Why are people irrational?

In what does the ruin of man consist? By sinning he has placed himself under a burden of guilt and has rendered himself liable to judgment. There is more than this, however. He has also become possessed of a fallen nature utterly and incorrigibly bad, with a heart "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). But even this is not all. Sin has acted like a subtle poison in his veins and has so stupefied and perverted his reason, will and judgment, that "there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God" (Rom. 3:11). Even in the presence of grace and the sweet pleadings of the Gospel men reject the Saviour provided, and with perverse unanimity prefer the empty follies of the world. Like the "great herd of swine" they rush madly to destruction, and hence the only hope is a sovereign interposition of God.

For instance, the heathen often are spoken of as groping after the light and unable to find it; and it is looked upon as their misfortune, not their sin, because they are bound down by circumstances too hard for them. Now that is not really so. The truth is, "There is none that seeketh after God." God's account of it in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is a totally different one. God states there by His apostle that, "When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." That was the beginning of heathenism. It is man,not seeking God, but endeavoring to escape from God, and has escaped, so to speak, into the darkness. The darkness is the darkness of resisted light, not the absence of light. The light has not been absent. The very character of the darkness shows that it has not.

I suppose this is the reason why the Son is designated “The Word.” The word is that by which God makes Himself manifest, it is the means by which He gives expression to His mind and will. Creation brought to light His power and divinity, and this was the work of the Son, who is not only God but the Word of God. We read in the beginning of the gospel of John, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” The heavens and the earth, as I have been saying, brought to light His power and divinity; but this was not all that could be brought to light, there was still His nature to be made known. But the ray of light that men possessed was very quickly given up. They did not like to retain God in their knowledge; He was not the kind of being that their hearts desired; they would have preferred a god with passions like their own. They had known the true God, but they glorified Him not as God neither were thankful. It is a great favour bestowed upon the creature, to be given a little light as to the blessed God. It is that which lifts man above the level of the beast. And how thankful the creature should be for that light! Where the light is appreciated thanks will be given to God for it, and where no thanks is rendered to Him it is a sure sign that the light is despised, and will soon be given up. “Neither were thankful.” What a dreadful condition of mind and heart. But it only shows that from the beginning man desired not the knowledge of God. The language of the heart of man from the moment that sin entered the world has been, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways” (Job 21:14).

We get in this first chapter of Romans the downgrade of the sons of Noah. The cause of their departure is given—pride and lust. They became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. The tradition of their fathers, (though the family that God had so mercifully and miraculously preserved through the flood, still lived in their midst), was too antiquated for these wise men, and the testimony of the heavens was absolutely rejected. Their wisdom was their folly. And what lay deep down at the foundation of all their departure was the fact that they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools. In their madness they drew the curtain of wilful unbelief across the window of their hearts, and shut out the light of creation. There was now nothing to hinder their mad career toward the sink of corruption. Enticed by the devil, and deceived by the pride of their own hearts, they ran down the slippery steep of unbridled lust into the quagmire of bestial pollution, and wallowed wantonly in the slime of their horrible degradation. In few words their swift revoking descent is sketched by the pen of the Spirit of God. It is the course of man without divine support roaming in the midnight of his wilful ignorance, the sport of the devil, and the willing slave of his own corrupt fallen nature. Without divine support man comes out according to what he is in his own depraved heart; and who could sound that bottomless abyss of evil but the omniscient God? And if men dishonour God they cannot rightly complain if He withdraws His support, and leaves them to dishonour themselves. Men think that they are very well able to take care of themselves, and that they can do without God, but man left to himself becomes a prey to the powers of darkness and a slave to his degraded passions, and the hell that he thus creates within his own breast makes him the most miserable being in the universe. No intelligent creature is self-supporting. God is indispensable to the happiness of every creature set in relationship with Himself; and all who are maintained in their primitive condition are maintained by the power of God; and even unbelieving sinners, if in contact with the light of God in His redeemed people, are greatly influenced for good, and escape many of the grosser evils to which those less favoured are exposed. How blessed it is to be brought into His marvellous light! Well may our hearts rise up continually in praise and thanksgiving to the God of all grace and love for the heavenly light with which He has gladdened our vision.

In the creation the Gentiles “knew God.” This is indeed not the conscious, vital knowledge derived only from new birth, but the distinct evidential knowledge that renders their guilt inexcusable. They wilfully refused to give God His own place: no pulsebeat of thankfulness would they have toward Him. They would receive His blessings, cut off the very hand that gave them, and proceed to pervert them to the full. The inward reasonings of their minds, because bent on following their own wills, dragged them into folly; and their hearts, wilfully without understanding, were colored by the darkness they chose. Moreover, the very reasonings that led them to such darkness they professed to be wisdom! — a profession which the more thoroughly declared them fools. This was their development — or evolution, if you will — “they became fools.”

The next ground is not the knowable but the positively known. "Because, having known God, they glorified him not as God, nor were thankful, but became vain in their reasonings, and their unintelligent heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of an image† of corruptible man and birds and quadrupeds and reptiles." (Ver. 21-23.) A traditional knowledge of God is in question; and as the former regarded man with evidence from the beginning calculated and adequate to indicate a divine First Cause, so the objective knowledge of God here spoken of was the portion of man even after the flood: indeed not till after that mighty event do we hear of idolatry. But man was unequal to the task of preserving the holy deposit; and this, because of his moral state. When they did know God, they neither glorified Him as such, nor were they thankful. This left room for vain reasonings, which again darkened the heart instead of leading it into light. It was the self-sufficiency, and so the folly, of the creature. For light is only seen in God's light, and man must sink into darkness when not morally elevated by looking up to One above him. The humbling proof appeared too soon; and philosophy but sealed the evil to which superstitious fear led the way. An unacknowledged Supreme was rapidly forgotten, and the glory of the incorruptible God exchanged for a likeness of an image of corruptible man, yea, into objects ever lowering till creation's lords, now the victims of this debasing delusion, worship the most loathsome reptile which eats the dust.

