"Revelling in the Total Depravity of Man

Rev. Roger Hawthorne, Grace Presbyterian Church, Milwaukee, WI

So I am peacefully minding my own business, trying to work the long crossword in the paper, over a cup of coffee, at the cafe when this guy comes up and belligerently demands to know how I could support the war in Iraq when the leaders of my own denomination have denounced it.

The fact that I work crosswords will tell you that I love words. This man's very attitude brought the word "belligerent" to mind. It means "full of war." From his attitude, I deduced that this man was ardently for peace, all the while evidencing anything except a peaceful attitude. In his own mind--and mine, he had just attacked me. The gloating smile on his face as he sneered that my own denomination's leaders had denounced that war said (1) he had concluded that means everyone in my denomination also has to oppose war, as though these unnamed officials spoke with the ruling authority of a Pope, and not even the Pope does that, and (2) he had just "smote" me with a nuclear bomb from which I could not recover.

Several thoughts came to mind.

One was the irony that so many people who favor peace are themselves so very war-like, sort of demanding that everyone else agree with them else they will beat us to death with their protest signs. That would be murder in other circumstances, but this would be murder advancing a holy cause, so it is acceptable.

Another wayward thought was, just who are these leaders of my denomination? Last time I checked, we were still saying that Jesus Christ alone is head of the Church. Admittedly, I might have missed it with my nose buried in a newspaper, but if Jesus has returned, the Book of Revelation says He will be doing so in the midst of one mightily god-awful war. I think the ruckus would have gotten my nose out of the paper.

Since it seemed unlikely Jesus has returned, I reckoned the man must be referring to certain executives within my denomination. I confess I don't spend a whole lot of attention on things they say, usually at most noting headlines or scanning their various letters to the masses, enough to pick up the gist of what they are pronouncing. I could have noted for my assailant that only solemn assemblies have the power to speak for the denomination and these individuals can only speak to the Church, not for the Church, but it is a distinction I doubt he would have appreciated, steeped as he was in a culture which thinks if the Pope sneezes, all Roman Catholic clergy rush to say "God bless you." I suspect Roman Catholics say some such if the Pope, or anyone else, sneezes, but I know a fair number of Roman Catholic clergy who hardly agree with each papal pronouncement. My denomination doesn't have a pope; we might have people who'd like to be the pope and with the pope's authority, but we don't have popes or bishops in the ordinary sense of the word "bishop." I myself was ordained as a bishop, but if we got into that, we'll be veering off course, other than to note that ultimately the Pope himself is a bishop--as I am a bishop.

But in this man's understanding, high officials in my denomination had uttered pearls of wisdom, and I was honor-bound to toe the official party line.

Of late, we have tended to neglect it, but our official party line is in our Book of Confessions, the theology and doctrines which mark us off as a distinct denomination. There are some powerful doctrines in the Book of Confessions--the absolute sovereignity of God, predestination to eternal grace.

There is one doctrine in our Book of Confessions which horrified me when I first encountered it, one I resisted for a considerable length of time, but the older I get, with each passing year that doctrine proves more and more comforting. I hasten to explain that I find it comforting because it does not stand alone! It is the doctrine of the total depravity of man. This is a situation where more inclusive language is demanded. The authors of that doctrine hardly meant that males alone were totally depraved. They thoroughly meant to include women. It is the doctrine of the total depravity of man--and woman--and child. In my own version what that doctrine means, it is this: if there is any way we can mess things up, we will, and we will mess things up every time and in every circumstance. It is simply the theological rendition of the apostle Paul's statement in his letter to the Romans: "the good I intend to do, I don't do; the evil I mean to avoid is exactly the thing I do." The doctrine of the total depravity simply says, even the good we intend is tainted through and through by sin.

What on earth, or in heaven, could possibly be comforting about that?

