Human Nature – Good or Bad? – Part 1
By Bill Jacobs
An article is taken from a transcript dated March 15, 2007.
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We're recording for LifeResource Ministries today. Our presentation is called Human Nature – Good or Bad? Part 1. We're going to do it all at one time, but we'll probably send it out in two parts.
You might wonder why we would discuss this subject – human nature. No matter what we believe about it, in the end, we will all still be human and act like humans, despite any action we might take to try to change that. So why would it be important to talk about it?
Well, I want to give you an example to make the point. There is currently on the market a parenting program that's designed for Christians. A lot of churches are buying into this program and using it. And the guy that designed the program – he and his wife – have become celebrities in Christian circles because of this program. This man that designed this program is an evangelical who believes in original sin – that babies come from the womb evil. Adam and Eve passed their evil nature to Cain and Abel, and we've all been inheriting this terrible human nature from our parents ever since. Because he believes this, it affects the way he thinks children should be brought up, of course.
For example, he says that infants should be allowed to cry alot and not be pampered. And he advises putting them on a strict feeding schedule right away so they start learning right from the beginning that they're not the center of the universe. Pampering spoils them – makes them more self-centered than they already are – and the parents' job is to get them out of that as soon as they can.
The whole program is colored with this idea that human nature is essentially evil. That would be a concrete example showing how what we believe about our origins and our nature affects, in a powerful way, how we might think about ourselves, about other people and about our kids.
So, what do you think? Do you think that we're evil from birth, selfish, self-centered? Does it spoil us if we're taken care of gently and promptly when we're infants? What do you think about that? Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that I was taught when I started going to church and went to college.
I want you to look at some scriptures with me. All of you here know all of these scriptures by heart. Let's go look at the first one: Jeremiah 17:9.
Jer. 17:9 – The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Romans 3:4 is another one to look at.
Rom. 3:4 – Certainly not, Paul says, indeed, let God be true, but every man a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and may overcome when you are judged.
We have a deceitful heart. It's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And every man is a liar. I'm not going to argue with these, by the way. But let's look at another one in Philippians 3:21.
Philp. 3:21 – Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself?
So, we have a vile body, we're told in the King James. And then in Romans 8, and verse 5, it says:
Rom. 8:5 – For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is emnity against God. For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
We've got carnal nature. We've got a vile body. We're proned to be deceitful and dishonest. And those were the kinds of things that we've thought a lot about over the years. I still believe all those things are true, by the way, but there are some unanswered questions then. If you use just scriptures like that to form your statement, or your belief about what humans are, there's been some things that have been left out of that picture. There were dots there, but we never connected them to the rest of the picture.
So, let's look at some other scriptures today and think about what they might mean. I'm going to tell you a story first. I think I heard about this just before, or while I was at, the Feast this year.
In September of 2006, passersby found a family murdered along an interstate highway on the Florida Gulf coast. A father, a mother and two boys, who they found out later were two and four-years-old, were lying on the ground lined up outside their vehicle when they were murdered. They believe, because of the way they were placed, that it was an execution-style murder, where the killer cold-bloodily shot them – they think, maybe, to take their car, or maybe for revenge of some sort. But we hear about these remorseless killings and we shake our heads at the evil that comes from human nature – the violence, the remorseless cold-heartedness, the willingness to inflict pain and terror on other people – and we think about all those scriptures that we just read, don't we?
But there was something else about that media report that passes by most folks. When we're deeply angry or afraid – like these people would have been – we tend to go into what we term low mode functioning. We talked about this when we had the series on Rupture and Repair. And the intellectual systems of the brain shut down, leaving only the deep core of the brain operational. So, when we're terrified, all pretense, all manipulation kind of goes out the window. And who we really are tends to come to the fore. In this execution-style murder, these victims knew they were about to die. They would have been terrified. And consequently, they would have been operating from their core just before they died. And it was in this mental state that the mother, lying on the ground, tried to shield her two sons from the perpetrators gun fire with her own body.
So what does that say about human nature? If you're at your base in a situation like that, and you use your body to try to protect your own children, what does that say about how God made us? Why is it so easy for us to understand what she did? We all understand that, don't we? It's not a mystery. We've just never connected that kind of behavior with human nature. But we all understand mother love, don't we? What we don't understand is how anybody could shoot four people – especially two little children – like that in cold blood. That's something we just can't figure out. And that says something really good about us, doesn't it, that we're like that.
