Checking into a company’s website, a pastor friend noticed their statement of values: “We believe in the basic goodness of all people.”
He came away wondering what a person would have to do to convince himself of that misguided philosophy.
True, there is something inside us that wants to believe in the basic goodness of people. I suspect that’s part of our sinful nature, believing against all evidence to the contrary that we are all right and not in need of forgiveness or salvation. It’s a major strain in our sinful system to hold that all we need to do is release everyone from restraints and for preachers to quit laying guilt trips on us and all will be well. “Imagine there’s no religion,” said John Lennon. As though that were the problem.
Have you seen the news this morning? How many people were killed in your city last night by people who were resisting restraints and determining to have their own way?
Our Lord said, “If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children….” (Luke 11:13). You are evil, but you still get some things right. That’s what He said.
We are a mixture. Rat poison, they say, is 98 percent corn meal. But that 2 percent changes everything.
Insights on this subject popped up in two unlikely places: a western novel and a biography of a longshoreman philosophy from over a half-century ago.