ARE WE GOOD? A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION ABOUT HUMAN NATURE

Consider the theology in these statements:

• “Down deep, everyone is basically good. It’s the world that makes them bad.”

• “I know he acts like a jerk, but once you get to know him, he’s a nice guy.”

• “Education is the way to elevate human nature.”

• “You can’t legislate morality.”

• “That kid needs a good spanking.”

How we view human nature profoundly affects how we handle crime, education, government, and parenting. It also separates liberals and conservatives, both theologically and politically. Most importantly, without a clear understanding of the human condition, we can’t relate rightly to God. So we need to get this question right.

John Calvin speaks for me when he writes: “For our nature is not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle.”1 This belief offends the modern mind, tainted as it is by wishful thinking, which holds that if we but call humans noble they will become noble.

I call this error “The Therapeutic Heresy” because it seems to coincide with the proliferation of therapy as the solution to modern angst. Don’t get me wrong, I think therapy can do great good – but as a belief system, the tenets of today’s secular therapy are a disaster.

The core of the therapeutic heresy is that down deep, humans are good. Since we were created in the image of God, an inherent goodness resides in every human. According to this way of thinking, the image of God in us may be hidden by our sin, but if we embrace God’s love and reject negative messages about ourselves – with the help of therapy or spirituality -- we can come home to our true selves and enjoy the life God intends for us. In the therapeutic heresy, the idea that we are sinners is minimized because it adds to our guilt and shame. Our true sin is believing that we are sinners.

There are half-truths in this heresy that make it appealing. Especially for people who have grown up under harsh and graceless teaching about sin, and who have internalized a deep sense of shame about who they are, it feels healing to hear that we are truly loved by God despite our sins. We shouldn’t take that healing away from anyone; rather we should encourage it. Moreover, for those who labor to become righteous by performing works of God’s law, yet fail and feel forced to hide their broken-ness, the kindness of God presented in this heresy feels like a welcome balm. This person also needs to hear of God’s liberating grace and experience the freedom from works it gives us.

But the error with this way of thinking is that it misdiagnoses the human condition. It prescribes aspirin to treat a brain tumor.

A truly healing solution to our human condition begins by asking: “Are humans actually inherently good?” Consider these scriptures:

All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. Psalm 14:3 and Psalm 53:2

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Psalm 51:5

No one is good – except God alone. Jesus in Mark 10:18

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him!

Jesus in Matthew 7:11

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

Paul in Romans 7:18

These scriptures point toward what is known in theology as “original sin”. It is much- maligned in therapeutic circles, but it speaks truly of a condition of separation from God into which every human is born. We can’t change it by wishing it away.

But what about references to human goodness in the bible? When Jesus says in Matthew 5:45, Your Father in heaven causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, he implies that some people are indeed good. He also says in Matthew 12:35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. So which is it? Are humans good or not?

Paul gives the answer. Nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. Any good in a person derives from God’s activity in that person. His or her own nature, apart from God’s activity, is completely corrupt. But when we turn to God in faith, something begins to change in us. The Holy Spirit comes to dwells in us, making us to some degree capable of good intentions and good actions. Paul describes this in Ephesians 1:13: Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Sin still dwells in us and asserts itself in both our intentions and actions, but now that the Spirit indwells us, the possibility of good exists.

What about people who don’t believe in God yet manifest goodness in their lives? I call this the “Ghandi Problem”. Two distinctions help us here. First, there’s a difference between true goodness and apparent goodness. Fallen human nature often wishes to appear good, through generosity or nobility, but the hidden desire is to be praised. Another distinction is what Paul says in Romans 1:19-20, and it seems to apply more to Ghandi himself: that unbelievers can observe from creation that there is a God whom we ought to worship and emulate. Theologians call this “general revelation” (or “natural revelation”). So God may be active in unbelievers, thereby causing a degree of goodness to manifest through them.

Some might want to dismiss these nuances and just conclude that humans are good. That would be a horrible mistake for two reasons. First, because the evil nature in humans must never be minimized. The murder, callousness, apathy, cowardice, and rebellion against the only truly good person – God – is dangerous when ignored. Atheistic countries in the twentieth century, by their murdering of millions of their own citizens, prove this point.

But the other reason we must not conclude humans are good is because it leads us away from our only chance of becoming truly good: embracing the cross of Jesus.

Those who hold to the therapeutic heresy say that the cross reveals something: the love of God. That it does, but they’re missing the more powerful truth: the cross achieves something. It atones for our sin.

Sin isn’t merely an immoral act that can be easily dismissed. It’s a break in relationship that leads us to hate God and his just demands on our lives. Sound extreme? Then why was Jesus hated and killed? Some will say that Jesus was killed because religion, in this case the religion of the Jewish legalists, makes us narrow-minded and brutal. But the truth is that humans resist God, and down deep, resent him. Paul says in Romans 8:7 The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, indeed, it cannot. Sin is imbedded in our fallen nature, and we can’t simply un-choose it.

How is God to relate with us in love when this is our true attitude?

Only by suffering.

Recognizing the depth of our human sin, and the depth of God’s suffering love on the cross, cuts us to the heart. It convicts us of our sinfulness, leads us to repent, and opens us to accept God’s grace won on the cross as the only way we can be healed. And unless this happens in us, we remain in sin and estranged from God. Be clear on this: no one can enter God’s kingdom of love while still carrying an unrepentant attitude toward God.

But into this tangle of human corruption comes the liberating grace of God in Jesus. Godly sorrow leads to repentance that brings salvation and leaves no regret (2 Corinthians 7:10). That is the great joy of new life that we claim by faith in Christ when we learn to stop being offended by condemnations of our fallen human nature and come to see ourselves rightly.

A final consideration: why is the therapeutic heresy dangerous to society? Consider how it affects parenting, as it does today on a widespread basis. When parents think their children are “basically good”, they fail to enforce strict standards for the child’s character. As a result the child is ill-mannered, self-centered, has a poor work ethic, and expects to get his way. A school full of these kinds of children is a miserable place.

Likewise, if we believe criminals are “basically good”, we lower our expectations of lawful behavior. Our leniency will result in pain for the criminal’s next victim. If we believe our political or business leaders are “basically good”, we will relax regulatory oversight of them and allow them to become tyrants and plunderers.

I do believe, as liberals tend to, that great evil resides in our social systems and not merely in individual hearts. This is an outworking of sinful human nature, and scripture calls this evil simply “the world”. This must be understood as well, lest naïve theology about human goodness and the inevitability of social progress leave us defenseless against human evil.

1John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2 Chapter 1 section 8.