Depravity is a word you don't hear everyday. It also isn't a widely held view outside of Christianity. It is however experienced everyday. So what is depravity? It is basically the idea that man is evil and that we are not inherently good. In all honesty this probably flies in the face of all the philosophy that movies have taught us. It was always shown in the movies that people are always good and willing to go out of their way to support their fellow man...well, its not exactly true.
In a lot of situations people tend to question God's motives, like, "why didn't God save me from that mugging" or "why did this person not get the help they needed?". God is an easy target for most people. You cant see him and many don't search for interaction with him. So why not pin it on him. Well, because God is not to fault for any of the evil in our world. We are.
One very piercing quote I had heard about some people who were in a Jewish concentration camp has really shown me this. In this camp there was one person who asked "Where is God?". Clearly this person was looking for hope, but the response they received was startling. One person quipped up "Where is man". For any person who has studied the holocaust at any length you know that the Jews and other people who were condemned to the death camps were done so by their neighbors. One of the most unstudied subjects by Americans is the case of the Velodrome d'hiver Round-up, a roundup of Jews by the French, not the Nazis, of Jews in Paris into an arena; much like the one that invokes thoughts by Americans of the Superdome in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It was that bad. No one would think to assume that God had to do with these people rounding up innocents for death, but we would rightly point to the people under duress by the Nazis for this act.
The problem is that we do not want to see the bad in people, but there is so much bad in people. In fact in the Bible it is said that the thing we should trust the most is the most dangerous thing of all; our heart. It is said in Matthew 15:19 that "out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander". We see how these things are a root to the evil that is in our world. However, rather than see the pain and suffering put on innocents as the work of man, we ask God for why it happened. It is simple, we are depraved and long for sin like a fat kid longs for a hot fudge sundae (been there!). Rather than run from sin, we turn to it and hope that the sins we long for will satisfy us, but they don't and just cause more pain.
Unlike us God was willing to give of himself and serve, rather than take. In Romans 5:7-8 it says "For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." To pin all evil on God and not at least take some of the blame for ourselves, we are not looking at a full picture. We have to be able to look in the picture and realize that us, from a kid who steals from a gas station to Joseph Stalin, have committed evil and wronged another man. To reject our depravity and place it on God is to accept that all men are inherently good, but not necessarily living up to their "potential", in spite of their fallen state. However, this potential can only be achieved through Jesus.
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| Not a vehicle for evil, unless stolen by the Joker |
In a lot of situations people tend to question God's motives, like, "why didn't God save me from that mugging" or "why did this person not get the help they needed?". God is an easy target for most people. You cant see him and many don't search for interaction with him. So why not pin it on him. Well, because God is not to fault for any of the evil in our world. We are.
One very piercing quote I had heard about some people who were in a Jewish concentration camp has really shown me this. In this camp there was one person who asked "Where is God?". Clearly this person was looking for hope, but the response they received was startling. One person quipped up "Where is man". For any person who has studied the holocaust at any length you know that the Jews and other people who were condemned to the death camps were done so by their neighbors. One of the most unstudied subjects by Americans is the case of the Velodrome d'hiver Round-up, a roundup of Jews by the French, not the Nazis, of Jews in Paris into an arena; much like the one that invokes thoughts by Americans of the Superdome in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It was that bad. No one would think to assume that God had to do with these people rounding up innocents for death, but we would rightly point to the people under duress by the Nazis for this act.
The problem is that we do not want to see the bad in people, but there is so much bad in people. In fact in the Bible it is said that the thing we should trust the most is the most dangerous thing of all; our heart. It is said in Matthew 15:19 that "out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander". We see how these things are a root to the evil that is in our world. However, rather than see the pain and suffering put on innocents as the work of man, we ask God for why it happened. It is simple, we are depraved and long for sin like a fat kid longs for a hot fudge sundae (been there!). Rather than run from sin, we turn to it and hope that the sins we long for will satisfy us, but they don't and just cause more pain.
Unlike us God was willing to give of himself and serve, rather than take. In Romans 5:7-8 it says "For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." To pin all evil on God and not at least take some of the blame for ourselves, we are not looking at a full picture. We have to be able to look in the picture and realize that us, from a kid who steals from a gas station to Joseph Stalin, have committed evil and wronged another man. To reject our depravity and place it on God is to accept that all men are inherently good, but not necessarily living up to their "potential", in spite of their fallen state. However, this potential can only be achieved through Jesus.
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