RE: Depressing christian forum posts
November 14, 2017 at 11:46 pm
(This post was last modified: November 15, 2017 at 12:08 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
Most mainline Christian denominations affirm that everyone is a sinner, corrupted by sin because of the disobedience of the original parents. That can be easily misunderstood to mean that people are bad, especially with scary theological nomenclature like "total depravity". The doctrine is only about 'absolute' good in relation to the holiness of God. The doctrine is not about whether or not people can be 'relatively' good with respect to one another. No one I know denies that people can be courageous, temperate, charitable, kind, or possess any of many other virtues. According to the doctrine, Mankind was created good in an absolute sense, being in perfect harmony with our own nature as God intended. However, upon taking falsity and evil into ourselves that perfect harmony was broken. And yet people still retain the capacity to live relatively true and good lives. The Lord calls on us to be such. However, we cannot by our own efforts restore a perfect harmony with God except by embracing His Grace.
