But i don't mean to (and i know i can't) chime definitively. I'd rather chime adjectively, or, in other words, to slap a label on us humans-- Are we good or bad? Malevolent or beneficent? Nice or mean? Selfish or altruistic? Dark or light? Team Sauron or Team Gandalf?
National Public Radio has time each week that they devote to listener-generated essays titled "This I believe." Now, I don't think they would allow my essay on the air (NPR is given to a rather narrow worldview), but in spite of that, this i believe: both history and the Bible are crystal-clear in their testimony of humanity's evil.
Do I need to catalog the countless horrors humanity has wrought against man, and woman, and child? I suppose the objection could be made that these horrors were the result not of an inherent problem in humanity, but rather a learned evil. Bad conditions make good people bad. But whence came the bad conditions? From other people who were under other bad conditions?
I have also heard it said that evidence for people's basic goodness is in their doing heroic deeds in the face of the worst conditions. I would offer, as counter-evidence, tales of people doing the worst possible deeds in the best possible conditions, such as Enron's upper echelon stealing millions when they already had millions.
The Bible is even more clear than history in this regard. Let me sum up what I consider a major theme of the entire Bible in the verse from Isaiah:
"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."
Also, in the Bible we are faced with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. If humanity were intrinsically good, why would God murder His own Son? Why would Jesus be such a big deal in the Bible at all? I feel as though it is necessary to fully embrace an evil humanity if we are to fully embrace Christ. Otherwise, our Lord and Savior becomes something of a megalomaniacal fool, greatly deserving our pity, not our reverence and worship. I think C.S. Lewis makes this point somewhere, much better than I.
I know the above is quite incomplete and inadequately argued; but hey, this is a blog. No one would would publish a book I wrote! Others have written far more eloquently and completely on this very issue.
My point in all this (besides making a general case for a biblical doctrine) is basically the way we use the words "human," "inhumane," and "humanity." It is not uncommon to hear "the act was inhuman" or "the inhumane treatment of people" or "what happened to his/her humanity?"
That's backwards. We should be using those words the other way around. It is very human of a person to treat another person with malice. Genocides are humane. They are committed by humans, no? When warlords in the DRC commit horrendous atrocities; when politicians allow the deaths of unborn children into laws, and when people kill other people, they are doing this because they are human. They are acting completely within, not without, their humanity.
3 comments:
Hmm... Well, first, I would like to say that I agree with the main point that you are trying to get across. People are evil. They are evil in themselves, and not simply as a result of bad circumstances. I agree with both that thought and the notion that sadly it is de-emphasized or denied in our culture on a broad scale.
However, I'm not so sure that I agree with how you attempt to apply this insight to use of the word "human." Here, I'm afraid you're giving up a word to the dark side that belongs in the opposite column. (It should, however, be noted that some expressions use the word "human" in something close to the way you suggest; e.g. "he's only human.") Although at present, humans are in a fallen condition, the most basic meaning of humanity is being in the image of God. That's how humans are defined at our first appearance in the Bible. Once that is recognized, references to evil deeds as "inhumane" or "inhuman" begin to make sense. Evil is a distortion of what humanity is by divine design. Thus, one being evil is actually being less human, according to God's definition of humanity. Evildoers (read: all of us pre-Christ) are not reflecting what God is like, and thus not living up to the biblical definition (from Genesis) of what being human really entails. This is seen not only in creation, but also in redemption. When Pilate cries out, "Behold the man" in John 19:5, it seems that John is portraying Pilate as speaking better than he knew. In Christ, we see true humanity. So, I appreciate your point, but I'm not ready to give up the word "human" to the distortion of what God designed "human" to be.
I too was with you until the last paragraph. I think anonymous is right, when people commit the acts that you speak of they are being less than they were created to be... human. I think I want to hold on to the term human for now, let's not forget that God became human so there must be something intrinsically good in the design so to be "inhuman" would be to go against the design. I don't know, it's 1am, I'll read it again tomorrow.
Thanks for your responses, Anonymous and Chuck, and sorry for my slow response (I was away this weekend).
Let me start by saying that I completely agree with your objection to my last paragraph, Anonymous. But then let me proceed by arguing that my re-categorization ought to at least be considered because most humans do not consider themselves within that biblical definition of humanity: "made in the image of God."
If all of the world's people did hold to that view, that they were made in God's image, then I would have no need to include that final paragraph. But this is obviously not the case. People see themselves as gods, and thus to be human in their eyes is to sin again along the lines of Satan's temptation to Eve-- "you shall be like God."
Their goodness, therefore, is on their own terms, not God's. They have invented a new good and a new evil, and to be human (in their view) is to follow the lines of this artificial, imposed morality.
To highlight these facts, I think my final paragraph deserves some consideration. So to answer Chuck, there is indeed intrinsic good in what God has made (for He does not sin), but my objection lies with Westerners' artificial definition of what humans are.
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