Human Nature and Redemption Through Christ

Then she said, I suppose, human nature. She said, I said, you see, I'm actually a greater revolutionist than you are. I think that man needs a revolution, but he needs to have his heart changed as well.

In 1937, my wife and I lived in England, and at that time, there was a Professor Cyril E.M. Jode, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London. Professor Jode was such a witty enemy of the Christian gospel that a rector of the Church of England preached a sermon on God, the Devil, and Professor C.E.M. Jode. So you may guess where they placed him. Professor Jode's idea was a very simple one. He said there's nothing wrong with human nature that better environment, better opportunity, and better education would not take care of. That's what we need. But if we give the people a better environment, a better opportunity, and a better education, what we call sin will dwindle away.

Isn't it interesting to look back now? That was 1939, 37. Here we are 20 years later. We have the highest economic standard of all time. We could say the best environment, best opportunity, best education of all time, and yet our juvenile delinquency rate and crime rate are rising, not merely in proportion, in inverse proportion, but in a far greater proportion, in a far greater ratio. Now the scripture says, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and incurably wicked. So I propose this morning to talk to you about this question of human nature. What's wrong with it? What's the cure for it? I want you to feel free to ask questions at any time.

I was brought up between World War I and World War II, in what you might call the glowing period when people thought that the League of Nations, the first endeavor of its kind, would bring permanent peace to the world. I'm not saying that I believed that, but that was a popular belief at that time. I never thought I would live to realize that in my time such cruelties could be practiced man upon man. On the island of Palawan, our enemy took fifty of our American soldiers, captured three years before, we'd been working for them for three years, it wasn't in the heat of battle, in cold blood put them in an air-raid shelter, soaked them with kerosene, and burned them alive. Two of them escaped. One got tired when he was trying to swim the bay, and he came back and gave himself up. They crucified him and used him for bayonet practice. That happened half a mile from my tent on the island of Palawan.

If you say, well, that's pagan oriental, no, no, in Europe, in Christian Europe, in the center of Europe, they were flaying people, taking off their skin, using their skin for lampshades. So you can take it from me, World War II was a great shock to most liberals who thought that the world was improving, it was a great shock. I walked through the blitzed area of London after the war. I remember before the war times of that number, going down to St. Paul's Cathedral and walking through those little alleyways to Marshal Morgan and Scott's headquarters, a regular warren of ancient little streets, you can picture it for yourselves. When I went back, the whole thing was blitzed to the smithereens. Every building just crumbled rubble. But I saw something I'd never seen before. From the same place, in this cleared area, I could now see two famous London landmarks that I couldn't see previously. One was the Old Bailey criminal court, the world-famous criminal court in London, and on the top of the Old Bailey dome is the statue of blind justice, blindfolded, with the scales in one hand and the sword in the other, the art weight and the balances and found wanting, and the sword of punishment. But just by turning on one's heel you could see the cross on the top of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. I had never seen those two before like that. To my mind, it took World War II to bring those two into position in the thinking of the modern man.

Well, Professor Jode changed his mind. When the blitz hit London, he came to the conclusion that he was wrong. It takes an honest and a courageous man to admit that he was wrong. And Professor Jode decided that the theologians had an insight into human nature that scientists hadn't arrived at. That was that there is something wrong with human nature and that human history is nothing more than a history of the follies of mankind. If you read your history books, that's all it is. Oh, there's undoubtedly human progress mixed with it. But that strange instability between human sin and human progress, and if you read the daily newspaper, you get the same sort of thing. Sometimes you get tired of the headlines, somebody doing something that you disapprove of so strongly.

So this morning, I thought I'd like to talk to you on human nature. We'll ask a few questions and we'll try and give you a few answers. I'm going to speak rather in an unprepared way because I'd like to feel through the subject with you. So if you'd like to ask a question, all you need to do is raise your hand.

