total depravity

Sometimes when I read the papers, I just want to weep. I have 2 kids of my own, and they are a precious gift from God. I am well aware of the challenges of children with special needs. But I cannot fathom the heart that is capable of this:

Girl prisoner’s ‘torture’
from The Sydney Morning Herald News Headlines
Court papers reveal seven-year-old NSW girl’s “slow and torturous” death by starvation.

I read the details, and I want to be sick. I am filled with outrage. How can a human being do such a thing to another, essentially defenceless child? How do you go out at night, or sit down in front of the television, knowing that you have locked a little girl in a room for weeks on end with no food?

There are no answers to that question, it seems to me. No answers except revelation:

Rom 1:28-29 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.

Some people have suggested that we Anglicans spend too much time talking about sin. My response is, how can you not, when this is what we read in the papers? We need to be real, talk about the world the way it really is. Only then can we fully fathom the real hope that is ours in the Gospel – that Jesus has stared this depravity full in the face, and defeated it, its lord and its enslaving power.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.