What's your story? Christians are story-tellers and story-dwellers - people who find their story in God's story of redemption. For this reason, every year, beginning at Advent, we revisit, remember, and rehearse the story of God in Christ.

Who are you? The story of God begins by revealing a profound and foundational truth about humankind. Humankind bears the "image of God" (Genesis 1:26-28). We are "mirrors of God" created to reflect God's glory.

If this is true a follow-up question naturally arises: What's our problem? If we bear God's image, why is there so much darkness, both around and within us? Why don't we live up to our potential? What's gone wrong with God's image-bearer?

The answer according to God's story is this: We have sinned - turned away from God - and the consequences to the image have been devastating. Having been made to reflect God's light we now dwell in darkness. We continue to possess the image of God but it no longer reflects God's glory or God's purpose.

Consequently, humankind is conflicted and full of deep and profound contradictions.

The Problem with People

On the one hand, humankind is capable of incredible accomplishments. We have explored the far reaches of space and the depths of the oceans. We have created remarkable machines and advanced technologies. We have experienced huge leaps in communication and information processing. We have developed cures for diseases that were thought to be incurable.

And yet, in spite of our greatest advances, human progress continues to be limited by human wickedness.

The twentieth century, the most advanced that the world has known in terms of scientific and technological progress [which was initially labeled "The Christian Century" by mainline Christians], saw, among other things, the terrible carnage of the First and Second World Wars, Stalin's in which 28 million died, the Holocaust, millions killed under Pol Pot in Cambodia, genocide in Rwanda, as well as a multitude of 'lesser' such as the loss of more than a million Armenians in Turkey, the killing of Muslims in Bosnia and Christians in the Moluccas, and so on.[1]

Our great and unmatched potential for good is rivaled only by our great potential for evil. Someone has written, "If man on one hand seems to be almost a god, reaching for the stars, on the other hand he seems to be a devil, capable of cruelty not found in the animal kingdom."

It is our greatness - our human nature, not our animal nature - that is the cause of so much pain. Some theologians and philosophers teach that sin is an expression of our lower or animal nature, but this fails to recognize what is so uniquely devastating about human sin. It is not our so-called "animal nature," but rather, our human greatness that does so much damage. It is not what we have in common with animals, but what distinguishes us from animals that wreaks so much havoc in the world. Sin is action, not of beastliness or of lower nature, but of our higher nature. "It is men and angels, not beasts, who rebel."[2]

Human sin proves the truth of the Latin phrase, corruptio optimi pessima, that is, "The corruption of the best things is the worst." Animals may eat other animals to survive, but they don't invent ingenious ways to torture their own kind. They do not invent nuclear weapons. They do not create technologies with the sole purpose to maximize and prolong human suffering, such as the cross. We are our own worst enemy. And it is our greatness that makes us so dangerous, deceitful, and destructive. Jung was right: "It is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind's greatest danger." Or, in the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Humankind is a paradox - a conflicted creature capable of great good and great evil. The Christian mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, said it best:

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!

Why has this happened to humankind - to God's image-bearer? The story of God answers this question in a variety of ways. For example, the author of Ecclesiastes writes, "See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes" (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Eugene Peterson's The Message translates this, "God made men and women upright and good; we're the ones who've made a mess of things." The New Century Version, written at a third-grade reading level, puts it most plainly: "God made people good, but they have found all kinds of ways to be bad." Our great potential for good has been squandered, leading to corruption and decay.

The Apostle Paul is the most succinct: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Having been created in the divine image to reflect God's glory, we have turned away from God. It is this fact - that we are image-bearers created for communion with God - that highlights the tragedy of sin. We have fallen from great heights, having been made for eternal glory.

The church's teaching on "original sin" and its corollary, the "total depravity" of humankind are attempts to summarize the bible's teaching on our human dilemma.

Total Depravity

Original sin finds expression in the total depravity of humankind. However, the phrase "total depravity" is often misunderstood and misleading. Some theologians have over-exaggerated the doctrine of total depravity. For example, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes,

Therefore let us hold this as an undoubted truth which no siege engines can shake: the mind of man has been so completely estranged from God's righteousness that it conceives, desires, and undertakes, only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure, and infamous. The heart is so steeped in the poison of sin that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench. But if some men occasionally make a show of good, their minds nevertheless ever remain enveloped in hypocrisy and deceitful craft, and their hearts bound by inner perversity. (II.v.l9)

The Westminster Confession follows in Calvin's footsteps, maintaining that humankind is "utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil."

This kind of language is self-defeating in its exaggeration. It fails to recognize that original sin is not truly original. The story of God begins, not with original sin and total depravity, but with God's original blessing and the goodness of God's image. This is too often forgotten. Furthermore, sin does not completely and utterly eliminate all traces of human goodness. Jesus himself clearly taught that humankind is sinful (e.g., Matthew 7:1) but he also recognized humankind's ability to discern good and evil in his parables and teachings.

