Coming to Faith series:
Part One – Internal Corruption

This is a blog series on what I believe are the touchstones for people coming to faith. What are the conditions that make people start to inquire about the Christian faith? what are the presuppositions that lead people to start searching for God? Basically… what makes someone a seeker?

First off, this is not about finding a formula or psychoanalyzing people. I really don’t care about the science behind it. Certainly the Holy Spirit is involved in someone coming to faith, and I do believe God can and does regenerate people no matter where they are in life. This is simply an observation on my part… a curiosity on the process of transformation towards faith.

In my opinion, step one is simple and yet difficult to accept. Basically… the realization that you and I have a problem. Not a problem like the world stinks and people don’t get along, but an internal problem of corruption. Think about this… If you had an internal recorder that recorded all of your thoughts and feelings for a day, what you think about… or try to resist thinking about, how comfortable would you be if that recording was made public?

The ‘internal’ part is important, because often we either like to blame the external stuff (for example: I’m an angry person because my spouse makes me angry) or we like to blame our character formation on our childhood experiences.

I hope I’m not misunderstood… of course bad life experiences will shape our character. Abuse will trigger long term emotional pain and that may cause us to behave in certain wrongful ways. But… isn’t it true that even those people with the most loved upbringings will still tell you that they have moral problems they battle inside them. That is, If they are honest. I should know… I would consider myself to be one of those people who had a great childhood. So yea, our environment, social experiences, etc… can turn us into ‘bad’ people, but are we bad because of those experiences? or were those simply triggers that bring out the badness?

“You can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants, nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil?” — Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs

So here’s the touchstone… when you think about the internal problem you have, do you accept it as just part of humanity? do you suppress it? or do you feel some sense of guilt or shame? I would argue that the internal sense of guilt is a natural and proper response. That innate feeling of wrongdoing is telling you that you are morally inferior, you are suppose to be good, but you can see the corruption deep inside you.

It is only when you realize there is a problem, that you start to seek a solution. Only the sick need a doctor right?

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good… Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.” – C.S. Lewis