One hundred years ago, Charles Darwin published his book on the origin of species. It's a mixture of first-class scientific research and some of the wildest speculations possible. Most scientists today, including most evolutionists, have discarded many of the Darwinian ideas, although they hold to many of his main theses. For instance, the theory of the recapitulation of the embryo, that an unborn baby developed through the various stages of evolution, has now been set aside. I came back from Oxford, I made that statement at the University of Southern California, 1950, in a series of meetings. A student came up to me, he says, they haven't scrapped it here. I said, I'm sure you're wrong. He said, I'll show you my textbook tomorrow. So he brought it. Sure enough, there was a big paragraph with the black letter headline, the recapitulation of the embryo. I was amazed. I said, now I got the impression at Oxford that it had been given up or set aside. But I said, let me read this first. So I read through the long paragraph and the last sentence said, of course, this is only a theory and cannot be proved. The weight of evidence is not conclusive. So that's like saying, we're stating this theory, but we don't ask you to accept it. Some people choose to accept it, it's a matter of faith with them.

I often talk to tiny children. I like to ask them questions. One of the questions I ask them, I ask some small boy in the front seat, are you an animal? Most of them deny it very vehemently. But nevertheless, they are animals. Mr. Davis, here's an animal. Everyone I'm looking at is an animal. The word animal simply means a living thing. We belong to the class of animal. We're not minerals. We're certainly not vegetables. Sometimes I wonder, though, there are certain vegetable types that walk around, but they're vegetables. They just grow. They're not really animals. But I'm not saying this is not an insult, this is a compliment when I say this fine-looking class of animals here.

We've got to remember that men, mankind, is an animal. Like the higher mammals, the brutes with which we are associated, they develop an embryo as we do. Not quite the same way, but much the same way. The higher mammals give birth to their young as human mothers do. Lactation, feeding by milk, is the same. We eat food when we're weaned, so do animals. We grow physically. When we are born, we're perfect little creatures, but we get bigger, develop in various ways, so do animals. We have appetites for food, for drink, for many other things, so do animals. We sleep as animals do. I haven't met anyone yet that can do without sleep. As a matter of fact, I'm getting so worn out these days that I really look forward to getting into bed. Nothing like a good sound sleep. We procreate like animals. Sexuality was a gift of God, and he made us in two main classes, and it takes the cooperation to produce the young, and the parents to provide the home for the young. It's the same with animals.

We could mention so many things, but I think it's also fair to mention some of the differences. Thomas Huxley, grandfather of Professor Julian Huxley, and the man who coined the word agnostic, an unbeliever as far as the Christian faith is concerned, said, between man and the highest of the higher mammals, there's enormous gulf, a divergence immeasurable, practically infinite. That's something coming from an agnostic like Thomas Huxley. I'll say it again, an enormous gulf, a divergence immeasurable, practically infinite.

Now, there are some areas in which there are similarities, but you begin to see the divergence. For instance, animals are conscious. You stick a pin into a dog, he'll yelp. He's not a vegetable, he's an animal, he's got a nervous system. Animals have consciousness, we as humans have a self-consciousness. It's hard to explore the mind of an animal, but those who make that their business can tell you that a dog is more intelligent than a horse, and a cat is more intelligent than a dog, and so forth, they make their own comparisons. I think they have a good case for it. I was surprised when Roy Rogers told me that after observing horses he'd come to the conclusion they were a pretty dumb animal. He's very fond of horses, though.

We have a dog, the most affectionately stupid animal we've ever had in the house. All I need to do is go to the front door, put my hand backwards through the letterbox, rattle the letterbox, and Nugget from the back door comes charging through like an express train. I open the door, away he goes out to greet the postman, even though it's ten o'clock at night or seven in the morning, it doesn't matter. Rattle that letterbox, associate it with him and his mind, and off he goes. He's been disappointed too often now. We do it with every visitor that comes. We say, now why don't you see the dog, and the dog may be in the kitchen, sleeping peacefully. I go to the front door, put my hand in backwards through the letterbox, rattle the letterbox, then open the door, and he goes charging through. But now he only stops on the steps and comes right back again, looking very disappointed.