Total depravity, in its most well-rounded sense, is not meant to communicate that every person is as bad as they can be, but that all are sinful and this sin extends to the whole of human nature. No aspect of humankind has been left pristine and untouched. Every faculty has been affected. We, who were intended for "being-in-communion" are now "being-in-sin." Made to be God-centered, we are self-centered. Having strayed from our original purpose, we find ourselves dead in sin and trespasses.

Total depravity reminds us that sin is not just a series of actions but the bent of our whole being. Sin is trivialized by reducing it to a laundry list of misdemeanors to bring to the confessional.

The Christian tradition holds that it is our being itself, not only our activities, that constitutes the problem. The biblical concept of sin is gravely trivialized if we reduce it to the "thoughts, words, and deeds" that liturgical prayers of confession habitually conjure up: that is, to namable, isolable incidents or traits, things that we have "done" or "left undone," which can be confessed according to various categories and hence ritually pardoned. Such "sins" may be external symptoms of sin (though in practice they are frequently foils by which we camouflage our more serious malaise); sin as such is something at the heart of us, so deeply ingrained in our persons that it is impossible to isolate, or even to describe, very satisfactorily.[3]

Instead, sin

refers to a deep-seated flaw in the manner in which we express our being over against these others. It concerns the preconception of self that we bring to every meeting with what is not the self. Sin means that what is wrong with us is wrong at the level of our self-image. It is there in our imagination before it ever forms itself into "thoughts, words, and deeds." It is a warped imagining of the self.[4]

We have failed to live up to our potential. That does not mean that everything we do is absolutely evil, but rather, it suggests we have "lost our story." The great Jewish rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, wrote "Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God." We have not lost our original essential humanity, but we have failed to develop into the fullness of being human.

Total depravity communicates not only that sin has saturated our entire being, but that we all are in the same boat. We are victims and victimizers. We are hurt people who hurt people. We are born into a corrupt system and we corrupt and infect the system. No one is exempt. We are all in this together. Alan Lewis has stated this truth well:

Original sin... the truth that humanity is connected. We are who we are, in righteousness, and fail to be who we are, in sin, together not apart...

Were sinfulness private, its guilt would be unendurable; and the inference that suffering directly penalizes guilt would be irrefutable. Rather, the concept of original sin lifts the weight of private culpability. It is not that we are not responsible for our own actions, but that the inevitability from which our moral and spiritual failure derives is a function not of our individuality but of our corporateness, the nature we share with others, not the decisions that set us apart. There is thus a solidarity in sin reflective of the solidarity of our creation. Made together in the image of the triune God, who lives not in isolation and separateness but in the fellowship and interdependence of divine community, we remain together in our disintegration and our guilt.[5]

Total depravity helpfully summarizes our problem when it is understood correctly. It does not mean that every person is as bad as they could be, but that all are sinful and this sin extends to the whole of our human nature. The adjective "total" applies to our (1) whole being, and (2) to all people.

The Human Paradox

Paradoxically, the truth is disturbing and incredibly liberating. It helps us make sense of the grand contradiction which is humankind - a contradiction we see all around us; a contradiction we feel in our own heart.

The paradox of humankind is great. "We are better than we know and worse than we think."[6] We are made in God's image. We have fallen far from our created purpose. 

We are a "magnificent ruin," a "beautiful disaster." Like a broken-down castle, the image still remains, but its glory has been dimmed by neglect and decay. Able to fly high, we have fallen far. The greater a person's potential or achievements, the greater the fall. We regularly see this in politicians, athletes, and celebrities. (Tiger Woods being just the latest but not the last. And one expression of our fallenness is our fascination and delight in the fall of others.) The fall is great because the glory is great.

The story of God is honest - painfully and gloriously honest, ringing true to our experience. In order to be true to the biblical story, we must teach both: Our dignity and depravity, our greatness and our misery. We can be incredibly helpful and incredibly hurtful. Life is wonderful and life is tragic. "The world is a place of both extraordinary beauty and hideous brutality. Life is an amazing gift and it is also, at least at times, a heavy burden."[7]

The good news and bad news must be held in creative tension. For this reason a common preacher's axiom is "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." It is necessary to speak of both truths, that of our dignity and depravity. Unless we are willing to admit our twisted bent, we cannot apply ourselves to seek transformation in the grace of Christ. We cannot transform ourselves - every faculty has been infected by sin. But we can trust God to heal us completely.

And we need not fear the truth, for though we are sinners, we are loved. God sees, hidden among the dirt and darkness, God's own image. Understanding the depth of our problem expands our understanding of the depth and breadth of God's love. Paradoxically, a recognition of our own sin can draw us into a deeper relationship with God as we discover that we are more sinful than we realized, but we are also more loved. In the words of Tim Keller, "You are worse off than you ever dared imagine, but God loves you more than you ever dared to hope."

This should also increase our compassion to others, since we are all in the same boat. The story reminds us that 

There's so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it hardly behooves any of us
to talk about the rest of us. (Joaquin Miller, 1841-1913)

The Christian story does not teach the nonsense of "I'm okay, you're okay," but rather, "I'm not okay, and you're not okay, but that's okay." For God's grace is greater than sin. You, God's image-bearer, are far too precious to be lost to the divine embrace.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2009