POLL (Is man basically GOOD or basically BAD)

[Danus]

Collecting responses for another post soon to come.

 

[theLords]

I voted basically bad.

Luke 18:19b
"...Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone."

Isaiah 64:6
"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away."

 

[handy]

Comment: I always tell my kids, if you're in trouble, go find someone and ask for help because most people are good and kind and will help you. And that is totally correct.

But, we also know from Scriptures, that no one is good except the Father and that man is a creature who is dead in sin. That's a bad thing.

 

[jasoncran]

while i agree that first part with dora, but our rightenouss is as filthy rags.

when adam and eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. that enable us to know the difference but with a tendency for evil over the nature of doing that which is right.

we dont have to teach children to lie, they will learn it and do it on their own.

tabula rasa. we are all born as a blank state and that we do have that sin nature, but we dont know how to sin and that is taught. we just have the propensity to sin.

 

[Mike]

I'm sure these verses haven't crossed anyone else's mind, so I thought I would share a gem with you. I just stumbled upon this, and it's actually very enlightening. ;)

Romans 3
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
11there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
13"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
14"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
15"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16ruin and misery mark their ways,
17and the way of peace they do not know."
18"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Seriously, assuming since this question is posed here on this board, the obvious answer is BAD. In the eye's of Perfect Goodness, we're filthy as rags.

Using secular standards, I believe most people (as Dora said) are good and want to help. And I stress most people. I believe people want to help others. I was laid off a few years back, and my company paid for a highly expensive transitional career search company. Their main thrust was to reach out to people; ask friends if you can use them as a reference to talk to their managers. The idea was that you ask the hiring manager to spend 10 minutes with you over coffee, not to talk about a job, but to ask for their advice in your career path - because people want to help other people. And you know what? It was true. I was never turned down in my request. This is an obscure example, I know, but I believe people generally want to help when they can.

 

[Danus]

Darn. I thought by now I'd have more votes. So, at the risk of this OP being buried, I'll go ahead and post my opinion.

The catalyst for my poll is a culmination of thoughts I've recently be pondering. Most notably the Calvin doctrine of the total depravity of man, but also a conversation I had, round about the same time, with a friend who was commenting on a recent crime in the area involving the rape of a child.

He said what we've all said; "What's wrong with people today? When I was a kid things where different. People where nicer, more compassionate." Well that got me thinking. Where they? Was it really any different then than now?

I grew up in a small town in Texas. I could ride my bike from one end to the other. My bike was often my trusty steed. I'd head out to keep the peace with my sixshooter. After all, I has the sheriff in town. It was the early 70's but it seemed more like the 50's where I was.

It did seem as if people watched out for one another more. You never heard of much in the way of unspeakable crime happening. We seemed insulated, or maybe we just didn't hear about it. However, I do recall the first brutal crime that got me thinking.

It was a murder in a town not far from us. A woman was found hacked to death with an ax in the laundry room of her home. If that was not shocking enough, turns out she was killed by another woman who was the wife of the choir director at the 1st Baptist church where both attended. The woman killed sang in the choir which was directed by the murdering woman's husband. I'm sure you can all figure out the motive on your own.

At the time I had no clue. I was maybe 10? I asked questions about it but the adults in my life would not tell me. No one wanted to talk about it. Shhhhhh! When I pressed for answers I was finally told that some people are just sick and do sick things. That became the standard answer for the behavior of many people who's sins spilled out into the public arena. They are just sick and do sick things.

When we moved to Dallas things really changed for me. Big city, new friends....way more sophisticated to worldly ways, and there I was standing at the threshold of adolescents in fount of it all.

Not wanting to be the hick kid, I immediately began to "fit in". The more I did, the more I began to see life a little differently. As I got older and more in tune with society, the less I held to this view that people where basically good. People where sick! more than just a few and with the speed of media growing ever faster around me I began to take on a more cynical view of what I was being told from the good Christian people who raised me, not just my parents. I became a modern day Holden Caulfield living in the 80's.

In 8th grade. We had to read the diary of Anne Frank and in it she said; "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." That's something my mother would say I thought. I wanted to believe it was true. I was raised to believe we lived in a polite Christian society, and all, but maybe a few, where basically good people. That idea was slowly evaporating before me. It totally disappeared by the time I started high school.

So, I rejected Christianity and embarrassed the world. Why not? I thought. After all I'd been lied to enough and if what they told me was a lie about the world then Christianity must be something similar. I equated the two in my teenage mind.

BUT...This is not a story about me. Years later I did embrace God for the same reasons I turned away, only then I realized the condition of the world...of man, was me, and I did not want to be what I'd grown to despise, my own sin.

Now I look back and I realize Anne Frank's thoughts where the wishful hope of a young girl who had not yet seen the full scope of the evil that exist in mans heart. That the idea that people are basically good needed an extreme qualifier to justify any truth to the claim. GOOD? Compared to what?

I don't teach my kids that people are basically good. I have two little girls. I tell them not to speak to strangers. I tell them not to go outside alone. These days kids don't walk to school or ride their bikes like they used to. They have to be chaperoned even on school outings, I don't miss one. Over protective? Perhaps.

I teach them that people are basically bad and some, maybe most, want to be good, but that some don't care, and still others will have you believe they want to be good when in fact it's rouse to be even worse.

Don't fear the world I say, but don't trust it. Like snakes the world is more afraid of you as a Christian then you need to be of them who are not. Who knows what scars I will leave them with this, but I hope to give them the truth in this matter at least for the effort of not wanting to leave them with the thought of a lie.

With that I want to share an article by R C Sproul on the total depravity of man
enjoy if you will. It's a sound media file.
Lecture 1, Radical Corruption from Total Depravity Teaching Series by Dr. R.C. Sproul from Ligonier Ministries


PS, Handy, thanks for you vote of Hope for man. I understand it.

 

[jasoncran]

danus that is well said.

i didnt see men as bein evil till i got away from my hometown and travelled in the army.