November 2020
How is it transmitted?
How serious is it? How can we
avoid catching it? Can you catch
it, or do we all have it from birth? I’m
talking, of course, about the disease of bad behaviour, the disorder that results
in the rejection of even loving authority – or what the Bible just calls ‘sin’.
The standard view in our culture is that this disease is
caught. That’s why we try to isolate
children from bad influences and to shield them from unhelpful friends. It’s why we think that a good environment
should produce good people. But the
older view was that this deadly disease is in us all at birth, even from
conception. That’s what the Bible
teaches: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother
conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)
What you believe about the source of human wrongdoing will
affect your response to the current deep disagreements over politics, race and
Coronavirus. If all people are born good
but some get corrupted then we will be angry at those who have allowed
themselves to be duped by ‘selfish politics’, ‘blind prejudice’ or ‘ridiculous
responses to the virus’. But if we are
all born sinners then my criticism of others is tempered by the humbling
awareness that I am made of the same fallible stuff and that I too need
correcting and saving from my own in-built foolishness.
If we think that children are born good then we will be
distressed when they don’t manage to ‘follow their dreams’ and ‘become whatever
they want to be’. But if we understand
that all of us are born with this deadly disease then we will be strangely
liberated from angst and shock when our children get things wrong. Instead we will understand that we must make
every effort to train them to do the right thing and we will long that somehow,
through someone, their future will be so much better than we, or they, deserve.
Sincerely
Graham Burrows
