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Ed.Note: the following is an enhancement of the teachings given at East Harbor State Park this past Labor Day weekend.

Forest Gump was a silly movie in many respects, but whoever wrote it grasped what makes life work and what doesn’t. Life doesn’t work for Jenny, the little girl who befriended Forest. She was sexually abused, and she grows up ruined by it, drug-addicted, sexually promiscuous, unable to love, and she dies from an STD, leaving an orphaned child in Forest’s care. There’s the lieutenant from Viet Nam who became suicidal and deeply embittered when he lost his legs in the war. Forest Gump was a stark and refreshing contrast to these figures because his life was miraculously useful, despite being physically and mentally handicapped. He received scholarships, launched Elvis and others to fame, was decorated by three presidents, and made the cover of Fortune magazine as a millionaire tycoon.

Thankfulness marked the difference between these characters. Forest was simple enough he never really understood the reasons for bitterness, and took life as it came with gratitude. This opened doors of opportunity few with far greater gifts ever see.

Jenny was deeply embittered, but her only revenge was to throw rocks at her father’s house one night, decades later – but her father was long-dead, and the house was a pile of charred wood. It was the pinnacle of her life, the most she could do with all her bitterness. The lieutenant was also headed for a dreary life, stuck in a home for incapacitated vets. But he took a chance and joined Forest on a shrimp boat. Hurricane Camille descends on their little boat, and the lieutenant spews his bitterness at God who is the cause for all the world’s suffering. When the storm subsides, he realizes God is not the cause for suffering. Even more, he sees God is someone who provides for those who suffer.

The movie was a fable, but (miraculously, for Hollywood!) it depicted a deep truth about the human condition: it’s a realm filled with opportunity for bitterness, and those who choose it get nothing in return. Those with thankfulness can step back to see the forest for all the trees, and they can find their bearings in a sick, hurting world.

The Furnace of Depravity

Ingratitude is the furnace for depravity in the human heart. It triggers a landslide of poisonous thoughts and actions, and it seals the fate of its victims with a blinding obsession of bitterness.

Ingratitude begins with rebellion, and then takes its own momentum. Paul describes it in Romans 1:

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools Romans 1:21-22 (NASB95)

Paul sums up the results in one phrase, “their foolish heart was darkened.” The darkness that descends on the ungrateful heart is the missed opportunities of real life, replaced by a self-made world of imagination colored with dark bitterness.

The problem follows a clear pattern, starting with an attitude towards God, and as we will demonstrate, it ripples across a lifetime of relationships.

“They did not honor Him as God”

This is where it all starts: “they did not honor.” It’s not a complex issue, just simple apathy and indifference towards God. It’s not hateful, it’s not denying God, but indifference is always rebellion where it exists towards God. To wander away from the Creator, glancing back apathetically is the epitome of ingratitude, but it is by far the most common way people rebel against the Almighty God.

Typically indifference takes the form of trite rituals, learned by rote memorization and practiced by bored and restless parishioners waiting to get done with it! How absurd to think God is indifferent like us! He sets in motion this vast and wondrous universe, but cares little when His creation drifts away by indifference? On the contrary, our apathetic rituals can never conceal the thoughts and intentions of the heart from Him, and it grieves Him deeply:

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” Matthew 15:8-9 (NLT)

Indifference towards God is an evil direction, to be sure, but not as fatal as the next step.

“Or give thanks.”

A bridge is crossed with the declaration, “I find nothing to be grateful for in you, God!” Apathy begins to fuel resentment, and bridges are burned, hope is lost, and the course of a life is set. Apathy spawns ingratitude by necessity, not only because they’re so closely related, but also because the apathetic heart is so empty and dull and holds nothing to be grateful for.

In this vacuum of apathy grows resentment. It is impossible to avoid God altogether, as Paul says, “Because that which is known about God is evident within.” It’s not an academic knowledge, but a deep and personal awareness of God we carry throughout life. It means we have an emotional reaction to God in the same way we carry an emotional reaction towards our parents throughout life, even apart from their presence.

Nobody is apathetic about their parents, and nobody can remain apathetic about God for long. Resentment and fault-finding fill the emotional vacuum left by apathy, because these are the simplest, most primitive feelings. Ingratitude is easy to sustain, self-propagating and it can dominate a life. Emotional beings interact emotionally, and in the absence of love other emotions take over.

Ingratitude distorts reality so it becomes impossible to find any cause for thankfulness, and as it mushrooms it poisons everything. Depravity thrives in such a world, Paul says.

