Total Depravity?
It sure seems like it sometimes.
Are we stopping to look at our fundamental assumptions? Might we be advised to take a fresh look at ourselves in light of what we see coming into being in this world of ours?
I came across a blog post this morning that captured my attention:
There is much I could say about this topic, but what moved me was this closing reflection:
Here’s what I cannot figure out. Was the promise (that I began this article with) always a lie? Is the human condition such that we are always at the mercy of primitive instinct? Conservative Presbyterians believe in the doctrine of “total depravity” — that human beings are always flawed and fallen and the best we can hope for is divine grace that cannot be earned. Are they right?
Well, conservative Presbyterians have been a part of my life for some years, like it or not. Technically, I am one now because I belong to a church that left the denomination it was in when I joined it and became part of a conservative Presbyterian denomination. I don’t have a fundamental problem with that — I think it was the best move available to them — but I do have a problem with Calvin’s version of “total depravity”. I think he went more than a little too far, and I have heard likewise from others in my church.
I do believe “that human beings are always flawed and fallen“. I think that that is an important part of us that we often overlook when we ask why things are the way they are now. Searching back through history and forward to the present, can we really say that we are now anything but “flawed and fallen”? Has technology, always full of promises, made our lives better? Or has it made us sick and demoralized? As in “flawed, fallen, and (now) diseased”.
I do not exactly believe that “the best we can hope for is divine grace that cannot be earned”. It’s the “best that we can hope for” part that I don’t care for. I would clarify, “We have an offer, a gift, of divine grace that cannot be earned, that is available to us if we accept its terms“. This phrasing asserts a required choice, and I don’t think Calvin would have been too pleased with that. (Other phrasings are possible; this is what I came up with on short notice. Suggestions welcome.)
So much for my beliefs. We need to be able to connect world events with causes, or perhaps even with a single cause. I propose that what we see now is the culmination of what happens when people lose all connection with where they came from and why they are here, making the assumption that we are left alone on this planet to work things out for ourselves. If in fact we are not designed to work things out for ourselves, but rather it is our desire to do things that way anyway, and if there are consequences for that choice, and those consequences correspond to what we are seeing now, it might be time to reconsider while there is any time left. The warning has been going out for millennia, but we are now well-positioned to destroy ourselves completely.
The threat of destruction appears to arise from technology, but we ourselves are extremely advanced technology! Instead of assuring ourselves (without evidence) that we are technology that somehow made itself (and perhaps needs for us to improve upon it), shouldn’t we — given what we now know about that technology — be asking “who did this and why?” That makes so much more sense. When is the last time you or anyone saw anything substantial and complex “make itself”? And why assume that we are left alone here? Why not consider the possibility that we are too stubborn to listen to what we have already been told, again and again. Why not ask and then listen for an answer?
The same prophecy that says we would reach this point of destroying ourselves also says we would not succeed. But while you still have time, might it not be worthwhile to retrace some steps, ask a few questions, listen, and even consider that there might be eternal truth buried somewhere in the flawed beliefs and teachings of our past?
Can we talk?
Matt. 24:4 And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you…
Matt. 24:21 “For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will again. 22 “And if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
I liked your post. You know, I have far too much 'religious' background (on my Mum's side) with a whole pile of Methodist ministers every which way in my heritage! There was even one family with 5 siblings - the 3 brothers all became Methodist Minsters and the 2 sisters both married Methodist Ministers! Wowsers!! :-D
I may not be 'religious' per se, but even I, when visiting my Mum recently, was looking through the old family Bible, and found myself reading Revelations, seemingly understanding it at long last. IT always seemed such a fantastical (scary) tale. But now it makes sense. Reading Matthew 24 makes sense as well.
The thing is, we've been foretold ALL of this, and not just from the Bible. There are plenty of manuscripts where this is foretold. We just have to go looking to find it. We've been told how the story goes, how it will unfold, and all we have to do is put a few pieces together. It's not hard. But most people won't put it all together...
Oh no, not Methodists! I'm not serious, but my mother's side of the family (southern) was Methodist (thanks to the circuit riders, apparently), with plenty of preachers, and my father's side (northeastern) was EUB, which later merged with them to form the United Methodists, so there was quite some exposure.
Your story sounds familiar. I think it's great that the Olivet Discourse and Revelation are m akingsense. They only can do so as we enter the era where we can match what they say with what the news is telling us, although it can be loads of work to hunt down the actual news amidst all of the propaganda! I have found some very interesting things in the Greek for Rev. 18:23 that the translators of the commonly-read Bible could not make sense of. Neither could I until 2020, although there were plenty of clues already of which I had plenty. But it took something enormously evil to get my attention.
What I particularly remember about my grandparents, apart from my paternal grandfather who was a special problem, was a strong, visible -- but also practical -- faith. It's hard to see much of a connection between that and the modern United Methodist church a mile up the road from where I live now.
My parents, however, born in 1923 and 24, were a product of that upbringing in combination with the horrors of World War II. Both were in the military during that war, my father a fighter pilot in the Army Air Core and my mother a Navy WAVE, and their lives seem to have been shaped more by that experience than by faith formation. My mother's first husband died in Germany weeks before the war ended there, and I can't say anything about the effects that war had upon fighter pilots, not in just a few words. My parents were determined fundamentalists by the time I was old enough to notice in the early 50's, and not evangelical that I could tell. My mother went on, as I approached my teens, to join with a fringe, fundamentalist Christian cult, while my father joined the mass exodus to the "unchurched".
Everywhere I look in that story I see problems that were leading to detachment from the kind of sanctified life that many of their closer ancestors led, and disappointment with and misunderstandings about God. I don't believe that this was in any way unique. It was the foundation on which the "boomers" were raised, and everything familiar to me from the 50's, rooted in tradition, was falling apart by the 60's and virtually gone by the end of the 70's. I followed in my parents footsteps, but eventually returned to the faith a little over eight years ago, in stages. I call myself "church hesitant" today, but I am even more hesitant to forsake assembling. I do find church "challenging", but I meet a good many others there that have similar understanding and feelings. That is encouraging.
It doesn't surprise me at all that inquisitive people today aren't considering the wisdom of the past when they seek to understand what is happening to our world. I would hope to share some of that wisdom that I received (it certainly isn't my own) using contemporary language and metaphor, and no I DON'T mean the gender-neutral/pursue your own truth stuff. But sharing KJV passages with younger people that didn't learn that archaic dialect when they were growing up does not strike me as terribly helpful (especially after working with a young adults group for a while and seeing one of them struggling to pronounce it, let alone understand it). For my own study, I have most recently been working with the NASB 2020 and the ESV for English, and with the NA20 NT and Rahif's LXX for Greek (both with morphological tagging -- I have a long way to go still with the verbs). Hebrew is out of reach for now.
Speaking of assembling, I need to go get dressed now for a small-group (well, medium, really) this morning. Thank you for sharing your story. There is much for us to sort through. Thankfully, we have help with that, and that is a subject I would like to broach here, but I don't yet know where to begin. It's not something to be attempted on one's own. What is?