The depravity of man is at
once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most
intellectually resisted fact.
- Malcolm Muggeridge
“Dear
Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am.
Yours
truly,”
-
GK Chesterton
Most everywhere we look, we
are seeing the disintegration of American society. We then ask ourselves, what
do we do, what can we do to turn
things around? We then begin frenetically running around seeking to reform the
Department of Education, the Social Security Administration, the Federal Bureau
of Prisons, Immigration Customs Enforcement, US Customs and Border Patrol, the
Internal Revenue Service, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of
our government, and so on. Of course this means then that we, both Democrats
and Republicans, believe the primary source of our societal conflicts is an “it.”
Get “it” right and all will be well.
Really?
What if the source of our societal
maladies is not in our institutions but in our hearts? What if our institutions
are corrupt because we are corrupt? What if the fundamental problem is the evil
that lies in each of our hearts: evils such as greed and envy, hatred and
malice, pride and egoism, lawlessness and decadence, lust for power and
control.
Having largely discarded religious
faith, we jettisoned belief in a transcendent moral order and, with it, any
concept of evil (moral disorder). Well that is not entirely accurate: we
replaced religious belief with political ideals and dogmas, which we (Democrats
and Republicans) adhere to and defend with a fanaticism of a witch burning
Puritan.
Do you, O thou spiritual
believer in Christ, doubt me, here? Pray then answer me this: if I disagree
with your social agenda or choose to not vote for your favored candidate, are
you going to anathematize me? Your Facebook posts tell me that you will.
It seems to me that today even
Christians, who should know better, are wrestling more with “its” rather than
hearts, including their own, behaving as if societal reformation begins and
ends with political and institutional reformation and the election of the Right
Candidate.
Newsflash:
Even if you get “it” reformed and the “right” person elected, if people’s hearts
are not transformed, your activism is nothing more than an attempt to put a classier
suit on a corpse.
I believe that all political
and social problems are ultimately problems of individual virtue. Therefore,
all endeavors to reform society must start with the human heart and the fact that
evil exists in the world and within us all. If it is reformation we are after then
this is a reality that needs to inform and govern our political activism.
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2016
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