Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

• Romans 7:18-20

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

• Romans 3:23

Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

• Psalm 51:5

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

• Isaiah 64:6

Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,
    no one who does what is right and never sins.

• Ecclesiastes 7:20

“On the first point, Rousseau believed that human beings were born good but were corrupted by the experience of growing up in society. Because he believed that our natural instincts are good, his view of the state of nature was the direct opposite of Hobbes’: man in a state of nature is a ‘noble savage;’ according to Rousseau. But a child growing up in a so-called civilized society is taught to curb and frustrate his natural instincts, repress his true feelings, impose the artificial categories of conceptual thinking on his emotions, and pretend not to think and feel all sorts of things that he does think and feel, while pretending to think and feel all sorts of things that he does not think or feel. The result is alienation from his true self (the term ‘alienation’ was not coined until later, by Hegel), and all-pervading falsehood and hypocrisy. Thus civilization is the corrupter and destroyer of true values – not, as people seem always to assume, their creator and propagator.”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer.  He lived in Geneva when it was a republic.  He was a prolific womanizer.  He had his own ideas about God, thinking that God was good.  He accepted the first chapter of Genesis but totally rejected the third chapter.  As the quote above shows, he felt mankind was good, and that mankind was made bad by the nature of our society.

I have written about how your philosophy unravels when you reject foundational concepts.  When you reject the Fall of Man and the sin nature that each of us are born with, you are left with a chicken or egg situation.

How can society be inherently bad and man inherently good, if mankind created the society?

The parallel that many non-believers argue today is that how can this world be so broken if God is good and everything that God created was good?  The answer to that is in Genesis 3, where Rousseau skipped a chapter.  Mankind was created in God’s image.  Mankind had the ability to choose to be good, and at first they were good.  But to choose God freely, without restraint, there must be a choice of good and evil, and Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.  Then, as God curses man and woman for choosing unwisely, He also curses the earth with briars and thorns and such.  And as Paul says in Romans 7, we fight that sin nature our entire lives.  Note: Romans 8 speaks of God’s Grace and the wonderful plan God has for us who love Him.

But in Rousseau’s world, he chose that society, which seems to simply appear from nothing, is bad and society corrupts people.  He stood by this thought up to the point of his death.  Someone sent him a note stating that men are bad.  Rousseau’s reply was that men are bad, but man is good.  So, one man alone can live a pure sinless life?  Not hardly.

My wife and I argued about many things and the “innocence” of a baby was one of them.  She gave birth and she maintained that the child was innocent.  It had done no wrong.  If the child did something wrong, it was innocently done because they did not know any better.

My thought was that the child is born extremely self-centered.  The child screams until you feed the child.  The child screams until you change the diaper.  And I have seen a child who hates being touched scream until you put him in the crib.  And I have seen a child who screams from the crib until you pick him up (a different child).  And if you do not respond to the first demand for attention, the second demand will be louder with emphasis.  The hour of letting them scream until they fall asleep – screaming because they do not want to go to bed – those are gut wrenching times.

With all my evidence, my wife would explain that we simply have not taught them yet.

But that is the point.  When we teach them, we are teaching them a societal norm.  So, they are “rotten” (based on behavior until they learn to not be rotten) until they are taught proper societal norms, but if man is inherently good and society is what corrupts them, would that not be the other way around?

I rest my case.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.