Depravity–Do you too know it well?
Nov 19
Let me start this post by warning you–I’m sure this will be much longer than a typical blog post. I would like to flesh out a series of thoughts I’ve had recently. I would appreciate anyone’s feedback to what you read.
These thoughts have originated because of two separate events in my life recently. One deals with a friend who has an eating disorder. Another deals with some people I know who live within the homosexual lifestyle.
For awhile, I’ve been considering the the idea that we all have some issue of depravity within us. For some, it’s very noticeable and apparent, such as an eating disorder or addictive tendencies, and so those people often go through intervention for their issues. For others, the depravity is much more secretive, and oftentimes even more destructive. For example, if someone has a serious problem with gossiping, that destructive behavior can destroy an entire church and cause many people to never know Christ. Whereas the homosexual may only destroy their own life and the lives of his/her partners. My passive/agressive behavior or my bitterness may destroy everyone I come in contact with…so I must come to recognize the depravity in me and must assume that everyone else has severe depravity in some area(s) too. We must realize that our depravity, even if it is not so noticeable, is probably even more deadly than the ones we typically label as depravity (i.e. homosexuality, drug use, sex outside of marriage, murder, etc.).
I would like to probe this a little further as well and compare the depravitous behavior in both homosexuality and your typical eating disorder. I would like for you to see if these similarities are true for your own depravities as well:
Both the homosexual and the anorexic must not give in to their depravity. For the homosexual, to do so is to exist in a relationship that is not God-honoring and contrary to God’s will and intent. It is to participate with another person in a way that was only intended for the sacred relationship of marriage. This unnatural union can also lead to other perversions of God’s natural sexual law if more permission is given it. The same is true for the anorexic. If she gives in to her tendency, she will be harming the body God gave her–in a much severe way than cigarettes or alcohol. In fact, her life–God’s temple– can easily slip away from her if she continues giving way to this depravity. In addition, she must lie to herself and to those around her to keep the behavior continuing. Much deception surrounds such a person.
In both cases, someone who has chosen to give up fighting their depravity and give in to their urges loses the credibility necessary as a leader of God’s church. If I knew that my church leader was perfectly ok with her eating disorder, and felt it was not against God’s intent, and as a result would help others who are struggling in this area to give in as well…she must not be in leadership until this attitude is corrected. If my church leader was perfectly ok with his homosexual lifestyle, felt it was not against God’s intent, and as a result would help others who are struggling in this area to give in as well…he must not be in leadership until this attitude is corrected.
If, however, the anorexic recognizes that her behavior is not God-honoring and leads to sin (deceit and destroying of the body), I have no problem with her remaining in leadership if she is willing to keep her depravity under submission to God’s moral law. She will undoubtedly need help and intervention to make this a reality (God’s intervention and of those around her), and will probably struggle in this fight for the rest of her life, outside a miracle. But through Christ, she has the power in that struggle to keep her depravity submitted to God. The same is true of the homosexual. If he recognizes that his behavior is not God-honoring and leads to sin (sex outside the bounds of marriage), I have no problem with him remaining in leadership if he is willing to keep his depravity under submission to God’s moral law. He will undoubtedly need help and intervention to make this a reality (God’s intervention and of those around him), and will probably struggle in this fight for the rest of his life, outside a miracle. But through Christ, he has the power in that struggle to keep his depravity submitted to God.
How about your depravity? Let’s look at a typical guy’s struggle with sexual misconduct of all forms (pornography, lusting after women, having sex outside of marriage) and what we oftentimes label as a typical woman’s struggle (although I think we all struggle with this)–gossip. If you give into either of these depravitous behaviors, you ought not to be in leadership. If, however, you recognize that your depravity is not God-honoring and leads to all sorts of sin (sexual affairs, even murder in the life of King David, slander, lying, the destruction of God’s church, etc.), I have no problem with you remaining in leadership if you are willing to keep your depravity under the submission to God’s moral law. You will undoubtedly need help and intervention to make this a reality (God’s intervention and of those around you), and you will probably struggle in this fight for the rest of your life, outside a miracle. But through Christ, you have the power in that struggle to keep your depravity submitted to God.
