Man, apart from God’s grace, is a sinner, not a saint.

To fail to recognize our own inherent corruption and the need for God’s saving grace leads to chaos and lawlessness.

In every generation man’s unconstrained impulse to have faith in his own righteousness and act upon that faith, reemerges. Today we see it in a radical Leftist agenda in America that is fueled by ambiguous intellectual movements which seek not just to find flaws in the American system that might be fixed, but which cry out for the system’s total destruction— to “tear the whole thing down.” Everything that came before must go, not just those ideas or structures that have rightly been judged as cruel or unjust. 

The forces that hold to the unconstrained vision, men and women who reject any need for divine aid or help and who really believe a new revolution can solve the problem, are once again at work. Trade-offs are unacceptable for the advocates of the unconstrained view. Only total solutions are acceptable. Perfection is within society’s grasp if we would only reach out and grab it. However, perfection is a high bar. Thus, any identifiable flaw in the fabric of society must inevitably spur on the next revolution. “Perpetual revolution” (not reformation) is the explicit doctrine of the foot soldier for the unconstrained vision of man.

The problem, of course, with this view is that it consciously rejects what it regards as the most detestable doctrines of the Christian faith: original sin and the desperate need for God’s grace.

The truth is the following three realities:

1. Man is a sinner, prone to war and wickedness, and mutual slaughter.
2. Any virtue in man is a gift from God. God the Father’s ultimate gift to mankind is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, who by His death and resurrection made it possible for the Father to send the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit to indwell every believer who accepts Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.
3. By living in the power of the Holy Spirit we are liberated from the world’s system, even to the point of welcoming our own persecution, which is to God’s glory and the glory of His Church. 

Adapted from article “Trying To Be Good Without God, Or Hoping “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”

 DECEMBER 3, 2021 by Anthony Costello http://www.patheos.com