“Their foolish heart was darkened”

Darkness describes depravity, and it’s an endless descent into a seamy world:

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;

And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:28-32

That one passage spouts off 23 hideous behaviors. It’s a condensed catalogue of evil, and the words come billowing out of the Bible like a numbing barrage of insults. But these are not insults. These are descriptions, from God’s viewpoint or from any objective viewpoint, of what our world looks like from the outside. Ours looks like a world teeming with destruction and all this destruction is summed-up in this word: depraved. Paul calls it “a depraved mind.”

The Depraved Mind

As the Bible uses “depraved,” it means literally “worthless and without value.” It may sound insulting, but provides insight into the emotional world wrecked by ingratitude. Alienation is a disease that grows, according to the Bible. Psychologists agree, and call it emotional illness.

Like a physical illness, emotional illness decays and depletes a person’s resources until it becomes debilitating. When emotional strength is sapped it becomes increasingly impossible to face the terrific strains and uncertainties of life, so withdrawal becomes a lifestyle. When people grow weaker, they lack the emotional fortitude to resolve personal conflicts or face the “larger questions” of life they discussed so easily in their youth. Ultimately, the emotional illness incurred by alienation and the withdrawal it precipitates can render someone “worthless and without value” to others. Thus grown children may perceive their parents this way — maybe with justification — and have little contact after leaving home. When married couples view each other this way, they get divorced.

The emotional illness of depravity is increasing in the American experience. Consider some of these statistics (all from NIMH research):

• An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.
• Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15 to 44.
• Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.
• Approximately 40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about 18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have an anxiety disorder.

But I’m Not Depraved!

People don’t like to think of themselves as “depraved.” Something inside cries out, “I’m significant! I’m more important than that!” This is a valid point, and it explains why depravity is such a tragedy.

A child enters the world so fresh and “full of promise,” as people say, and it’s an appropriate description. The little critter is made “in the image of God,” the Bible says, and human life has the most amazing potential of any life on the planet. It’s a position of unequalled strength among other creatures, and along with great power God granted us great authority:

Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it! Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
Genesis 1:28 (NLT)

This is why life is so radically transformed for new parents when their first child is born. They are immediately struck by the priceless significance of the new human life they created together, even though it is such a tiny thing. They know what potential and power they hold in their arms with that squirming baby.

Things change, however, as time passes. It’s possible for that sweet infant to transform into a beast unrecognizable even to the parents. It is fascinating that the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin was once enrolled in a seminary to become a priest. But the priest became a beast who slaughtered 50 million people in his Siberian gulags. In his mother’s eyes, he was a much different little boy. Although Stalin continued visiting his mother for decades until her death, neither of them could bear to discuss how different he had become. Apparently Mrs. Stalin never discussed or cared to understand her son’s new identity, even though he became perhaps the most powerful man in the world after WWII.

Stalin’s transformation epitomizes depravity. In the end, as history knows him, this little boy became an utterly reprehensible beast—truly sub-human in his ferocity and sadism. Surely it can be said about this monster that his life was “without value,” and devoid of anything redemptive. He was a rabid beast, and when he died those who knew his savagery—his closest associates—were relieved.

The Depravity of Everyday Life

Not everyone is like Stalin, however, so it becomes hard for us to understand how depravity describes our lives or those of our children. Yet God says the effect is similar.

Practicing evil and living in a world dominated by evil has a deleterious effect deep inside our humanity. Regarding evil,

“They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them,” Romans 1:26

Depravity becomes a consensus and social pressure to conform. Everyone knows that working for “the Almighty Dollar” is a flat-line existence, but what are the options?

Consider the person who simply lives to enjoy life. Quite unlike Stalin, nobody is harmed by this enjoyable person. This is someone who enjoys a good time—not a degenerate or addict—but works a steady job, pays taxes and enjoys Friday happy hour with the office gang. How is this person depraved or “worthless”?

The problem with this picture is the vantage point of the viewer. As a snapshot, the “enjoyable life” seems quite innocuous. As a full-length movie, it’s a waste of time to watch. This is the grief that God bears as he allows true freedom to reign on earth while his beloved humans waste their existence and capabilities on grinding existence. As the years add up, a lifetime of the “enjoyable life” adds up to a lot of nothingness. Humans were not created as blobs of mere existence, like a plant. Yet this is precisely how so many people live their lives, and not accidentally, but through strong-willed determination. One such “enjoyable life” friend told me it was his ambition to pay the bills, have some occasional fun, and procreate. Is there any difference between such a person and the crabgrass that infiltrates our lawns? Crabgrass also works in order to spread, soaks up sun rays, and then dies.