I was working with a psychologist once – he was helping me with a case – and a man had done something that was very reprehensible. And I asked the psychologist why he thought he did it, and he said, “I don't know. If you hang in there, and he hangs in there long enough, he'll probably explain to you why he did it.” And he says, “When he does, it won't make any sense to you, and that'll be really good for you – that you don't understand it.” So, we're all like that with situations like this, aren't we? We don't get why people do those things – because we're not like that. We're not wired that way, it seems.
Let's look in 2 Timothy 3. This is the scripture that I want to connect to this story.
2 Tim. 3:1 – This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Well, that just sounds like carnality, doesn't it? But he says it's going to get worse at the end.
That word – that term – that phrase – without natural affection – that word in the Greek is astorgos. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. Probably not, however. It was translated without natural affection and it means...sort of a negative of love of kindred. It's natural to love your kindred. It especially pertains to love of parents for children and children for parents. That's called natural affection.
Now, if it's natural, isn't it part of your nature. It is, isn't it? It's what's expected, because that's how we are. So Paul is telling us that it's natural for parents to love their children and children to love their parents. So, is that bad? Is that evil? It isn't, is it? And yet that's just as human as it possibly can be, isn't it?
Now, let's think about that term that Paul used when he talked about our vile bodies. The word he used for body there is soma in the Greek. You know, if you have somatic complaints, that means there's something wrong with your body – your soma. Somatic has to do with body. He talked about our vile somas.
Let's read another passage. I want you to notice something about this before we talk more about soma. He says in 1 Corinthians 6:13:
1 Cor. 6:13 – Food is for the stomach and the stomach for foods. But God will destroy it and them. It's all just temporary. Foods and stomach are temporary. Now the body is not for sexual immorality.... That word is soma. The body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the soma. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your somas are members of Christ. Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one soma with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the soma, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own soma. Or do you not know that your soma is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, who you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your soma, and in your spirit, which are God's.
It seems to me, if we look at this, that our soma can be used to do vile things, or it can be used to do good things. You know, we can take our somas and go down and drive nails to fix the roof for a poor widow woman, or we can use it to commit fornication or adultery – or overeat, or overdrink, or whatever else.
The soma is neither righteous or unrighteous. It's how we use it, it seems. So why would it be called vile? Well, we're going to understand more about that in a minute. But I want you to think about that question.
Jeremiah 4:14. By the way, I'll give you a clue. That statement – where he talked about our vile bodies – is a really good example of prooftexting – where you take something out of the context and use it to say what you want it to say. You know, we've got this deceitful heart that's desperately wicked, don't we? That's what Jeremiah said. But he also said this:
Jer. 4:14 – Oh Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you? Now if something lodges within you..... If a splinter lodges in my finger, that's something that comes from outside of me and lodges in me, doesn't it? It's not a natural part of my body. In fact, my body – if I leave that alone – will push it right out of my finger. It'll fester up and it'll just eject it. Jeremiah 4:14: Oh Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you? So, even though we are proned to be deceitful and wicked, it's quite possible for us to do something about that. So, yes. The human heart is deceitful. Everybody has lied. But we're also told to stop being that way, and to change our thinking, and to stop thinking all those deceitful and self-centered thoughts.
Now, if there is something that we can change, is that part of our nature? I guess it would depend on how you define it. And I'm not going to go into all that right now, but it's something for us to, at least, entertain, isn't it? To think about. The Bible says it discerns the intents and thoughts of the heart. So that would be good exercise for us to think about.
I was talking to a lady the other day about her son, who can't control his impulses. And I explained to her...and this is psychological talk in the truest sense, but it also just really rings true for most people when they hear it. I explained to her that we all have a part of our mind that monitors our own behavior, don't we? I mean, we're all self aware, aren't we? And we're all keeping track of what we're doing and saying at all times. Well, kids that have impulse control problems don't have a very strong part like that. We call that, in psychology, the observing ego. And ego just means self. It doesn't mean arrogant. It just means yourself – a part of yourself that keeps tabs on yourself. I told her, “If you want to help him strengthen that, all you have to do is talk to it. Every time you see him doing something good – maybe not every time, but.... A few times a week, when you see him doing something where he's had to control himself, say, ‘How did you do that?' and you're talking right to that part of his brain that takes care of that stuff. It's not important for him to know. He may say, ‘I don't know,' five hundred times. And he may be telling the truth all five hundred times, but eventually, as he starts to mature and grow up, if you talk to that part of his brain and exercise it, it's going to start growing.” A lot of people think that's just a bunch of hokey stuff. It works! It's powerful! And yet, it's so easy to do, isn't it?