Well, it's hard to know what an animal really thinks. That's association of ideas. We trained him, I suppose, or rather he trained himself. In other words, he used to greet the postman every day, and they began to associate the idea of the rattling of the letterbox with the postman. Now you only have to rattle the letterbox and he goes charging to see the postman. He doesn't seem to be able to stop. He gets started, but he stops a little short of time. One time he used to go down the street, and one time, the first time I tried it on him, he went around a tree to see if the postman had gone up the tree.

Well, I as a human being can say I'm Irish by birth, but I've never known of a dog, I don't know any way we could test it, but I can't imagine a dog saying I'm an Irish terrier. They're not self-conscious, so far as we know. We have concepts where they have percepts. For instance, a dog will go to the door and look at the snow and sugar. But we have developed an idea of whiteness. We can't find any trace of that if animals have it. We have language where animals have utterance. A dog will yelp, a cat will meow, a horse will whinny. A parrot may repeat things, but the way it does it has no understanding of what it repeats. Mankind has developed language, communication by sound.

You say, oh, but just a moment, some animals have it. Yes, some animals have it, to a degree. For instance, mating calls, or hunting calls, but you couldn't dignify them by the name of language. So you can say that now you begin to see the divergence. Mankind has language where higher mammals have just utterance. They have reactions, we can make judgments. A cat sitting by a fire will start purring. We enjoy the warmth of the fire, but we laugh, and cats can't laugh. In fact, we're the only animal that laughs, did you know that? And not only that, we're the only animal that blows his nose.

You could say that animals are determined by their instincts, where we are self-determined. You say, what's the difference? Well, a balloon is at the mercy of the elements, a plane flies against the elements. A balloon cannot go against the wind, but a heavier-than-air machine can. That's the difference. We have instincts too. There are certain reactions that are automatic with us. That's why we have certain primitive temptations, but we're able to overcome them. Where animals can only do it through fear of punishment inflicted upon them, or some other restraint forced upon them. They don't make a choice in the matter, it's a question of... A dog, for instance, will not pick up... some dogs that are trained will not pick up meat on the street, because their masters trained them that way by putting something burning, burning pepper inside the meat to teach them not to eat meat off the street, so that nobody could poison them. So the dog remembers the burnt tongue he had for a while, and he won't touch meat on the streets. But his instinct is to eat the meat he finds. Now, we are the same, except that we can make a choice. We are self-determined, where they have only the question of instincts and training.

They have ignorance, where we have history. For instance, 1066 means a lot to an Englishman, 1776 means a lot to an American, 1849 means something to Californians, but as far as I know, our dog Nugget doesn't even know his grandfather's name, he has no history. We have science where they have providence. When you think of peanuts, what do you think of immediately in association? I think of two things, peanuts, squirrels on the one hand, and George Washington Carver on the other. What's the difference between the two? Well, the squirrels simply gathered nuts and hid them away, whereas George Washington Carver made plastics and all sorts of things. He was a scientist. You get the idea? Perhaps I shouldn't have said peanuts, I should have said nuts. Squirrels will pick up peanuts alright, but they don't have much opportunity to do so.

We have culture where they have barbarity. Mosquitoes go to concerts, but not for the same purposes that we do. Now we come to the three most important things. Animals are not immoral. You can talk about man-eating tigers, you can talk about killer lions and rogue elephants and so forth, you can use words that we use of criminals when you apply them to animals, but you can't carry the thing through very far. Animals are amoral, they have no morality. We have conscience.