But when once the human will has begun to act deliberately apart from God, the reign of ignorance has already commenced. God alone is Light and is Truth. His will being disregarded, the imaginations (dialogismois) of the human heart become substituted for the wisdom of God. But these imaginations not only act as a veil and barrier to exclude the light and blessing of Divine truth; they become themselves the guide and directory of human action — conscience, meanwhile, being all too weak, of itself, to force its way through the mists of human thought into the presence of Truth — of God. Hence the Gentiles are said to have the understanding darkened (Eph. 4:18), and their ignorance is affirmed to be the cause of their moral alienation from the life of God — the hardness (porosis,) of their hearts being the low ground on which all this ruin lies.

But grant once again that man is a sinner; grant that he has a will that perverts his judgment, lusts that seduce his intellect; grant that sin indulged dulls the conscience and depraves still further the heart (and these are lessons of every day experience); grant that an offender is not an unprejudiced judge in his own cause; and you have abundant, over-abundant reason for distrusting the mere rational estimate of man's possible future. That he has a conscience capable of being aroused by God's word, and of responding to His appeal, is of course true. That God challenges man's understanding and his moral sense, and makes them His witnesses is also true. He will be justified in His sayings, and clear when He is judged. But that those who have never learnt to measure themselves in His presence should arraign His justice because His estimate of sin is different from others, is the height of irrationality, as it is of pride.

Our first father hath sinned. Thus the fountain was defiled. Evil has abounded, and sin has taken its free, full course. We learn in all this scene in the garden what has distorted the natural conscience, in circumstances so plain that we can say what they are. Now it is hard to learn what we are, because that which has made us sinners in heart has made us sinners in understanding also. As the conscience is affected and renewed by the Holy Spirit, so is it perverted by sin. There may be a false standard of good and evil, and thus blindness through that (as a law of darkness), as well as corruption of heart. Paul says, "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing I also did," etc. (Acts 26:9-11). And the time was come, the Lord forewarns, when those that killed the disciples would "think they did God service," John 16:2.

"When He entered indoors from the crowd His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. And He says unto them, Are ye also thus unintelligent? Do ye not perceive that all that is outside entering into the man cannot defile him, because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging* all meats? And He said, That which goeth forth out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, go forth evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickednesses, deceit lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these wicked things go forth from within, and defile the man."71 There is nothing in the heart of man that so hinders his intelligence as the influence of religious tradition. Not only this, but tradition darkens a disciple wherever it works, and one effect and invariable accompaniment of it is specially insubjection to the humbling truth that there is no good thing in man. I do not deny that God can bring everything that is good into the heart. For He gives His Son, and in Him eternal life; He washes the believer in the precious blood of Christ, and gives the Holy Ghost to dwell in him. Neither do I speak of what is the fruit of Divine grace working in man; but I maintain that what comes out of man as such is invariably bad. As to this the disciples were dull of understanding, yet there was not one obscure word in what Christ uttered. Why is it that Divine truth seems and is so difficult to apprehend? Our obstacle chiefly lies, not in the head, but in the heart and conscience. It is not the bright or the powerful intellect that understands the word of God best; it is the man whose purpose of heart is to serve the Lord. Wherever there is a simple-hearted desire to do His will, "he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." It is not, If thine eye be keen or far-seeing, but "If thine eye be single." (John 7:17; Matt. 6:22) What a comfort to a poor soul that is consciously weak, ignorant, foolish, it may be! Such a one, nevertheless, may have a single eye, and consequently see farther, spiritually, than the brightest of men, whose heart is not unreservedly toward the Lord. What in this case hindered singleness of eye? Why were the disciples so undiscerning? Because they did not like to receive such a tremendous sentence on man. They had been accustomed to make conventional differences.

The mercy bestowed upon us reveals our need. This is strikingly exhibited here. Sin has not affected our bodies only, the evil has reached, and is deeply seated in, the understanding. It is darkened (Eph. 4:18), and, naturally, "there is none that understandeth: there is none that seeketh after God." "The world by wisdom knew not God;" and no greater proof of this can there be than its ignorance of Christ. "O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee;" for had they known Him, they would have known His Father also (Rom. 3:11; 1 Cor. 1:21; John 17:25; John 8:19). Men are not innocent, they are not pure in heart; therefore their understanding is incapable of holding a true balance. Alienated from God and enemies in their mind by wicked works, how can they know Him?

But the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and thus deliver us from the intricate system of deceit which in one way or another has caused all our race to wander from Him. Eve's innocent mind was deceived by the serpent, the devil who deceiveth the whole world (Rev. 12:9), and blinds in Christendom the minds of them which believe not the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4). Sin, too, is deceitful, lusts are deceitful, riches are deceitful, the heart is deceitful. There are those who handle the word of God deceitfully, and false teachers by good words and fair speeches deceive the simple. Innocence was no safeguard; the ablest intellects have not escaped; minds stored with knowledge have proved no protection. The abounding privileges of Nicodemus and pre-eminence in the outward service of God availed him nothing. His questions show what the natural understanding makes of divine truth (John 3). He must be born again, must have a new nature and thus a new understanding; and the Son of God was come to give it him.