Slow Learners

 Foolishness Bound Up in the Heart

Sometimes we Christians find ourselves wondering at the foolishness on display in our society.  Things which to us are so self-evident and obvious appear  beyond the ken of the average Unbeliever.  Take something as basic as whether depravity and perverseness is native to the human soul, or not.  Christians, realizing that this is something about which we cannot be neutral, turn to the revelation of God to find that indeed we are all corrupt.

The doctrine of Total Depravity is often misunderstood.  The Scriptures do not teach that man is corrupt as can be, but that every part of the human being is to some extent corrupted by evil.  The "total" in Total Depravity refers to universality not degree.  The poison of sin is traceable in every part of our being.  In some times and cultures the poison is more advanced than in others.  The ante-diluvian civilization, for example, saw a maturation and flowering of evil everywhere: every intent and thought of the heart of men was only evil continually, we are told (Genesis 6:5).  But at other times the redemptive record reveals that Unbelieving cultures are a long way short of being filled up with evil (Genesis 15:16). 

This being so, it is expected that children, for example, will manifest aspects and manifestations of self-will, disobedience, contumacy, stubbornness, and selfishness from a very early age.  "I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me" says the Psalmist (Psalm 51: 5).  The Borg is already on-board the ship, as it were.
  Experience confirms the expectation in spades.  Every parent would have to be blinded by some very opaque glasses indeed not to see this from the very earliest days of their child's life.

Yet the general consensus is that children are born righteous and without sin and that it is society which corrupts them.  Man is good and righteous, innocent; it is the environment which makes him evil.  Thus it is generally held that crime is a social construct: if wages were higher, education more effective, and better television programming were to be had, crime would wither on the vine.  The reason folk spend all their life on the dole is not that they are lazy or indigent, but because "society" has not presented them with the right employment opportunity.

The child-as-innocent view has won the ideological and religious battle in our country now for over fifty years.  If society believes that children are innocent until made sinful by external conditioning parenting immediately becomes child-centric.  The challenge is to impose as little as possible, and to allow the innocence within to come forth and flourish.  Indulgence and permissiveness become the order of the day.

It is no surprise to Christians that the fruits will be forthcoming generations riven with narcissism, self-indulgence, sociopathic behaviours and dissipation.  So it has come to pass--and we marvel at how society is puzzled by this, as if it were unexpected.  It has led to what is now being called the "New Zealand paradox": high teenage injury, death rates, and national debt  in such a peaceful, ethical and developed nation.


Solving this paradox has become urgent.  Now there are claims that research is beginning to give us the answers--at last. 

Teaching self-control to children as young as 3 can set them up for healthy, wealthy and crime-free lives, researchers have found.  Physical health, alcohol and drug addictions, personal finances and criminal offending in adulthood can be "significantly predicted" by how a child acts up to 11 years old.
The findings, part of a study of 1000 children born in Dunedin in 1972-73, have been released today by chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman.

Really!  Apparently it is now statistically established that children who are taught self-control at a very young age are far more likely to be self-reliant, independent, productive and constructive members of adult society.  Self-control means a child being taught and trained by parents to deny one's immediate desires and preference, likes and dislikes, for a greater good which only the adult can see.  It is the very opposite of permissive parenting.

Professor Poulton said that for young children self-control meant the ability to control emotions and persevere in the face of challenges. "If you hold off that chocolate now, in half an hour you can actually have two chocolates, for example," he said.
"There is no time at which you can't be thinking in terms of inculcating or teaching self-control skills. They are skills that you can learn - that's the good thing about it."
The study also found a "gradient" of success with children who had more self-control enjoying more health and wealth in adulthood than others who had even a bit less self-control.

This sounds a lot like discipling children--aka, disciplining them--from the very earliest ages.  

Well, we are glad for small mercies.  Apparently the Dunedin longitudinal study is unique in the world.  We did not need all those millions of dollars and all those long years of labour to be expended to reach the conclusions.  We Christians knew from the outset what the results would be.  But, hey, it's never too late.

What are the chances that Unbelief will change its view on the intrinsic goodness of man?  Not good.   Unbelief has too much at stake to let that particular bit of its perverse religious architecture to go. 

"Foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, but the rod of correction drives it far from him" (Proverbs 22:15).  That acute observation has been around for over three thousand years.  But Unbelief tends to be blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to the really important things.