I remember at the time of the depression in Ireland, I was walking along the street near my home on the Armour Road in Belfast, when I saw a big shaggy dog, a real shaggy dog jump up, a big Airedale terrier, jump up and steal a leg of lamb from a butcher's storefront. And the butcher ran out and he shook his fist at the retreating animal. He was angry, but he knew he could never overtake the dog, besides if he did overtake it, the leg of lamb wouldn't have been worth much. That same evening, believe it or not, on my way back from an errand for my mother, I saw a sort of scuffle, an unemployed man in shabby clothes grabbed a leg of lamb and ran like a hare with it. And the butcher came out and shook his fist in the direction of the retreating figure and he swore, and he says, they're just like animals, what's the difference, he says, dog steals and, ah, he walked back again. He said, well, there was a difference. Next morning, that man came back to the butcher with a leg of lamb. He went, in the meantime, to one of W. P. Nicholson's meetings and got converted and brought back the leg of lamb which they hadn't cooked yet. I never heard of a dog bringing back a leg of lamb. I've never heard of a dog repenting. We have conscience and we can repent.

Dogs are not religious, animals generally are not religious, so far as we know. It's true that dogs will worship the moon, but I don't think it's real worship, they just simply bay it, the bright light. The affection a dog has for its master is something like the worship that a human creature has for the creator, in a very small degree. But those who make a study of the subject are agreed that animals don't worship. There's no evidence of it. You don't find, for instance, you'll find among primitive tribes little traces of worship of various ceremonies and forms, but never among animals. We have worship and we have prayer. We praise God, we intercede for others, we petition God, we confess to God. We can't find traces of that in animals.

I mention these things just to provoke you to thought. They're by no means complete, they're by no means well stated, but I think you could agree with Thomas Huxley in saying that between man and the higher mammals there's a great gulf fixed. Yet listen to some of our over-enthusiastic ultra-evolutionists, you'd think that we just simply went up like this and one merging with the other. A great gulf fixed.

As we observe human nature, we find that man is capable of doing wrong. And he knows when he's doing wrong. I'm not going to deal with the exceptions. We excuse the insane, even criminally insane. We excuse little children, you can't try a child for murder, a tiny child. We're not going to talk about the exceptions, but we'll say there's something wrong with human nature. And not only does the Bible teach this, but J. Edgar Hoover teaches this too. He's quite agreed that there's something wrong with human nature. There's a tendency among us to do wrong, in the best of us. And the Bible has taught it in a simple way, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We know what the right thing is, and we do the wrong thing. If we don't know, we don't feel the same conviction, of course. But for instance, who could justify stealing? I used to think that the laws of God were arbitrarily fixed by the Creator, and there's a certain amount of resentment. Just as, for instance, you go to school and you find that school has a lot of regulations, your first inclination is to rebel against those regulations. You may not, but your first inclination is to. You don't like to be ordered around. And a lot of people think of the Ten Commandments as a sort of ordering around of the human race by the Creator, or by popular custom. But supposing everyone stole?

Supposing, for instance, I would like to speak to somebody and come back again and find this tape recorder gone. And I've borrowed it from Bill Jones. Now I'm in a mess to pay for Bill Jones. Well, if everyone stole, life would be absolutely impossible.

I remember meeting with a bunch of soldiers at the end of the war, and there was a great drop in chapel attendance just after VJ Day. Strange, as soon as the pressure of war was gone, morals dropped all around. There was less fear of losing life and so forth. And the men would sit around in a circle, yarning at night, bull sessions, talking about what they're going to do when they hit the States. Some of their ideas were highly immoral, maybe not criminal, but highly immoral. One fellow was advocating free love. Well, after all, why all these old conventions? Why not just have free love?

I said, listen, fellow, listen, if President Truman declared by proclamation that henceforth free love was permitted to the whole of the United States, a lot of people would think they'd enjoy themselves, but the country would go to pieces within one generation. If we know that broken homes, which rob children of parental authority and parental love and care, lead to so much juvenile delinquency, what do you think free love would do? Yet some of these fellows had the crazy idea, because the idea appealed to them. In other words, they wanted to satiate their desires; therefore, it would be a good idea.

