Man's True Nature

I know that I didn't blog regularly last week, for which I do apologize. With four English classes, there's just a lot of reading and that's sucking up my every spare minute. Not that I'm complaining, mind-I love the classes. They're so much fun, and many of them are with my favorite people on the planet. So the work is worth it. However, the fun doesn't mean that the classes aren't time consuming. They do provide excellent fodder for deep thought, however, as my old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne made clear this week. We've been reading his short stories in my American Lit class, and they've been absolutely fascinating. One of the things we've discussed is the fact that Hawthorne reveals mankind's true nature, his very heart. Dr. Jenkins said the most amazing thing-most authors try to reveal the heart to show its goodness, while Hawthorne seeks to show all that is wrong and cruel about it. We don't want our true hearts to be revealed, because we don't want to know what we ourselves are capable of doing. And if you think about it, that's absolutely correct. I'd like to think that I'm really a good person who very occasionally does bad things, but thanks to the Fall and to our sin natures, I think it's the exact opposite. I'm really a bad person who very occasionally does good things. That's a scary thing to think about...we think that we can never be capable of real evil, but tweak the conditions and quite possibly there's nothing that we wouldn't do. Humans don't want to face that reality, and that is what makes Hawthorne so disturbing to so many. In his stories, pastors become adulterers, good men are corrupted by the devil, and fathers treat their daughters like experiments. Thankfully, there is a happy ending to all of this. God swoops in like the chivalrous knight of old, and offers mankind a loophole in the tragedy of life. He gives us grace for our sin natures, and offers a place in heaven for all those who do the absurdly simple thing of sincerely praying a prayer. Isn't it marvelous beyond contemplation? It certainly is for me.