All of this talk of depravity is usually far from my tongue, as I’m not a Calvinist and rather swing to the complete other side of free will (so far to the other side that some might label me a heretic!). But I see the reality of depravity in my life and in the lives of people around me: pornography, gluttony, gossip, homosexuality, anorexia, anxiety, addictions, etc. I guess I don’t believe in the Calvinist’s total depravity though–I believe our depravity doesn’t put us in a place unable to reach for or desire God. Instead, I believe our depravity causes us to cry out and seek God for help. Either that, or we choose to give in to our depravity and ignore God’s call for our lives.
The homosexual and the anorexic are not this way simply by choice. And I’m guessing your depravity isn’t there simply by choice. You may have been born with it or with its tendencies. Some of us deal with depravity that is much more difficult to live with than others. You wish it were no longer a struggle for you. You want desperately for it to be removed from your life–just like Paul asked God for 3 times. Yes, God has given the human race over to a depraved mind as a result of our sinfulness as a race, but there is hope through Jesus Christ. He is our only hope, and with the power of Christ and the strength of our brothers and sisters, when we are weak then we are strong. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Resist temptation. Submit to God. Confess and repent of your sin. Accept forgiveness. Work out your faith with fear and trembling. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Fight the good fight. Run the race. Don’t neglect being in fellowship with other believers. Pray for one another. Encourage each other. Put on the armor of God. Search the Scriptures. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you too shall be saved.
Very interesting topic. I think you’re on the right track to discovering some very deep truths on the nature of how God uses us to reach others.
I’m particularly keen on your views of ‘free will’, as you mentioned you were far from Calvinist and could be labeled heretical. I would love to hear back from you and have a discussion about that, as it happens to be an area that I have done years of research on. Let me know.
Hey Aaron, I half-jokingly said “heretical,” although I’m sure some would label it as such. Have you heard of open theism? I would be considered an open theist. Basically, I tend to believe that since God gives humans free will, God limits his ability to know what our future choices will be. While he knows every possibility of the future, he cannot by definition know what we will choose in the future, because our will is truly free. If he does know what I’ll do tomorrow…how can I but do what He knows I’ll do…am I really free then? I believe that God could have chosen to create a universe where he would know our future choices, but instead he chose to make it this way. That’s it in a nutshell…
That is fascinating. I’ve never come across that viewpoint before. I enjoy learning about others ideas, and seeing if they mesh with mine.
Personally, I wouldn’t consider that to be heresy. But take that with a grain of salt. I’m on the complete opposite side of the ‘free will’ spectrum. You could consider it an optimistic form of Universalism.
I believe that mankind has no free moral agency, and can in no way supersede God’s will for us.
However, I’m not close-minded about. I’m open enough to listen and study other options, compare it to scripture, and see if it holds water. But I have yet to come across anything Biblical to refute my stance.
That’s me in a nutshell.
I’m interested to hear what brought you to these ideas.
I would be delighted to continue this conversation over e-mail. Or if anyone else who reads this has questions, I’m happy to oblige.
Well, I’m not sure why Jesus would pray to God “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” if it always would be done on earth. It seems to me that the prayer would have gone like “Our Father who art in heaven and whose will is done on earth as it is in heaven” if that was the case. I submit that God’s will is more frequently not done on earth than it is done, and that is why we must pray.
(I fulfilled my lifetime of doctrinal discussions by the age of 17 so I’m not going any further with this.)
Hi Joel, thanks for responding. I’ll try not to drag you any further into this discussion, but please allow me to respond.
The Lord’s Prayer is a great example given to us by Jesus on how we ought to pray. It’s an outline, if you will, made up of different parts that we can incorporate into our own style. But not everything in this prayer is a request, or petition, to God. Verses 9 and 10 are statements, attributes of God. 11, 12, and 13 are requests for provision, forgiveness, and safety or protection.
