The Heart of Man

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" - Jeremiah 17:9

"This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead." - Ecclesiastes 9:3

Whatever the cause, the effect is very clear: man is guilty of evil. This statement is essential to today's ministry. Man-kind no longer accepts the responsibility! We live in a nation of non-commitment, where marriage is not sacred, sex is not sacred, life is not sacred, and ultimately God is not revered.

I fear my culture, and myself, are completely giving ourselves to visual stimuli. Movies like Watchmen, a complete cesspool of sexual and violent imagery, inundate our theatres; YouTube brings us almost any event we want; in the wider Web, anything can be found in abundance. We give ourselves over to the senses and eradicate the intellect in an attempt to hide from God. Post-modernism, quasi-existentialism, are not new, but simply a more visible representation of man's heart as it has existed since the Fall. Sodom and Gomorrah, the Hebrews while Moses was on the mountain, the Hebrews throughout history between Judges and prophets, and on, give us dramatic presentations of sin.

Jesus says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,...teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you;" and Jesus instructed not only the salvation He offered, but the sin that man needed salvation from. Only a sinner needs a Savior, even atheism does not argue this; the real argument is that there is no sin, and thus no there are no sinners. Our generation, our time, is different in this aspect. C.S. Lewis writes it like this, " The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock" (emphasis added). The modern Christian must confront the modern Man where he is trying to escape to: morality (or the non-existence of it).

Satiating our stimuli can be said to be wrong at certain times, because we can point out that the horror, or for some the enjoyment, of a type of movie or scene is horrifying or enjoyable for a definable reason. That what we are engrossed by is a deviation from what we know to be "unnatural." William Hazlitt once said that "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." That is the comparison we function by; we see bodies torn up in gruesome horror films and are shocked, dismayed, frightened! - if we realize that this is a perversion and pain, or some are disgustingly satisfied, entertained, curious - if they have no reverence for the body. Either way, the mind is reacting to a clear deviation from Nature, it is obvious!

Even in morality, we find atheists who expect others to act a certain way. In American culture today we find more and more people stressing "tolerance" and "acceptance" and yet quickly change face and reject, even ridicule Christians. Lewis makes the point in Mere Christianity, "I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people." Post-modernists may claim that Christianity is intolerant, but whatever the content of the claim these are still claims of morality. The important point to make is that when we adhere to a moral ideal, we make our statement based on a Standard. When we bring that thought full-circle, it is simple to see that whatever we say in reference to right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, we say against a higher Standard that we are trying to come into line with. And if there is a Standard, there must be a Giver of the Standard. Man is evil; all have sinned whether it be against God's Law or his own; if there is any morality whatsoever, there must be a measure of it; because we judge based on a standard and measure each others' morality, there must be a Being above the world who set the standard. It is here that God takes His place as the Creator, the Giver, and the necessary Savior for fallen sinners in this fallen world.

In faith,
Jason