Just this: it means we don't have to achieve perfection. We aren't going to achieve perfection in any event, although we should at least try to--but we are not going to. And that's o.k. God's grace to us through Christ Jesus is more than sufficient. We live by grace and grace alone, not by our wonderfully moral and and spiritually pure achievements, which in fact are not moral, nor pure, just full of sin, as is everything else we do. Christ died for our sins, including those sins we commit in our very efforts to do good in the world!

The doctrine of the total depravity of man, and woman, is very comforting, because it forces me to God's grace through Jesus Christ. The doctrine has another happy outcome: it forces humility. Any good I might achieve is Christ at work in and through me; the glory and praise is His, not mine. I am totally depraved. In and of myself, I am incapable of achieving good, because my being full of sin is going to sabotage my efforts at good every time. But, praise be to God, good does happen in the world--and it is God at work, not us.

I have my reservations about the war in Iraq. I am an enlisted veteren of Vietnam; I know the American government lies to the American people and to the world. I know that our nation acts from self-interest, as do all nations, and we would hardly expect, or tolerate it, should our government act otherwise. Accordingly, we can be quite certain that no matter how high and lofty the goals our government sets forth, there is a considerable amount of self-interest involved, sort of, well, entirely as sin dominates everything we depraved people do. I could wish our government would achieve a moral perfection which has always eluded me. Something tells me that if I cannot achieve moral perfection, neither will any government, regardless who is president or which party controls Congress. I neither expect nor believe everything our government does is noble; the most I hope for is that somehow some good degree of good might come out of governmental actions.

Whether we are talking about you or me, or any individuals, or about nations, that is the most we can look for--that some degree of good might come to pass. I am skeptical about the cited reasons for our war in Iraq, just as I am skeptical about my real motives behind my own actions, but will good come out of it?

Then I look at the five year olds our troops freed from Iraqi prisons. Five year olds in prison? Would anyone dare claim freeing children from prison is not good?

I think of the men freed from Iraqi prisons, men who had been arrested and subjected to torture hours before our troops arrived and the jailors knew our troops were underway, but still they plied their craft of inflicting human misery.

And I think of the graves at those prisons, some containing bodies, hands bound behind their backs, killed just before our troops arrived. Forgive me for thinking the same fate awaiting those who were still alive when our troops arrived there, that they, too, would have been executed had our troops been delayed. I suspect those freed prisoners ardently believe some good has come out of this war! I suspect the theologian and would-be Fuhrer assassin Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have rejoiced had Allied troops arrived at his prison a few days earlier than they did--before the Nazis executed Bonhoeffer. We were too late for Bonhoeffer; we were not too late for the surviving prisoners from Iraqi prisons.

And I think of the Shiites in their gruesome pilgrimage to the tomb of their founder, a pilgrimage the Iraqi tyranny had denied them for 25 years, akin to a government forbidding Easter worship. A fair number of those Shiites were chanting anti-U.S. slogans--while on a pilgrimage made possible by the blood of too many young American men and women. But it is good that they can practice their religious faith openly. Would that we in this nation were half as enthusiastic about practicing our faith!

And I think of the women who will not be raped by official representatives of the Iraqi government, raped in front of their parents or husbands and children as a means to punish the man for some imagined slight against Saddam Hussein. I think of the men and women who will no longer be subjected to electric shock torture and having their ears cut off.

Did our government intend these consequences? Yes, to a degree we did. Were there other and rather base motives for waging war in Iraq? I am certain there were very self-seeking reasons behind the war; it would hardly have been otherwise! Humans compose governments, and humans are totally depraved.

Total depravity is an official and somewhat binding doctrine of my denomination. While I have to admit I did not read in depth whatever "officials" of my denomination had to say against the war, somehow I am confident that they made no allusion to the doctrine of total depravity. It's a doctrine which kind of embarrasses a goodly many clergy who believe, all evidence to the contrary, that we're perfectable.

But it is a comforting and humbling doctrine, forcing the question whether good has come out of the war in Iraq. Yes, some degree of good has come out of the war, to God's glory and to Whom alone belongs all praise.