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Depravity
Grand Experiment
Broadcaster Paul Harvey told a version of the following story on the radio many years ago.
There was an old man who was a great admirer of democracy and public education. So close to his heart did he hold both institutions that he tried to bring them together into one grand experiment, a public college where students would practice self-governance. There would be no regulations; the goodwill and judgment of the students would suffice. After years of planning, the school was finally opened. The old man was overjoyed.
But as the months went by, students proved time and time again that they were not the models of discipline and discernment the old man envisioned. They skipped classes, drank to excess, and wasted hours in frivolous pursuits. One night, 14 students, disguised by masks and “animated with wine,” went on a rampage that ended in a brawl. One struck a professor with a brick, and another used a cane on his victim.
In response, the college’s trustees convened a special meeting. The old man, now 82 years old and very frail, was asked to address the student body. In his remarks, he recalled the lofty principles upon which the college had been founded. He said he had expected more—much more—from the students. He even confessed that this was the most painful event of his life. Suddenly, he stopped speaking. Tears welled up in his failing eyes. He was so overcome with grief that he sat down, unable to go on.
His audience was so touched that at the conclusion of the meeting the 14 offenders stepped forward to admit their guilt. But they could not undo the damage already done. A strict code of conduct and numerous onerous regulations were instituted at the college. The old man’s experiment had failed. Why? Because he took for granted the one essential ingredient necessary for success: virtue. Only a virtuous people can secure and maintain their freedom.
A short time later, on the Fourth of July, the old man passed away. Engraved on his tombstone were the simple words that reflected the success and failure of his most important experiments: “Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and father of the University of Virginia.” Now, as Mr. Harvey says, you know the rest of the story.
Imprimis, April 1997, Volume 26, Number 4, Hillsdale College, MI, pp. 1-2
Popular Religion
“Until we believe that we are as bad as God says we are, we can never believe that He will do for us what He says He will do. Right here is where popular religion breaks down.” - A. W. Tozer
Quoted in The Berean Call, September 1993, New Man, July/August 1994, p. 10.
Quotes
- Truly it is evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them. - Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662
- No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul. - John Calvin
Source unknown
Jehovah Our Righteousness Jer. 23:6
My God, how perfect are Thy ways!
But mine polluted are;
Sin twines itself about my praise,
And slides into my prayer.
When I would speak what Thou hast done
To save me from my sin,
I cannot make Thy mercies known,
But self-applause creeps in.
Divine desire, that holy flame
Thy grace creates in me;
Alas! impatience is its name,
When it returns to Thee.
This heart, a fountain of vile thoughts,
How does it overflow,
While self upon the surface floats,
Still bubbling from below.
Let others in the guady dress
Of fancied merit shine;
The Lord shall be my righteousness,
The Lord for ever mine.
Olney Hymns, by William Cowper, from Cowper’s Poems, Sheldon & Company, New York
Dysfunctional
According to sociologist Robert Bellah, “One of our current psychological gurus says that 98 percent of Americans are dysfunctional. No doubt he is right. He has just discovered original sin, though he is mistaken if he things 2 percent are without.”
Our Daily Bread, April 19, 1995
Need of Humanity
Charles Hodge points out the overwhelming need of humanity:
Our guilt is great because our sins are exceedingly numerous. It is not merely outward acts of unkindness and dishonesty with which we are chargeable; our habitual and characteristic state of mind is evil in the sight of God.
Our pride, vanity, and indifference to His will and to the welfare of others, our selfishness, our loving the creature more than the Creator, are continuous violations of His holy law.
We have never been or done what that law requires us to be and to do. We have never had that delight in the divine perfection, that sense of dependence and obligation, that fixed purpose to do the will and promote the glory of God, which constitute the love which is our fist and highest duty.
We are always sinners; we are at all times and under all circumstances in opposition to God, because we are never what His law requires us to be.
If we have never made it our purpose to do His will, if we have never made His glory the end of our actions, then our lives have been an unbroken series of transgressions. Our sins are not to be numbered by the conscious violations of duty; they are as numerous as the moments of our existence.
A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save.
C. S. Lewis, quoted in Against the Night, Charles Colson, p. 139
Property Laws of a Toddler
(Evidences of Original Sin)
Test this on the toddlers in your home or church this Christmas!
1. If I like it, it’s mine.
2. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.
5. If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks just like mine, it’s mine.
8. If I saw it first, it’s mine.
9. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
10. If it’s broken, it’s yours.
Deb Lawrence, Missionary to the Philippines with SEND International, quoted in Prokope, November/December, 1992, p. 3.
Black Tuesday
October 7, 1969 the Montreal, Canada police force went on strike. Because of what resulted, the day has been called Black Tuesday.
A burglar and a policeman were slain. Forty-nine persons were wounded or injured in rioting. Nine bank holdups were committed, almost a tenth of the total number of holdups the previous year along with 17 robberies at gunpoint. Usually disciplined, peaceful citizens joined the riffraff and went wild, smashing some 1,000 plate glass windows in a stretch of 21 business blocks in the heart of the city, hauling away stereo units, radios, TVs and wearing apparel. While looters stripped windows of valuable merchandise, professional burglars entered stores by doors and made off with truckloads of goods. A smartly dressed man scampered down a street with a fur coat over each arm with no police around, anarchy took over.
Source unknown
Purity
We begin by trusting our ignorance and calling it innocence, by trusting our innocence and calling it purity. And when we hear these rugged statements of our Lord’s (Matthew 15:18), we shrink and say: “But I never felt any of those awful things in my heart.” Either Jesus Christ is the supreme authority on the human heart or He is not worth paying attention to. Am I prepared to trust His judgment or do I prefer to trust my innocent ignorance? As long as I remain under the refuge of innocence, I am living in a fool’s paradise. The only thing that safeguards is the redemption found in Jesus Christ. Purity is too deep down for me to get to naturally; but when the Holy Spirit comes in, He brings into the center of my life the very Spirit that was manifested in the life of Jesus Christ—the Holy Spirit, who is unsullied purity.” - Oswald Chambers
Source unknown
Dear Abby
Dear Abby: I am 44 and would like to meet a man my age with no bad habits.
Dear Rose: So would I.
Source unknown
Pollution
Alexander MacLaren has written, “I remember a rough parable of [Martin] Luther’s grafted on an older legend, which runs somewhat in this fashion: A man’s heart is like a foul stable. Wheelbarows and shovels are of little use, except to remove some of the surface filth, and to litter all the passages in the process. What is to be done with it? ‘Turn the river Elbe into it,’ says he. The flood will sweep away all the pollution.”
Today in the Word, September, 1989, p. 12
Quote
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell, Dickens, Dali and Others
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