The Human Condition: Are We Good by Nature?

“Man is essentially good but it is society that corrupts him.” This idea for many is inarguable but still for many others it evokes irony, confusion and doubt. We look around and see so much evil – from little lies to murders – yet there is also no denying that men at one time or another do acts of goodness to their fellows. But are these good deeds enough to warrant our thinking that we are good people through and through? In the ninth stanza of Steve Turner’s satirical poem, Creed,  concerning the modern mindset in the West, he says this:

 We believe that man is essentially good.

It’s only his behaviour that lets him down.

This is the fault of society.

Society is the fault of conditions.

Conditions are the fault of society.

Question: Who makes up society? Man. Who proposes those evil ideas of ethnic cleansing, lying about company profits, racial superiority and suchlike? Man. And I am immediately called to attention by the following profound statement which has been attributed to a research done many years ago by the Minnesota Crime Commission:

“Every child starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centred. He wants what he wants when he wants it – his feeding bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny him these once and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is in fact dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. Every child then is born delinquent. And if permitted to continue in this self-centred world of his infancy, given free reign over his impulsive actions, every child then would grow up a criminal; a thief, a rapist or a killer.”

The Christian scripture is even more to the point when it says that the human heart is wicked and only God can understand it (Jeremiah 17:9). One author, describing his visit to the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, where Adolf Hitler sought to exterminate the Jews, recalls seeing Hitler’s words that hung on a wall saying: “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality … We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence – imperious, relentless and cruel.” Quite ruthless!

Admittedly for many of us, Hitler is an exceptionally evil man. But we are also reminded of the tragedies in Kosovo and Rwanda, Sierra Leone (where even babies’ arms were chopped off) and Liberia; in these places the world witnessed unimaginable human cruelty – mass killings mingled with rape cases. But let us come home to Ghana and to less gruesome pictures of evil, albeit still symptoms of human depravity. Recent atmosphere in the political arena has given most Ghanaians reason to protest against the coarse verbiage that politicians use against each other. Most of these politicians are educated and they also know our culture’s sense of right and wrong but this has not stopped them from being insulting to each other. Further, let us look at some of the things which we consider normal in our society today: In business circles, a promise is not enough we need a contract. (We may argue that this is necessary because of forgetfulness but it is also often the case that we want to insure against any sneaky behaviour from the other party). We build houses and make doors but they are not enough, we need to lock and bolt them, and sometimes even employ security men in addition. When travelling on long journey buses and aeroplanes, we buy tickets but this is not enough, the tickets must be inspected and collected before we board. Making laws is not enough, we need the police to enforce them (and in some cases even the police need to be policed). All these things, although so familiar to us, are due to our sinful nature. We cannot trust each other. We need protection from one another. So going back to my initial observation that society consist of man, the following question becomes vital: if man makes up society and society corrupts man then where are we getting this idea that man is by nature good?

There is sometimes the idea that, “Oh if only we educate people and give them employable skills and also educate them in ethics and moral values, our social vices will be curbed.” But this misses the point! D. L. Moody, the famed American preacher (1837 – 1899) is credited with the humorous observation that if a man is stealing nuts and bolts from a railway track and you send him to school for formal education, at the end of his education he will steal the whole railway track. The point is this: man’s fundamental problem is not a lack of information or education on how to be ethical or moral. The problem is that our hearts are diseased, if not twisted. Thus, giving a man the best education that money can buy while his sick heart, with all its twisted desires, has not been healed is at best a joke. Fundamentally, we lack the power to do what we know to be right and to do this consistently.

Admittedly we sometimes do good deeds and also find others doing good in our society. Thus there is the question: how is this possible if we indeed are not good people by nature? Since man is the creature of an infinitely good and holy God, there are times when his ways and culture may mirror the beautiful and good attributes of God – such as mercy, charity, honesty, unity etc. But because man is fallen (resulting from the sin in the garden of Eden), all of our ways are tainted with sin. The Bible tells us that man was created in God’s image. Think of man’s condition as a mirror that has fallen and been cracked all over. The image you would see of yourself in such a mirror will be a distorted one. God’s image in man‘s current state is a distorted one . So yes, men do good deeds but this is not because they are naturally pure at heart.  We are like clocks that do not work. Yet even a clock that is not working will show the correct time twice a day, won’t it? But this does not mean it is keeping time. Thus our doing good deeds is not evidence that we are good (i.e. our clocks are functioning well). Rather we are dead spiritually. In theological verbiage, we are fallen – we are separated from God. It is often the case that even what seems like a pure gesture of goodness has some selfish goals – self validation, or emotional satisfaction – rather than for the sake of pure goodness. We often lack that sense of transcendent goodness (the goodness from God’s own person and character) – that something is good, whether or not I or those around me approve of it.

Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, who described to himself as the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) also explained our human struggle of knowing what is good and yet not being able to do it in these words:

“I know that good does not live in me – that is in my human nature. For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don’t do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do. … My inner being delights in the law of God. But I see a different law at work in my body – a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body. What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death? Thanks be to God who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Romans 7: 18-19, 22-25

In a day when the prevailing mindset says that man is good at heart but society is to blame for his flaws, the words of Jesus Christ come echoing through the centuries in sharp contrast: “… from your heart”, says Jesus Christ, “come the evil ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others…” Matthew 15:19. But Jesus comes to us not just with wise teachings and profound observations about human nature; he also gives us new hearts – hearts that beat after God’s own heart –  a new view of God, the world and ourselves and also through his Holy Spirit he gives us the enabling power to do what we know to be right. This is where Jesus Christ stands unrivalled among the founders of all the world religions. Rather than only pointing you to some enlightening teachings and deep truths, He, by his power transforms selfish lives into selfless ones. This is what Christians call the new birth (i.e. born again) – our natural desires and inclinations begin on a journey of transformation: Our desire for power turns into a love for humility and service. We begin to exalt commitment over feelings, forgiveness over anger, patience over shortcuts, confession over cover-up and sacrifice over comfort. And a powerful example is given us in the life of the one who called himself ‘the chief of sinners’; he once persecuted Jesus’ followers, but after having bowed to the Lordship of Jesus, Paul declares to the Church in Philipi that, “All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death, in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.” Philippians 3:10-11. Not only did he confess it, he lived it and it ultimately led to his execution.

In the Christian worldview being good or doing all the good things is not what will earn you a place in God’s eternal Kingdom. It is your acting faith in the finished work of Jesus on the Cross – that his death pays for your sins and where your life into the future manifests this belief. Indeed, when a Jew once came to Jesus saying “Good Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus responds saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” – Mark 10:17-18. So, if no one is good except God and the situation is such that only good people will be going to heaven then who really is qualified for heaven? No one! But thanks be to God who makes entry into heaven possible for us by means of our faith in Jesus Christ . This is why all the religions and belief systems where one has to do good things to earn a place in heaven miss the real issue. Man cannot be transcendently good on his own to please God. At best a man may be able to abide by his own definitions of goodness (and ofcourse these definitions often change to suit him) but this is not the goodness God seems interested in. Without Jesus Christ, there is really no hope for mankind in having our hearts changed and in pleasing God.

** All Bible quotations have been taken from the Good News Bible – Second edition © 1994.