William Wilberforce 1779: Ch. II Sect. I

Ch. II Corruption of Human Nature.

Sect. I : Inadequate conceptions of the corruption of human nature

We have looked at the defective notions people have about the importance of Christianity. To understand Christianity, first of all we need to understand the corruption of human nature.

As I see it, most people in the upper classes who say they are Christians either overlook, deny or make excuses for human nature. Though to be fair they do admit two important things: a) that there are and always have been a lot of bad things happening in the world; b) that education does not make people good: even when people know the good they do not do it.

These two points are both so clearly true and obvious that one should accept the quote: “the majority are wicked”.

The problem is that this is not traced to its true source.

People who call themselves Christians use weasel words to hide the evil in human nature. They pretend people are really good: they pretend evil comes from outside, not inside the human mind.

Real Christianity says: We are fallen creatures; We are now biased against good and towards evil; We are sinners to the core.

Someone on another planet who simply read a list of human abilities would think that with such intelligent, creative and skillful inhabitants earth must be the ideal world.

What a shock they would get when they saw what we humans have really done – all the war, violence, oppression, injustice and every other kind of evil.

Look at the ancient world - not the barbaric nations, the classical civilisations where we applaud their achievements and their philosophy; not the lower classes but the elites. Even there their morals were absolutely disgusting. As Paul said: “Just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind”

Look somewhere else: to the new world untouched by these civilisations. Are these 'children of nature' pure and perfect. No! Accounts of the American Indians describe them as proud, indolent, cunning, selfish, horribly cruel and with a lust for vengeance of insatiable ferocity.

You may say: 'these heathens are indeed indefensible, but can we not base our view of human nature on nations which have been blessed with the light of revelation?' Here Christianity has set the moral bar far higher than ever it was in a pagan country – especially when it comes to treatment of the poor and weak. Here godly laws and customs restrain so much evil behaviour – you only have to look at the recent French Revolution to see how evil multiplies when these restraints are removed. Above all, we live under the dreadful expectation of standing before God on the Day of Judgement. Yet even with all this we experience the truth of old sayings like “power corrupts” in our society and we find that even people who talk about virtue do not practice it.

Here are some other arguments. a) Children have to be trained to be good – it does not come naturally. b) We all practice self deception. Christianity has often been disgraced by people who forget Jesus in their persecuting zeal. One can understand heathens who have such warped ideas of what God is like behaving badly, but Christians? It is a terrible thing that we who ...

“enjoy the full light of revelation, to whom God has vouchsafed such clear discoveries of what it concerns us to know of his being and attributes; who profess to believe that “in him we live, move and have our being”; that to him we owe all the comforts we here enjoy and the offers of eternal glory purchased for us by the atoning blood of his own Son; (thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift) that we, thus loaded with mercies should every one of us be continually chargeable with forgetting his authority and being ungrateful for his benefits; with slighting his gracious proposals or greeting them at best but heartlessly and coldly.” (Wilberforce's text)

This is the acid test for the depravity of human nature: what have the best and finest Christians discovered about themselves? They will confirm how desperately corrupt they know their inner human nature to be.

When you compare the potential of humans with the performance of the human race, excuses like “frailty” or “occasional lapses” of human nature just will not do. Human nature is bent. Our nobler powers are corrupted, we don't even want to know about God or know or obey his laws. Evil habits have made us slaves to sin, darkened our understanding, hardened our hearts and seared our consciences until we even glory in our slavery.

Some people are better, some worse – but no one is free.

So just like Newton's Laws, this principle of evil being ingrained in human nature is a matter of scientific observation of reality.

We also have this revealed to us in Scripture. From “the imagination of the human heart is evil from youth” in Genesis through so many possible quotes to Paul's lament in Romans “What a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body that is subject to death”. Other verses tell us that we need a radical change in our nature to become true Christians. Holy people give God all the credit for what they are.