The Meaninglessness of Depravity

Paul’s description of depravity is predicated with this declaration:

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
Romans 1:18 (NLT)

What a tragedy and crime it is when an entire human life is consumed by meaningless stagnation! Humans were created with far more power, authority and potential, and when all this is exchanged for a series of fleeting, meaningless pleasures, God’s anger is not unreasonable. Parents may rightfully feel this way if the child they poured their lives into turns renegade and slips into some debauched, drifting lifestyle.

More reprehensible, this exchange of something-for-nothing is driven by the trite appetite for personal gain. When selfishness permeates the entire course of life, it sucks all value out of human existence. Always consuming, always feeding the appetite, it’s a life reduced to rubble as time passes and gifts decompose in temporary, fleeting moments. These are lives, Paul says:

“…whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” Philippians 3:19 (NASB95)

Secular researchers are catching up with the Bible’s assessment. The American pursuit of pleasure will never compensate for the loss of meaning and significance incurred by depravity:

“Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential, [Professor Seligman] insists: ‘This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.’” (Time Magazine, 1/2001, emphasis added).

“Engagement and meaning” is what God wants us to build. We are builders, by nature. But alienation and withdrawal is the very antithesis, creating an ever-shrinking world of trite pleasures. The diagram below depicts the simple yet profound polarities a life can gravitate towards:

The Infantile Love Defect

One classic example of the direct line from ingratitude to depravity is the Infantile. It’s a growing phenomenon in the modern West, well-documented and researched, and it feeds on the growing consensus of hyper-individualism (see “Here and Now”). As one secular researcher describes it:

Two generations ago, the children’s books are about doing well in the world, they’re about achievement, “The Little Engine That Could”, a typical example. The primers today are much less about good commerce with the world and much more about feeling good, about high self esteem. - Dr, Martin Seligman, “Forum on Depression”, 8/16/2002.

In other words, self receives the emphasis in American education under the rubric of “self esteem,” and of course self is reinforced later by the culture through consumerism. Self-emphasis lies at the root of the Infantile’s inability to form deep, lasting relationships.

The term Infantile is used in Love Ethics to describe the primitive stage of emotional development typical of childhood. Children thrive on simple emotions that cannot sustain significant relationships. Children feel deeply for others existentially, in the here-and-now, but a strong self-centeredness is mixed with their feelings. They care about others when they feel like caring.

The core problem with an Infantile is the inability to rise above the moment, to look across the expanse of time and see things from a higher view. Because of this short-sightedness, children do not retain thankful hearts for long. It matters little how much effort and sacrifice their parents lavished on them in the past. What matters foremost is the sacrifice and effort lavished today! Children can’t understand why they can’t gratify their desires immediately. When faced with limitations or frustration, they cry and throw violent temper-tantrums because they lose all sense of proportion or perspective.

Yet children can sometimes be so charming and warm, too! When a child feels warmth for someone, that means love, and a child can really pour it out! It’s a familiar sight: the child cuddled in his mother’s arms, as in The Tragedy and Beauty of Love, and it’s a warmth that touches everyone.

Infantile love is cute in a toddler — even with its finicky drawbacks — but it’s a tragedy in an adult’s love relationships. The obsession with immediate gratification and unrestrained emotions is so primitive! With age we expect to see increased intelligence, experience and knowledge of the real world to lift the adult above temporary events and hold a consistent perspective. It’s called stability, and it’s a position of great power and strength in a tumultuous world:

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; Ephesians 4:14 (NASB)

The here-and-now can be a frightful place for children “tossed here and there by waves,” as Paul says. They’re so overwhelmed by immediate pressures, and so easily dominated and crushed. Children would make terrible soldiers facing the roar of cannon fire, but a well-trained soldier can stand it, realizing victory is possible by holding the line.

This inability to stand strong is the weak heart in the Infantile, and the idolization of emotions is the disease weakening it. This disease manifests itself in clearly-identifiable ways:

Feelings determine reality. Infantiles feel so strongly about their view and cannot rise above these feelings. As one Infantile pop says, “How can it be so wrong if it feels so right?”

Inability to understand other people. When children quarrel with one another, they cannot perceive each other’s viewpoint. This is normal for children because their brains are undeveloped. But the adult Infantile retains this handicap because personal feelings overwhelm their cognition.

