The problems we are facing go much deeper than culture and politics and thus cannot be resolved with a mere changing of the guard. Our sinful hearts are the issue. They are the root. They are the source of all the rot and decay, misery and injustice, corruption and oppression we see in our world at present. Thus, if we are ever going to see any substantive transformation, it must begin here, at the source, and nothing less will do. God Himself must have mercy. Every other recourse be damned.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

The reality of human sin is one of the most obvious and indisputable facts of our world. It doesn’t require any special powers of perception in order to detect, nor does it take any particular context or set of experiences in order to perceive. Rather, sin makes its presence known the same way a pile of manure does: by its rancid odour and unpleasant effects. The stench in the nostrils, the burning in the eyes, the sudden confluence of flies, maggots, and other unsavoury creatures all work in concert to alert even the dullest of chumps that he is standing knee-deep in a pile of excrement.

Sin, in other words, is ubiquitous. And it doesn’t take a genius to see it.

At the same time, we also have to note that human beings have an impressive knack for denying reality — even when it’s overflowing their boots and running down their legs. And nowhere is this skill more evident than in our dogged evasion of our own depravity. As the firestorm of the last several years has demonstrated, we will use anything — or anyone — as a scapegoat, if it means shielding ourselves from a confrontation with our moral rot and decay. The determined effort to boil all of society’s ills down to one or two causes (i.e. “Trump!” or “the patriarchy!”) is simply evidence of this trend. Anything will suffice as long as it allows us to locate the source of the world’s evil “out there” instead of our own hearts.

Malcolm Muggeridge put it well when he said, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” This is true. We simply can’t bear to admit that we are sinners.

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