Total depravity is the doctrine that human nature is thoroughly corrupted and sinful as a result of the fall. This doesn’t sound like good news. But it changed my life.

It was a Sunday morning in 1996 when I heard the sermon. As a single man of 28, I had struggled with same-sex attraction for much of my life. For years, I had been acting out on that attraction.

And, I was a Christian. I knew from an early age that the Lord had chosen me to be his. As I struggled with a confusing and unwanted sexual desire that was nonetheless intoxicating, I gradually learned how to lie to others and to myself, simultaneously justifying and denying the reality of my sin. I lived a double life: I was the good Christian to everyone I wanted to impress, and I was the flirt and tempter to all the men I wanted to draw into my embrace.

With each passing year, the ease with which I justified my sinful behavior grew. Particularly when I felt lonely, unloved, unaffirmed, tired, or ashamed, I ran into the arms of lovers with less and less resistance. I was Pavlov’s dog, mouth watering for satisfaction each time I heard the ringing bell of my emotional emptiness.

Accruing Guilt and Shame

With the momentary pleasure of sin, however, came a mounting awareness of guilt and shame. They were the weeds that kept me from truly enjoying the flower of sin. No matter how often I pulled those weeds, new ones sprang up. Though I didn’t see them as such at the time, the guilt and shame I felt (and despised) were the Holy Spirit’s tools to teach me, through pain, that sin is not what I was created for.

Over the years, that guilt and shame compounded in my soul with interest. It was like accumulating credit card debt. I’d made a thousand small impulse purchases—and couldn’t ever pay off the balance. The burden felt increasingly crushing.

My theology was an uninformed and strange mixture of Arminianism and Christian perfectionism. I felt a certain love for God and from God. But the haunting awareness of my love of self—and of the pleasure sin brought me—undermined any assurance I had of God’s love for me. Surely, I felt, I need to somehow accumulate more “good” toward God than “bad.” But I had a sinking feeling, for I knew this was impossible.

Depravity Confronted

Back to the sermon. The preacher was James Boice, the church Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia. And the sermon was the first in a series through Romans. The first topic: total depravity.