Arbitrary rights. Because their cognitive strength is overwhelmed and because feelings determine reality, children can create the most arbitrary and outrageous rights! When a brat storms into the kitchen where mom is busy cooking and demands her immediate, full attention, is there any reasonable basis for this demand? The adult Infantile is equally unconcerned with such trivial questions.

Endless rights. When an infant feels a need, the quiet household is suddenly pierced by shrill screams. Young parents learn early they either get the infant on a feeding schedule or go insane from endless demands. Adult Infantiles fare no better, crying “Foul!” whenever compunction dictates. They live in a simple world of candy-canes and lollipops where they should never have to feel badly.

Perverted justice. The younger the child, the less able he is to shake off hurts. In the adult Infantile this translates into an inability to forgive. With great emotional flair and righteous indignation the Infantile insists it is an abortion of justice to overlook the wrongs perpetrated against his person! Aggressive Infantiles are quarrelsome and nasty, while more passive temperaments mean the silent treatment. Long rehearsals of grievances, sometimes from distant years, makes the Infantile difficult to please for most people.

Over-reactions and violence. The Infantile uses emotions like a club. Feelings of perceived wrong are so overwhelming in children they feel they have the right to use force to get their way. Infantile adults likewise stomp around, storm out of the room, throw things, yell and punishing withdrawal. They regret it later when feelings subside, yet never enough to drop the emotional club because, after all, who would give up such a lethal and effective weapon?

Hedonistic, immediate gratification. When my children rolled out of bed they always asked, “What are we going to do today?” Kids live in the moment, and the adult Infantile’s fixation with feelings turns the moment into a prison of addiction to emotional stimulation and pleasure.

A narrow definition of love. Children understand love as an emotional warmth, and love is emotional. But love is not exclusively emotional. The child has difficulty understanding that a parent’s discipline is also loving. John gives a definition lacking in the Infantile’s dictionary:

But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. 1 John 3:17-18 (NASB)

Infantiles often feel they’ve loved someone deeply by oozing warm feelings all over the person. But authentic love is sacrificial, as John points out, and the oozing feelings that come so easily to the Infantile hardly qualify as sacrificial.

Inability to build. A day without emotional stimulation is intolerable, and the Infantile finds it difficult to settle down to the mundane, routine tasks of building a life. The solitary moment is a weak position to contend with the course of a life. The Infantile life is often the sum of disconnected, emotional jolts going nowhere and building nothing.

Ingratitude. This is the crown of immaturity and the curse of the Infantile. It means persistent dissatisfaction, increasing demands, and an inability to capitalize on the opportunities and gifts floating past. They rarely appreciate the extent of sacrifice others make on their behalf. Instead, if they feel poorly, they demand more sacrifice.

Broken relationships. Relationships in a kid’s life come and go so easily. Billy was best friend yesterday, but an enemy today. In the end, the Infantile’s past is littered with a host of relationships begun with such sincerity and earnestness, but eventually severed by mutual agreement. People tend to distance themselves from such a reckless person because the Infantile lacks the main components in biblical love – being easy to please:

“Love is patient…it is not easily angered…and keeps no record of wrongs.” 1 Cor. 12:4,5

When the dust settles after a whirlwind of emotional turmoil, the Infantile often ends up with loneliness and a history of alienation. It is a life that epitomizes the definition of depravity: “empty and useless.”

Infantile Hope

Balanced against their shortcomings, Infantiles are quite often blessed with rich, creative gifts and deep emotional charisma which draws people. It is often because the Infantile is so imaginative and emotional they find it difficult to harness these powers. The vast majority of artists, musicians, and innovative thinkers are Infantiles because of their vivid imaginations and wild emotions. At the very least, the Infantile’s youthful excitement and liveliness is contagious, and people love having an Infantile at a party – as long as there aren’t too many and they refrain from temper-tantrums. They can be charismatic because they’re so emotionally expressive.

Like so many of us, our greatest strengths can also be our most lethal poisons. This is why we so desperately need God’s hand to reconstruct our lives into the image He intended. This is God’s hope for us, and the whole reason why Jesus Christ had to die on the cross: to provide a means for God to take up residence in our lives and provide the kind of close, loving support we need to clean up the gooey mess.

It’s called Regeneration, and it’s God’s marvelous plan to sweep away past failures and build a whole new future – even for the Infantile! With the Creator at work, the most unbelievable transformations are possible. Please carefully consider what God says here about it:

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-8 (NASB)

This great promise first requires, however, a significant change in heart. And this is the subject we’ll take up next.

Tags: depravity, infantile, ingratitude

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