Humanity: All Suck or Just Some Suck?

Recently, I questioned the viewpoint that man is "totally depraved".  Now that I have let you think about it for awhile, I figured I'd let you know what I think about it.  For those of you who like Bible verses to back things up, I apologize in advance.  I am certain that I can use verses to use to make either point.  (For example, the "all our good works are filthy rags" verse can be used to explain that humans are totally depraved, and the "humans were created in God's image" verse can be used to explain that it doesn't make sense for humans to be totally depraved.)  I'm sure that you can find places on the Internet that support either point of view, so I'm going to just talk about what I have thought about.

I guess we should first figure out what it even means to be totally depraved.  The word 'totally' seems fairly straight-forward, and my handy-dandy Internet dictionary tells me that 'depraved' means 'morally corrupt'.  So, if we are totally depraved, then we must be absolutely morally corrupt.  But what does that mean?  Does that mean that our morals are all completely wrong?  Or that each of us has some wrong morals?  Or that when making moral choices, we are never able to make a completely moral choice?

It really boils down to how we define things, doesn't it?

With that, I don't think that humans are all suck.  I think that as humans (Christians and non-Christians alike) strive for good, it is clear evidence of us being God's loved creation that is not completely bad.  And since all good things come from God, we can see how much God loves us by the good that results from our efforts.  However, I would say that probably everything we do gets tainted by the hurt in the world.  Whether it be pride or selfishness, I think that even our good deeds are rarely done without thoughts of the self instead of purely out of love.  I think this is where I can see humans pale in comparison to the perfect goodness that is God.

The reason that the doctrine of "total depravity" bothers me is that it seems like it turns into a very negative, self- and other-deprecating belief.  It's like the focus is turned from how beautiful and wonderful God is compared to us to having an excuse to say how horrible humans are.  This is subtly different, but it is different because one focuses on the good and the other focuses on the bad.

I think that it is important to take the doctrine of our imperfection in the more positive light for a few reasons.  First, focusing on the positive turns our attention to looking for and toward the good which is just way more helpful than focusing on the negative.  Second, I think that focusing on how awful humans are tends to promote hatred and stifle compassion.

So, there you have it.  Humanity: Just Some Suck.