We do have different parts of our minds. Somebody said, “It's almost like our brain has psychic organs in it with different functions.” And sure enough! That's what they're discovering – that a lot of one kind of function happens in just one place in the brain.
Matthew 18, verse 1 through 6. Let's ask this question: Are children evil from birth? I don't know that this scripture answers that question, but I think it asks a really good question. It says:
Mt. 18:1-6 – At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” So here are the disciples having a carnality event, right? Selfishly arguing over who's going to to be the greatest, and desiring control – or maybe, coveting it, we should say. And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and sat him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say unto you, except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
So, if we're all born rotten, why would Jesus use a child as an example of what we should be like? In fact, did He not say that being converted is like becoming like a child?
So, we've seen an example of how people are going to get more carnal as the time passes, and how kids, apparently, become more carnal as they get older. Peter was once an innocent little child, but here he is at thirty years old arguing about who's going to be in control. And we all know how that works, don't we? We see innocent little children that don't have the knowledge of good and evil at first.
Ecc. 3:11 – He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. So, is that a bad thing – to have eternity in your hearts? Because God made us the way He wanted to make us, we're compelled by our nature to desire and seek that which is spiritual and eternal. That's why the kingdom is a carrot. That's why He put that in there – because He wanted us to desire what He has.
And you know, they're finding out now that the human brain is designed to seek answers to spiritual and eternal questions. There's a part of it that spends a lot of time working on that. That's the fifth question I've asked you: Is it natural...? Maybe you might want to know what all five of the questions were. So I'm going to back up and read them to you.
The first one was: Isn't it true that we have natural affection? Of course, Paul said that we do. And we saw the example of that woman protecting her children.
The second one had to with our body. Is it really all bad, or can it be used for good or bad – as a neutral thing?
The third one was that the human heart can change. And if we can change it, is that a part of human nature?
The fourth one: Are children evil from birth? Matthew 18. It would seem that there may be some aspects of humanity – human nature – that aren't fully developed at birth.
The fifth thing is that God has put eternity in our hearts. There's a desire for humans to live on. Rockefeller Center was the best he could do, on his own.
The sixth question I want to ask you has to do with Genesis 1:25. I'm going to read through verse 31 to you.
Gen. 1:25-31 – And God made the beasts of the earth according to its kind, and cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Would that be a bad thing? If we're made in God's image, would that be evil and terrible? No, it wouldn't. “...according to our likeness.” And we know that that isn't just talking about how God looks, don't we? We know that it has to do with a lot of the godly characteristics that God has and He's given to us – like the ability to love each other, to be relational, to have natural affection, to desire eternity. We were made to be like God. “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you. It shall be for food. And also to every beast of the field, to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which has life. I have given every green herb for food.” And it was so. And then God saw everything that He had mad, and indeed, it was very good. Now, there was something back there about procreating. Those people were having sex. They weren't picking kids off of trees. And God saw everything that He made, and indeed, it was very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day.
So if God made man in His image, how could he be evil? And after He created man and said that everything that He created was good, how could human nature be evil?
We talked about the different things that we have in our head. It would almost be like we have different organs in our brain for different mental functions. Let's talk about some of those for a minute. When we talk about human nature and how people work, let's just try to break that down just a bit. The first theory I'd like you to think about that we all have within us is what we could call body considerations. And I've got – I think – three of them here to talk to you about.
The first is biological drives. We all like to breathe. It's really bad when we can't. We like to stay alive by eating food. Not only does it taste good, but it's necessary. And it really hurts if we don't get food. We like to be in a very narrow temperature range. That feels good to us. We have a desire to be safe. When we get too far out on the edge of a cliff, we become anxious and tend to pull back. We have a strong desire naturally for sex. And that causes humans to continue on the earth. Some people think video games are also one of these drives, but I don't think it really is. Kids would like their parents to believe video games are biological. So, okay, we have those drives. And we also have the capacity in ourselves to avoid pain. Pain hurts, and so we tend to try to avoid that. It hurts to lack air, food, to be too hot or too cold, to be injured. And pain avoidance is a very big part of keeping us alive, isn't it? And that's all natural. It's all a part of us. We don't like it when we're in pain, but pain is a good thing for us because it tells us when something is wrong. Is that bad? No, that's really good, isn't it? The desire to have sex is also good. Without it we would all die out.
All of these drives need to be controlled in order to have a society though, don't they? When we're born...when we're about a year old, our parents start socializing us, right? Right away – teaching us we have to share. We can't hit. But the drives themselves are not evil. They're necessary for us to live, aren't they?
