“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” -Jeremiah 17:9
That is not a very cheery verse of Scripture, I know. And not something I would normally expect to write about in the middle of our summer break when we are enjoying trips to the beach, picnics with family, and all sorts of light hearted and innocent pleasures. It represents, as well, one of the most despised of Christian doctrines, that of the natural depravity of man. It may be the most despised yet it remains the one doctrine for which there abounds the most evidence. Sickeningly so.
I returned from close to three weeks of relative isolation from the news media and events of the day to discover in our local newspaper fresh evidence of all the above. News item after news item detailed in astonishing fashion the foolishness of men and women, even in our own community, many of whom were members of our fashionable and educated elite. Some had simply destroyed their own reputations while others had utterly destroyed the lives of others. I am privileged only to read about such matters. My friend, a policeman, has to investigate first hand and witness the underside of our community in all its gruesomeness. I can see and feel the anguish and astonishment that turns over in his soul each time I meet him when he even starts to hint at the stories he cannot tell me.
I was reminded of the ever present nature of sin and how it seeps into the lives of all around us while traveling by plane to Seattle. I observed with some admiration a stewardess moving so confidently about our plane calmly directing the passengers, handling all the little issues arising in those cramped quarters, and handing out refreshments at 40,000 feet. She was our authority figure completely at ease with her responsibilities and master of her high-flown domain. Yet I could not help but marvel in over hearing her discussion with a co-worker as they sat awaiting landing as she poured forth her personal anguish over her own teen-age children who were not doing the right thing. How could one so confidant and capable in directing perfect strangers be so powerless to direct the lives of her own children? And how could I be so easily fooled in failing to see a life of quiet desperation that exists behind such a professional façade?
Yes, sin is everywhere, even crouching at our own heart’s door. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of how desperately he wanted to become a part of a traveling drama troupe while confined in Stalin’s prison camps even though it furthered Stalin’s evil propaganda. It was easy duty away from picks and wheel barrows. A year after failing to gain entrance to this traveling team, he learned that their truck had been hit by a train en route to another camp. “…I once more realized that the ways of the Lord are imponderable. That we ourselves never know what we want. And how many times in life I passionately sought what I did not need and been despondent over failures which were successes.”*
I see quite readily the huge fault lines in the lives of so many around me as they fall into ruin. Yet I must retain a healthy distrust of my own desires, both base and sublime, for I truly do not know what I really want. Jesus said I am nothing more than a sheep after all, one of God’s most helpless and mindless creatures. We are called to walk humbly with our God. Read your newspaper, talk to a policeman, or simply watch the well heeled lives around you stumble and fall. Together, they are a very ample source of humility to remind us all that there except for the grace of God go you and I. Nothing like a little portion of soberness in the middle of your summertime fun. Sorry.
*The Gulag Archipelago Two, Harper & Row, 1975, p. 501
