The author of the article in the July 2024 Signs Magazine, recounted his families experience in the Netherlands during WWII.
I remember one thing on the tape that my grandmother said, and it has stuck with me ever since. It is what I shared with my recently atheist friends when they told me that deep down, we are all good.
My grandmother said of that time in the Netherlands, ?You didn?t have to worry about the Germans that much. It was your neighbors you had to watch out for.? In an effort to save their own lives, neighbors would turn against neighbors. As the basic human desire for survival came to its fullest depth of need, goodness disappeared. What surfaced was betrayal, malice, violence, fear, dishonesty, and selfishness. The German soldiers were at the door of my grandfather?s home that day because one of his neighbors had turned him in. A neighbor, by the way, they had lived next to for many years.
The story reveals that selfishness, not goodness lies in the depths of human hearts.
The theory that deep down humans are naturally good, of course is in contradiction to the Bible.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Selfishness is what lies in the deepest levels of human beings, Selfishness, self perseverance, self exaltation. Self can be nice and loving if it brings satisfaction and elevates self, but if self feels neglected or imposed upon, self will fight against all that threatens their idea of what self wants.
It's interesting that some of the great rebellion stories have that same idea
{the idea of inherent goodness, thus no need for God) at their root.
Lucifer, while still in heaven, initiating the first rebellion:
Lucifer went forth to diffuse the spirit of discontent among the angels. Working with mysterious secrecy, and for a time concealing his real purpose under an appearance of reverence for God, he endeavored to excite dissatisfaction concerning the laws that governed heavenly beings, intimating that they imposed an unnecessary restraint. Since their natures were holy, he urged that the angels should obey the dictates of their own will. {GC 495}
Note the same thing in a big rebellion while the Israelites were in the wilderness:
Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and two hundred and fifty princes who had joined them, first became jealous, then envious, and next rebellious...."And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, You take too much upon yourselves, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you lift yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" (Numbers 16:3) ..
They had talked in regard to Moses' position as ruler of the people, until they imagined that it was a very enviable position, which any of them could fill as well as Moses. And they gave themselves up to discontent.....and utterly refused to any longer acknowledge the authority of Moses and Aaron. {1SP 296 -.298}
The problem is-- when created beings turn against God's authority they are subjecting themselves to the authority of the cruelest of masters, from which only God can save them.