Now we know that all those things are going to go away eventually, aren't they – so that we won't have to be controlling those things later? But just because that's true, that doesn't mean they're bad, does it? I'm really proud that I like to keep breathing.
Let's ask that question about the “vile body” then. If you read that scripture and look at the word that Paul used that was translated vile, it's simply a word that refers to a lower state. He's saying, “...our inferior body.” This human body is inferior to the spiritual body we're going to have later.
The Bible also says that our soma is redeemable. It says that it is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that it can be a living sacrifice to God that is pleasing to Him. It is one of the masterpieces of His creation – at least that's what He told us there in Genesis – and that it's very good. So it's all in what we do with it, isn't it? Actually the body is good. It's not bad. And it's amazing how He's put these drives for self-preservation in us and how they all work. It's like He started it and set it in motion and He doesn't have to do any maintenance on that. We're carrying it from here. We're keeping ourselves alive, feeding ourselves. It's on auto-pilot. It's amazing what He did.
Look at this one. 1 Corinthians 12:23. Here's Paul talking about the members of the church as members of Christ's body. And he's making an analogy. He says:
1 Cor. 12:23 – No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. You know, people think the ministers are...you know, but actually he's saying, “No, we're all ministers. Each of us has a gift. We're supposed to use it to minister to other people.” So he's saying it's like a body. There are some parts of the body that are weaker – you know, like your pinkie finger, or your little toe. They might not be as dynamic as a pair of deep brown eyes or bright blue ones – something like that. And those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable.... Now, which parts of our bodies would we think to be that? ...upon these we bestow greater honor. And our unpresentable parts have greater modesty. He's talking about our sex organs here. But our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which naturally lacks it. The parts of our bodies that funny-looking and that we keep covered up all the time are the parts of our bodies that we use to produce more children who are made in God's image. He's given us these less-than-beautiful parts to serve a very special funtion – honorable, even. So even the parts of our bodies that are used for sex are not bad.
We have this body and it is self-preserving. And it can be used for good or bad. And it also is a self-healing body.
Several years ago I pulled a heavy toolbox out of the back of my little truck and I hurt my left shoulder. It was waking me up at night – you know, when I'd roll over. So he had an MRI done and he decided that it wasn't bad enough to do surgery on it – an honest surgeon. He could have said, “Yeah, you need surgery.” But he didn't. He sent me next to the physical therapist. I did that for several months. I thought that it would never go away. But one day – about three years later – I woke up and I thought, “Hey, my shoulder didn't hurt last night. It might not be as good as it used to be, but it doesn't hurt anymore.” I thought I was never going to get over that, but my body healed itself after all my efforts were done with it. It just took care of it by itself. Isn't that a really good thing? That's a really good thing. And that's a part of us, isn't it?
Let's look at other parts of us that have to do with our mind. I guess that doesn't have to do with our mind so much, except that all of that really is controlled by the brain. The brain controls all of the healing and everything. Besides the body, let's look at some social drives we have. We also have social drives besides physical drives. There's been a lot of research on this in the last few years. Brain mappers are learning a lot about how our brains work and how they're organized. It's all pointing toward two aspects of human nature – or the human mind.
We have a very powerful, natural drive to be connected to other people. We have a natural drive for deep connections to moral and spiritual meaning. And as you see our society become more and more fragmented – more and more isolated – you see less and less availability for people to learn about morality and spirituality. The churches are not strong in the neighborhoods anymore. Parents don't take their kids to churches as much as they used to. You also see a huge increase in mental illness among young people. They're thinking that that's a good part of the problem – the relational part and the moral-spiritual part. Isn't it interesting that people that don't even know if they believe in God or not are doing scientific experiments on the brain and they're coming to these conclusions. It's amazing.
We can see how our bodily drives are designed to perpetuate life, but we have these emotional drives – or social drives – that propel us to seek relationships and spiritual meaning in life. It's not just in our bodies, but it's in our nature that we're made in God's image. He's a relational God and He's a moral-spiritual being.
Paul used that word, astorgos, for that natural affection for parents and for children. That's a deeply instilled aspect of human nature – to love children and parents. When kids can't love their parents, because their parents are neglectful or hurtful to them – or frightening – it puts them in a terrible bind. Babies come already wired to make connections with mother and father. They need that connection. It's not that they just need the warmth and support, the food and the changing that comes from being able to make a connection with mother. They need the connection to develop their brain normally. So their job, in the first year of life, is to see mother and father as a secure base, so that they can learn to trust them. And from that foundation of their personality, they learn to trust other people and trust that life is going to be good. And when they start to develop enough brain power to think about God, it gets transferred to Him, too.
