though it is distorted by sin, whether through the arts, or through doing good things, or whatever. Rather than causing us to judge the not-yet-redeemed as essentially worthless, the reality of our own struggle with depravity (with our sin nature), though we are saved, should humble us and give us compassion and mercy for others.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:12-14
4. imonk
- 02/16/2006 3:30 pm CST
Tusky Mug. Cool :-)
Jim appears rather cogent. We are checking his pulse.
5. Kevin
- 02/17/2006 4:47 am CST
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
This is a beautiful sentence! Thanks for quoting it, David Marcoe
One minor point - Hitler came to power via a democratic election.
Hitler had already built a para-military force numbering in to the hundreds of thousands before he was democratically elected? He then used that force to strong-arm entire regions of Germany to throw the vote in his favor. The subsequent seizure and transformation of the German government in to the Nazi regime was not exactly constitutional either, IIRC.
Our system, however, is not a democracy. To quote from Federalist Paper 55, "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. ... Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." Power is never concentrated to strongly in any one group: the functions of government are divided amongst three branches; the power of government is divided between the States and the Federal level; our Congress acts as a mitigating institution of public passions, while our Constitution acts as a restraining compact on both the government and citizens. The mutual overlap, our checks and balances, create tension between the various spheres and levels, allowing for stability of the whole. This carefully constructed system was heavily shaped by a Calvinist understanding of human depravity.