I am beginning this post on intuitive knowledge with a lengthy quotation from a book that was a best-seller back in 1973, “Whatever Happened to Sin,” By Dr. Karl Menninger:
On a sunny day in September 1972, a stern-faced, plainly dressed man could be seen standing still on a street corner in the busy Chicago Loop. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, he would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to the person nearest him, intone loudly the single word, “GUILTY!”
Then, without any change of expression, he would resume his stiff stance for a few moments before repeating the gesture. The, again, in the inexorable raising of his arm, the pointing, ant the solemn pronouncing of one single word, “GUILTY!”
The effect of this strange j’accuse pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again; then hurriedly continue on their ways.
One man, turning to another who was my informant, exclaimed: “But how did he know?”
No doubt many others had similar thoughts. How did he know, indeed?
“Guilty!” everyone guilty? Guilty of what? Guilty of over-parking? Guilty of lying? Guilty of arrogance and hubris toward the one God? Guilty of “borrowing” not to say embezzling? Guilty of unfaithfulness to a faithful wife? Guilty only of evil thoughts – or evil plans?
Guilty before whom? Is a police officer following? Did anyone see? Will they be likely to notice it? Does he know about it? But that isn’t technically illegal, is it?
I can make it up. I will give it back. I’ll apologize. I wasn’t myself when I did that. No one knows about it. But I’m going to quit. It’s a dangerous habit. I wouldn’t want the children to see me. How can I ever straighten it out? What’s done can’t be undone.
I quoted this portion of Menninger’s book to introduce one of the major facets of the evangelical thought process. Having discerned — from what ever source it comes — that we have an intuitive morality as a part of the common sense, it is also evident that we all fall short of the standard. None of us measures up to what we know we ought to be. Our failure to measure up to even our own moral standards is a source of guilt. And like the moral sense, this sense of guilt is universal.
The a man living in a tribal situation feels guilt just as surely as those commuters in Chicago. Because of this, Menninger’s question — Guilty before whom? — is quite profound.
The obvious answer to this question is a powerful argument for the existence of God. You can find it in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. But I am not going to repeat his argument here. Rather, I am going to be using the universality of human guilt to broach one of the foundational principles of Christian thought; sin.
The Bible defines sin as lawlessness. Specifically, we sin when we disobey the law of God, either the revealed law or the law written on our hearts (Which Paul refers to as the law of our mind). Christians see sin — or lawlessness — as the fundamental human problem.
A couple of my atheist friends over at Differhonestly.com have spoken of building a better world. But my question to them or anyone else who desires a better world is this: The human race has always desired a better world; so if we’re capable of producing one why haven’t we done it?
The New Atheist’s answer to this question is, religion. But I would ask, who created religion in the first place if not man? If not man, who created war, murder, rape and all of the other things we collectively cry out against? What kind of people would create or do such things? The answer, discomforting as it may be, is that people just like us create and do these things. And since we have done this is it unreasonable to suggest that something must be seriously wrong with us? We Christians answer the question; yes, there is something wrong with us. We call this thing, sin.
We also note that we human beings are predisposed towards sin. For example, we all appreciate the virtue of honesty and yet our children naturally lie. No one ever had to teach them to do it and no one had to teach us. And it does not end with lying. When we take an honest look at ourselves we observe an innate predisposition towards violation of the very moral code that we have as part of the common sense. We call this predisposition, original sin. We call the actions that eventually result from it, sin. And we understand all of this collectively as the human problem.
In our time it is fashionable to assume that the human problem is a lack of education. The assumption is that the Bible is wrong. We’re not sinners by nature and by choice, we just don’t know any better. And so, denying the reality of our true moral state we try to solve the human problem by educating away the sinfulness of our hearts. But it never seems to work.
I saw an example of this just yesterday. A member of the Nebraska Cornhusker football team was caught driving under the influence of alcohol. Since this was the second Cornhusker player to get into trouble in an alcohol related incident, coach Bill Callahan, felt compelled to defend his program. He did this by pointing out the team has an ongoing alcohol education program in place.
Coach Callahan’s response was typical of the sorts of things we see everyday in our culture. In fact, it is so common that no one even questions its wisdom. In our culture it is just assumed that the answer to out of wed-lock teenage pregnancy, STDs, and drug and alcohol abuse, etc., is eduction. But I would argue that the young man in question already knows everything Callahan’s alcohol education program is designed to teach him. His problem is that he chose not to heed the teaching he has received.
In the same way the average teenager today could write a book on sex. He or she has been learning about it since kindergarten. They know all about STDs too. If you don’t believe me, ask them. So, why do we have a problem? The liberal answer is that we need more and better sex education, more programs, more government funding, more free condoms.
If you want to be branded a raving fundamentalist fanatic, try suggesting that the education approach is a waste of time and money. If you take me up on this be prepared to be viewed as a part of the problem.
For the record, we Christians do believe education is important. But we understand that C.S. Lewis was right when he said, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” We also note that highly educated people still sin. This is true because the human problem is not an uneducated mind but a sinful heart.
Paul said it this way; “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We believe this is a self evident truth, part of the common sense, and that it is the source an observable universal sense of guilt among all human being. This being the case, our culture’s educationally based behavioral modification programs may exacerbate rather than solve the problems they aim to correct. In the final analysis they may even prove to be counterproductive because it is possible they will only succeed in producing a generation of clever devils.
Posted in Apologetics