What do you think about the idea that kids are rotten to the core from birth and that they need to suffer hunger and dirty diapers so they can learn patience and humility? You know what that approach actually does to them? It causes them to be anxious about whether or not they will be taken care of and whether or not they can trust their parents. And then later in life they'll be anxious about whether God will take care of them, too. That's what that does.
It's also true that at nine months or a year they start crawling around on the floor and begin to separate themselves from their parents – mentally and spacially. Their job then is to differentiate. If they've built that foundation of trust and connection with mom and dad as a secure base, then they are able to go out and start exploring with that security they have. It's at that time that the part of the brain that controls self – the one we were just talking about – that that begins to develop. They can't control themselves in the first year of life very much. You can always find instances where towards one-years-old they can do that better, but... At that time they can hear the word, no, and they can begin to put the brakes on their own behavior. They have the ability to do that somewhere between nine months and a year-and-a-half. That's when they start to need boundaries to feel safe and secure. But not at first. The boundary they need is a blanket wrapped around them – to keep them out of trouble. After that, when they get to where they can move around and get in trouble, that's when their brain is ready to start hearing, “No,” and have a lot more boundaries set. It's quite amazing how God has done that.
So, we have physical pain to drive us to keep safe, and healthy, and fed, and comfortable. What do we have to propel us towards relationships and towards spirituality? Well, we have mind pain, don't we? Now what is that? Well, the technical term for it is anxiety. When we don't find the relationships – the connections we need in order to grow – we become anxious. That's why we have so many anxious little kids running around. We might call it lonely, but that feeling really is anxiety. And when our behavior does not connect to moral and spiritual meaning, we also become anxious. We might call it guilt. And it is, but guilt produces anxiety. So just like physical pain, this mind pain that people have is good. It tells them something is wrong. Something needs to change. And it can propel us to take care of our relationships better, or seek some out if we're lonely, and it can keep us from doing things that we know are wrong. That's what it's for.
Now, some people are so lonely, or they've done so much wrong, that they experience so much anxiety that they can't get rid of it, and it's wrecking their life. And sometimes, when we're very small, our parents send us the message that we're wrong, or bad, or never going to succeed. That's where that comes from. The ability to feel anxiety when we're doing something that's not good for us or other people is a really good thing, because that can motivate us to correct the problem.
I'm working right now with a boy who's eleven. He's in middle school. He's chewed his fingernails down to the bloody quick – all of them. He got failing grades last year. His story is that two years ago his mother died of breast cancer and his stepfather didn't want him. His stepfather was pretty abusive and his mother was neglectful. He and his brother are way behind in study skills and social skills and all that, because they never got taught anything. They live way out in the middle of nowhere. She was homeschooling them, supposedly, but she never really taught them anything. So they're way behind.
He learned how to survive in his environment by becoming really manipulative. I've been seeing him for several months now. It's not just me who has been seeing him. There's been a whole team of people at our clinic that have been working with him. He has a home coach that goes to his home. He's got a school coach that goes to school with him. His grandmother, whom he's living with, gets to do family therapy. He and his brother both have individual therapists. So he's up to A's and B's this year. And his fingernails are not bleeding any longer.
What exactly is it that I'm doing as his individual therapist? Well, what I'm doing is I'm providing a healing relational field for him. He comes in once a week, and we play games, and talk, and he does art. He knows that in that environment he can say or do anything and I'm not going to judge him, or look down on him, or correct him. Parents can't do that, because they have to hold boundaries. But in that little office, there's not too much trouble he can get into, so I don't have to impose a lot of rules. I think the only rule we have is “Nobody can get hurt and nothing can get broken.” After that, anything he wants to say or do, he can do, and I'm not going to put him down for it. So, he comes in week after week and I'm literally watching him heal himself, because his mind has the capacity in it, given by God, to overcome his grief and his anxiety that he's experiencing. You know, when you chew your fingernails down to the quick, that's anxiety. And I'm watching this happen as I play with him and just hold whatever he has in that space. That's a part of human nature that we don't think much about, but it's all good, isn't it. That's great – that we have the ability to do that given the right environment.
Okay, now you know I've left something out, haven't I? The Bible says that there's a lot of bad stuff about human nature. We read four scriptures related to that in the beginning. How does that fit in with all the good stuff?
(You've just heard a presentation called Human Nature – Good or Bad? Part 1. To understand the relationship between both the good and bad aspects of human nature, be sure to look for the second part of this presentation, which will be out in about a month.)