If, for instance, it were not a law of God, thou shalt not commit adultery, we'd have to make it a law of men. It is a moral law among men. Adultery is not punishable by law, but if you read, for instance, in the Income Textbook, it says that a man may not put down his mistress as a dependent because it's against public policy. It's against public policy, and although, for instance, they don't enforce punishment of adultery, because it would be very hard to enforce, nevertheless, they would agree that it's wrong. It's completely wrong.

Take the question of lying. Supposing you couldn't depend on anyone's word. Somebody says, meet me at such and such time, you go there, and nobody's there. The Social Security promises your grandmother $63 a month, and they don't keep their word. Nobody keeps his word. Life would be impossible. That test of universality is a very good one. If you want to examine, friends, whether or not something you've got, a notion in your mind, is right, say, supposing everybody said it would be right, that will soon knock the props from underneath you.

So that, as far as law is concerned, the law shows us where we've fallen short. There's something wrong with human nature. The word sin actually means shortcoming. We fall short of the law of God, and these shortcomings bring punishment in themselves. The wages of sin is death. I used to think of God as a kind of super policeman handing out citations, as it were. You know, the way we noticed in Chicago when we were living there, every time the police had some fund drive or something, they handed out a lot of tickets. They seemed to have a goal or a quota to meet, or maybe the idea was, you give me a dollar towards the police fund for the poor children, and we'll drop this ticket type of idea. I don't know whether that was the case or not, but that's what the impression was among a lot of people. We mustn't think of the punishment of sin in that way. It's sin that brings its own punishment. The wages of sin is death.

I was a pay clerk in a large bakery concern for a long time. And I used to blow the whistle every Saturday morning and hand out the men's pay envelopes. They all said thank you, but they weren't really thanking me. If they didn't get it, there'd be an eruption. They earned it. And the wages of sin is death. Every time you do something wrong, you earn punishment, and it overtakes you sooner or later.

In Australia, 1957, the crazy teenage habit of playing chicken with automobiles had arrived. Australian teenagers have fewer automobiles, but there were enough of them to play the game. When I was in Brisbane, a young fellow driving down the wrong side of the street crashed into another man driving who didn't see him coming. This fellow was killed, and four children were left orphans. I heard it broadcast on the radio the other day when we were driving. Police were warning somebody had driven up the wrong ramp on the freeway. Well, they were after him as quick as they could. Why? Because a person who disregards the law is a menace to himself and to everybody else on the road.

I think I told you once before that Mrs. Roosevelt wrote to us when we were at Westover Field in Massachusetts during the war to ask us to look into the case of a very fine young man that lived on a farm next to their place at Hyde Park. She said she couldn't understand why he seemed to spend most of his time in the guardhouse. I made inquiries. I found he was a good soldier. In every possible line of inquiry, I got nothing but commendation for him, except one thing. He had one little weakness. Every time they gave him a weekend pass, he never came back. So he was serving his third six-month sentence. You can't run an army if people won't keep the law. So there's punishment for that.

The laws of health are equally obvious. School, where could we draw the line? So the wages of sin is death, and death has been passed upon all men because all have sinned.

At the Hollywood Christian Group on one occasion, a man came to me and said, tell me, Orr, how does God forgive sins anyway? That in Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins according to the riches of his grace. He said, what you're trying to tell me is that Jesus died for me. I said, yes. He said, I heard that since I was a child. How could anybody die for me? I said, why not? He said, the Los Angeles police were holding a man for murder. If I felt sorry for the fellow, would they let me take his place? He said, they would not. He said, how could Christ die for me?

Well, I said, that's the most difficult doctrine you could ask me to explain, the doctrine of the atonement. I could perhaps illustrate. I think in some other instances I may have given this illustration in this church before, but I think it's worth applying here. When I was seven years of age, I used to play ball out the back. Diagonally across the lot from our house was the house of a fellow called Albert Mann, and his house was definitely in the way as far as we were concerned. Every time we hit the ball hard, we should break a window. One day Mr. Mann rushed out and shook his fists. He said, the next one of you brats breaks my window, I'll break your ear. He said a lot more than that.