Chapters 15-18

Written by: Charles Colson

Presented by: David M. Hasz

The Trouble with Us

• What is the question that poses the challenge?

The Trouble with Us

• If God is both all-loving and all-powerful, why doesn't he use his power to stop both suffering and injustice?

Why oh WHY?

• God gave us a free will. The only moral restriction on Adam and Eve was that they don’t eat of the tree.

Why oh Why??

• We believe sin came from original sin in the garden - the responsibility for evil is on man.

Utopians??

• Other world views don’t place the responsibility for evil on man, but on

Whose responsible or WHAT?

• Environment - create a better environment and bammo you have human perfection

• This is utopianism.

William Buckley observes:

• Utopianism “inevitably…..brings on the death of liberty”

• The story of the Synanon.

What Utopianism did not deliver…

• When moral convictions and personal commitments are destroyed the result is not a great release of human goodness.

What it did deliver in Synanon

• The result is an individual who is controllable by those who form the family, church or village.

It takes a Village...

• All utopians, no matter how well intentioned, adopt this strategy in one form or another.

• The utopian myth lives on, Where?

HERE

• Admittedly there’s an enormous difference between a totalitarian state and America’s democratic republic, yet the same assumptions that led to the most destructive tyrannies of the twentieth century are at work in our own society. The only difference is the speed at which these ideas are being played out toward their inevitable consequences.

Why?

• Because we have forgotten original sin.

• We have forgotten we are responsible for the evil in the world.

Will it be too late?

• Will we realize our stupidity and change course before it is too late?

• What happened to original sin?

Rousseau

• He stated, “In its natural state, human nature is good, people become evil only when they are corrupted by society”

This led to….

• From Rousseau were born the politics of redemption, the idea that politics can be the means… of transforming human nature.

• The NEW MAN

Rousseau’s Teachings led to..

• The modern concept of revolution, which involves not just political rebellion to overthrow a particular ruler but also the wholesale destruction of an existing society in order to build a new, ideal society from scratch.

Rousseau’s philosophy in practice...

• For in practice, the utopian program of building a new and perfect society always means killing off those who resist, those who remain committed to the old ways, or those who belong to a class judged to be irredeemably corrupt ( The bourgeoisie, the kulaks, the Jews and the Christians)

Rousseau’s ideal state

• A state that turns out to be one that liberates its citizens from troubling personal obligations.

Rousseau the man..

• In his last book he grieved that he had “lacked the simple courage to bring up a family”

We are all Utopians now??

• Read page 178-179.

• Here is the irony: When we deny the Christian worldview and reject its teachings on sin and moral responsibility in favor of a more “enlightened” and “scientific” view of human nature,

If we do that what?

• we actually end up stripping people of their dignity and treating them as less than human.

How do we do it in the US

• Drugs, Alcohol, Crime, etc. etc.

• Citizens are offered no encouragement to assume moral or personal responsibility for their lives, thus their behavior is reinforced.

Welfare…

• Welfare has spawned an underclass where dysfunctional behavior and illegal behavior are the norm.

Clarence Darrow

• Already at the turn of the century, Clarence Darrow, the lawyer who achieved notoriety defending Darwinism in the Scopes trial, was portraying criminals as helpless victims of their circumstances.

• Sound familiar??

Victims

• The victim ploy can be attractive because it frees us from having to admit wrongdoing.

Western Law based on Responsibility

• For centuries, Western law codes and social morality were based on a high regard for individual responsibility!

Denial of Sin

• Denial of sin may appear to be a benign and comforting doctrine, but in the end, it is demeaning and destructive, for it denies the significance of our choices and actions.

The Paradox!

• Therein lies the greatest paradox of all attempts to deny the Fall: In denying sin and evil, we actually unleash its worst powers.