Depravity

The first point – total depravity.  Now, Calvinist or not, an understanding of the human condition as completely and utterly withoutany righteousness in it becomes clear the moment you sit in an audience at a movie theatre and realize what people find funny.  I saw a preview for the new Sacha Baron Cohen film…I paid so little attention to it that I’ve forgotten the title already…just the other night.  there’s nothing like looking at the state of comedy to make you realize that people find morally reprehensible characters among the most amusing of all.  Perhaps it’s the innate human sense of pride – I am better than this – that causes us to laugh at those things which, as Christians, we understand are damning.  But then, we oh so conveniently forget things like Isaiah 58:1-2, which declares unequivocally “Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgement of their God”.  And lest I get prideful myself, claiming to take the moral high ground above others, I have the reminders in Romans 3: 10-12, or in Psalms 14: 2-3 and 53: 1-3 that I’m under the same thing.  Those verses read simply this: “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.  They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”  Yes, my fellow, utterly lost brothers and sisters.  Not one is righteous.  No one does good, not even one.  That’s why we need to get down on our knees and thank God for Jesus Christ, who was the only truly righteous man.  We have to thank the Lord that he loved us enough to allow Christ’s righteousness to supplant our own, because we can’t do a damn thing without Him.  Let me rephrase that – we can do a whole lot of damn(ing) things without Him.