Read the first few chapters of Romans and then tell me that humans are basically good.
There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one.
Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Wow, I was not expecting this response at all, especially since these were my exact words,
"I still have faith in people in general and believe that there is good in everyone and I try to look for that good instead of always focusing on the negative."
To begin with, I never said I thought humans were basically good but what is interesting is that I do think humans are good even though that had nothing to do with my point in the original blog. Confused yet? You probably will be soon because to carry this out further, I believe this response was not only an incorrect reading of my blog but also an incorrect reading of the Bible. This passage from Romans 3:9-18 is taken in part from another passage in Psalms and should, like all passages, be taken in context. Without context, many passages can be used to justify almost anything.
I am far from being a Biblical or theological expert and I am not well-educated and I am not even very smart but I am a thinker and as I read this passage and the verses directly after it, I think that this speaks to God's incredible grace more than to our unworthiness of it. In fact, if one reads the two verses immediately following you see that only under the law are we considered to be evil and since we as Jesus-followers are not under the law but as the author Paul says so many times not just in this book but practically all of his other books included in the Bible, like this from Ephesians 2:8 and 9: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
We are not under the law but under grace because Jesus died on the cross to pay the price it took to satisfy the cost of our sin. But because we all have that sin nature with which we are born and is a part of us as much as our own personalities in and of ourselves we are evil and that passage from verses nine to eighteen applies to everyone of us. So, in a nutshell, we are not righteous but are saved because of God's love for us anyway.
Now, back to the original blog. I never said anything about righteousness. Please understand the difference between my off-hand comment about there being good in everyone and about humans being righteous. I do believe that there is good in everyone and even though it was not my point, I also believe in a very general way, not Biblically or theologically necessarily, that people are good. Again, I may not be smart but I can see and what I see so many times is people reaching out to people. I see it in my church (you would hope you would see it there) but I also see it in on the news. Believe it or not I see people being good to other people on the news! Sorry, mainstream news stations but in spite of your negative reporting I saw people after 9/11 waiting in line to give blood. After the recent Virginia Tech massacre people from all over the world sent condolences and more to the families of the victims. It does not take a crisis of this nature to bring out the goodness in people either. What about all the people who volunteer in nursing homes or dog pounds or bring presents to orphans? The list is thankfully long of all the good things people do everyday and as I tend to be cynical sometimes I hope we all never forget it and continue to do our part.
2 comments:
In the first 3 chapters of Romans, which I quoted from, Paul makes the case that mankind in our fallen state is desperately wicked and completely unable to do anything to please God. He does this by referencing supporting passages from the Old Testament, and by observing how we are all unable to meet God's standard as outlined in the Law. Even the Jews who made it their life-long pursuit to be righteous were not able to keep the Law. He describes how we each intentionally rejected God and chose our own way, and God gives us over to our desires. We put ourselves on a downward spiral away from God, and every path away from God is downhill. Apart from God's grace, we are all under the law, and the law condemns us, because Jesus is the only one in history who has ever lived a sinless life. Every religion is based on man's attempt to earn God's favor through good deeds, but in the end those efforts are futile. We can not be good. It is not in our nature. We can not choose God, and we can't do anything to merit his favor. We don't even have the faith or the ability to desire Him unless God gives it to us. It is a pretty bleak picture, really. So why does Paul start out a book about the grace and mercy of God with such a dark appraisal of our situation? Because you have to understand that the bad news is really bad before you can appreciate how good the good news is. You have to recognize our own hopeless situation before you will throw yourself on God's grace. If you think that we have goodness of our own, we don't need God's righteousness. If we can bridge part of the gap between us and God, God does not get 100% of the glory for bridging that gap with the death of His Son.
Todd,
I think that we are talking about different things here. You point out that humans do good things, at least some of the time. That is very true. There is a scale of goodness, where zero is always evil all the time, and one hundred is always completely perfect all the time. I think we will agree that no human is a zero, and Jesus is the only perfect 100 in history. From a human perspective, lots of people strive to be on the higher end of that scale. Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, and Ghandi are examples of people who spent their lives doing good things, but none of them were perfect 100s. From a human viewpoint, they are "good" people. But God's standard is holiness and exemplified by Jesus. We are not good in God's eyes unless we are a perfect 100. On God's scale, all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), we have all fallen short of God's glory (Romans 3:23) and we deserve death (Romans 6:23). By God's standard, no one is good but God (Luke 18:19).
So people do good things, but by nature we are sinful, and from God's viewpoint we are hopelessly unable to reach His standard. The Good News is that He didn't leave us in that situation, but as a free and unearned gift he offered his own Son as payment of the penalty of sin on our behalf. If we will accept that gift, he replaces our sinful nature with his righteousness and gives us his power to do good, AND to be good.
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