I’m a Romantic. And no, I didn’t accidentally spell “romantic” with a capital R. That was intentional. It was intentional because as opposed to being addicted to falling in love and having a new girlfriend ever three months, being a Capital-R “Romantic” is to be one who is very focused on the beautiful, the exceptional, the sublime, the deep and mysterious and (above all) how I feel about them. I love music, poems, stories, paintings, and pictures that bring tears to my eyes, that make me laugh heartily, make me think deeply, that comfort me, or express the beauty around in special ways. I love the high sounding words and exclamation points of Longfellow and the absurdity of Poe and the way Hawthorne makes the otherworldly interweave and meld so well with the normal. I am a Romantic. I am fascinated with emotion and emoting and what makes people do it and why. These are all good things, and they all, whether negatively or positively, point to Christ and I am enriched by them and thank God for my unique perspective on them. But, for that matter, my Romantic soul is a human soul, and is thus a broken soul. It leads me to wallow oftentimes in melancholy, loneliness, envy, and rejection all out of a Romantic notion of the sublime beauty of it, the inescapable and gritty reality of it. And those emotions are real, no doubt. But they are by no means a faithful witness of who God is and what Christ has done.

God made my body, He has a right to what I do. God made my mind, He has a right to what I think. It only logically follows, then, that since God made my soul, He has a right to how I feel. All these rights are doubled when He shed his grace on me and bought back, with the very blood of His only, beloved, cherished son, a dead worthless wretch. Thus, to be depressed is to say that the life He gave, that he planned out, that he put together, that He is actively and directly engaged in directing and cleansing and redeeming with purpose and intentionality and all His infinite power and foresight is somehow not good enough. To succumb to loneliness is to say that His constant, perfect, unconditional, self-sacrificing, Putting-Christ-on-the-Cross-to-Have-Me love is not sufficient and I need another’s to complete it, or to complete who I am (sorry, Jerry McGuire). To envy is to say that what He has provided for me is not enough, and that He owes me, despite the fact that all I ever do is fail and sin, and yet he provides me with all that I need. To allow a grudge or bitter thoughts to lie in my heart and get settled in is to say the Supreme Law-Giver of the universe, the judge of everyone, the one who is completely and perfectly wise, omniscient, and morally perfect will not render a judgement about an issue in my life in the right way and that I must enact justice on my own terms, even if it’s the petty terms of just hating that person.

The aforementioned makes sense as an aphorism, (God made it, He owns it), but so often we want to feel the way we want to feel and to be told different is the most egregious thing we could hear. We see nothing wrong with harboring bitterness, envy, jealousy, anger, or even lust, just so long as we don’t “do anything” about them, as long as we’re not hurting anyone. And they are so very real. Abject heartache and mourning and joy are so very there. They aren’t tangible and yet we feel them all over. We may all acknowledge these are negative attributes, of course, but I would ask why we do. Is it simply because they make our lives less comfortable? Make us not “the best versions of ourselves”? That puts these things on par with bad diets and poor sleep routines. Could it be that these feelings, these various motions of the heart, are truly sinful (in the wrong proportions and allowed unchecked) in and of themselves, despite not having any tangible ill to society at large?

Just ask any woman how she would feel if she asked her boyfriend, upon seeing an extremely attractive young woman walk by, whether or not he thought she were attractive more attractive than herself. Of course he thinks she is, most everyone would acknowledge that she is, even the woman asking the question believes she is, but that doesn’t change our souls. It still hurts to hear such things from another, one who is supposed to be ours, one for whom we are jealous and expect to be jealous for us. And by the way, the aforementioned young man is now defending and ham-hawing his way around his obvious answer and beginning to justify himself. But why? Do we justify good things we do? Do we really feel that same involuntary, blood-rushing-up-to-our-face anxiety when we donate one hundred dollars to charity? No, we defend things we feel can be attacked, things we feel are wrong or inappropriate or hurtful. No one had to tell that young man not to ogle that young woman, and no one had to tell him it was wrong when he went ahead and did it anyway. For that matter, no one had to tell his girlfriend to feel slighted. Even if it doesn’t make sense to be slighted, (which it doesn’t in this case) she is and “she” invariably will be.

This is definition of total depravity as the reformers, namely John Calvin, understood it. If you think the idea that human beings are inherently sinful means that everyone is entirely hell-bent on being as much like Hitler as they possibly can and they are held back only by a thin veil of “society,” then you have grossly misunderstood it. Even if you think it means that every single person, if given the chance, would commit atrocious acts of violence and barbarity (the fact that that seems to be the case is neither here nor there), you misunderstand it as well. Total depravity is much more alarming of a reality. Total depravity chiefly consists in the fact that all human beings owe literally all that they are, mind, body, soul, time, possessions, life, and yes, their emotions, to God. But, instead of giving it back to Him we take it up ourselves. Those that claim that humans are indeed good, and that they can be good without God, ignore the great pride and conceit that they indulge in as they claim that; those that claim to be the purest and most virtuous most likely ignore the hidden place of the heart. Most people won’t rape someone walking down the street if there are no laws, but most people will undress them with their eyes with or without them. A great many may not even do that, but they may be very proud of themselves for not doing it. In other words, total depravity is the condition of the heart of mankind, the “human condition,” as its called, which inspires our feelings, thoughts, words, and deeds. Despite this, the vast majority of people will never kill anyone, rape anyone, burn anyone’s house down, or betray their families or nations. But it doesn’t really matter as far as our being good people or not is concerned. If we take the words of Jesus seriously, then we will believe that “out of the heart come evil thought, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft lying slander (ESV, Mark 15:19). If we take seriously the wisdom of Samuel, we will see what he saw when God revealed to him that man looks on the ourward appearance, but Yahweh looks on the heart (ESV, 1 Sam. 16:7). If we take seriously the wisdom of Solomon, we too will look inward to see that the heart of mankind is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. If we meditate on the words of the Prophet Isaiah we will see that when he spoke of the people of Israel, saying that “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags” (NIV, Isaish 64:6), he was speaking of our hearts, as well. It all boils down to whether or not we take God seriously, in reality. When we see Him as He presents Himself to us, as a real, feeling, living, active person, who has personal, individual love for us as far smaller, far weaker individuals, we begin to see that even the hidden motives of our hearts can be just as devastating as the overt actions of those we call “bad people” because a loving and holy God is offended and disobeyed in both instances.

So while I appreciate the difficulty and the power that some of our emotions, attractions, inclinations, and addictions can have over us, and that held properly our emotions and the ability to emote is a blessing, it is not worth acquiescing control of my life to them, or diminishing God’s holiness in regards to them by making excuses and whitewashing them. Our greatest joy, rather, will be what God himself foresaw, through the prophet Ezekiel, when he prophesied of the monumental, miraculous nature of what it means for a person to have Christ by having faith in Him:

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (ESV, Ezekiel 36:24-27).

So the heart of the human being is indeed evil, but by the blood of Christ alone God, by His own power and sovereignty, can freely without works of merit on our part, do the greatest of exchanges. Will one be instantly perfect and never fail again? Will everything go one’s way? Will the believer always have an abundance of possessions and goods? Absolutely not. The experience of too many, past and present, as well as the constant pointing of Christ to the reward to come should remind us that the gospel is not about making this life its best, but about giving us real life as a forerunner of the very best; allowing us now to dimly see Him, by faith and through the joyous battle of holiness, but then to stand by Him, face to face, for all time loving and exalting and praising Him.

So when we are tempted to think that our sin is only as egregious as it is tangibly damaging to others, let us not forget; all sin hurts us, and all sin hurts the very heart of God.