But i do like to look at things from different angles. From what I can tell, you’re saying that Jesus was asking God for His will to be done on earth, because man’s will was, or is, the more abundant. I think you’ll agree that our own personal will is what gets us into trouble, and straying from the true path. But here’s what I don’t understand, if that’s the case. Why would Jesus be petitioning His Father to “Lead us not into temptation” if God is passive when it comes to our free will? Does Jesus really believe that God is ‘leading us into temptation’ and He’s asking God not to lead us that way?
I’m not expecting answers. I’m also not saying you are wrong. My point is only this: under closer scrutiny, there are some very difficult questions that arise. The truth that I’ve found in scriptures is for me, and your’s for you. We will only understand what we were meant to understand, by the spirit, for any particular moment in our lives.
By the way Tim, I’ve been thinking about open-theism, and i kinda like it. It’s different and creative. I bet Catholics can’t stand it!
I really want to respond to this in a detailed manner because I have been thinking about this very topic, but anything I could say would be inadequate, especially in this small space.
I’ll try with A few quick thoughts though:
– Sin is a powerful thing. We can’t forget how powerful and destructive it can be. So powerful that people can become blinded to what is wrong or right. Blinded to what is moral or immoral, godly or ungodly. Before people can begin to live God honoring lives they must first identify that they are sinful. Sometimes this is the hardest part of the battle because we are typically last to recognize our own sin. And once we begin to live with sin for so long we can even begin to believe that we are spirit filled Christians, not even noticing the heavy baggage of sin we are carrying around.
– I’ve been working with alot of people with both of these issues and wondering what is the root cause. If I try to separate myself from a religious point of view for a moment and strictly look at the situations from a counseling perspective, alot of other thoughts come up. Granted, I’m always finding myself back to the answer that sin is the cause and Christ is the answer, but sometimes people can become super religious and impractical. Here’s a pretty well written article on a somewhat related topic. Basically helped me to understand people better from more of a practical point of view: http://www.narth.com/docs/selfreinvention.html
– I agree with you that sin is sin, but the challenge is knowing when a self-distructive behavior is before the light of God or when it is hidden or simply unnoticed, either in our own lives or others. And what to do then???
So yes, we are all depraved…but…..Well it’s getting late and I could write about 10 more pages but I need to sleep.
“I agree with you that sin is sin, but the challenge is knowing when a self-distructive behavior is before the light of God or when it is hidden or simply unnoticed, either in our own lives or others.”
Lisa, couldn’t agree with you more here. Also, I see a difference between depravity and sin. I think we are born in a depraved state, but that in itself is not sinful. It’s how we respond to our depravity that is sinful. If we give in to it, we sin. That’s my viewpoint right now, but I’ll probably change it as time goes on…
I think it is always interesting that specific types of behaviors always come to the fore when the topic is depravity. Sex is one, and I personally have also used gossip as the offset the apparent male-centric focus on sex. Just focusing on the things that viscerally seem depraved can be a disservice, though, because the person who hasn’t been committing a sexual sin or something else that can be easily identified as depraved will be able to ignore those things that truly are depraved about him or her.
As you alluded to, our depravity originates in our selfish unwillingness (or, to the believer of total depravity, our complete inability) to give areas of our life over to God. This is definitely different than depravity originating from committing specific acts. I like that you mentioned anxiety as a sin because it is an example of a person’s unwillingness to give trust to God, yet it is not widely seen as a depraved act. While there are many things about me that God is working on, this one thing may be the most severe of my depravities that He has to address.
Onto open theism, I remember our discussions on what God really knows. My POV is obviously a bit different from yours, with my take being that foreknowledge is not the same to a being outside of time as it would be to a being inside time. So, if we knew ahead of time it would be predestination, but God knowing only makes it predetermined if God were limited to a human POV. What is apparently unchangeable to us might actually be changeable, but the only problem is that we can’t wrap our limited minds around the paradox in the concept. That’s just my two cents.
Hey Drew, you make a good point about how we tend to focus on specific types of behaviors when it comes to depravity. In other words, what I hear you saying is that we are depraved in so many more areas as well. Ahhhh! I feel despair entering in! 🙂
Actually, all the more need for a Savior.
Exactly!
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