UNIVERSAL BADNESS: AMERICA'S FOUNDERS AND THE NATURE OF MAN
80% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. (1) That belief may be proof of another current poll in which a majority opined that the government cannot be trusted. (2)
“Some worry the government is doing too much, others say too little, and others mention the government doing the wrong things or nothing. Respondents also cite concerns about how money has corrupted it and how corporations control the political process.”
The
founders of America understood why government is untrustworthy and devised a ruling system based on that certainty.
Our
second president, John Adams, famously said, “Our Constitution was made only
for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of
any other.”
John
Witherspoon wrote, “Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy
and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form
of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but
beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and
slavery must ensue.”
John Adams
recognized, "Every man hates to have a superior, but no man is willing to
have an equal; every man desires to be superior to all others... We may
look as wise and moralize as gravely as we will; we may call this desire of
distinction childish and silly; but we cannot alter the nature of men..."
‘We
cannot alter the nature of man.’
What did
Adams and his 18th century peers think about the nature of
man?
-George
Washington. “No compact among men...can be pronounced everlasting and
inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no
mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent
of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of
corrupted morals on the other.”
-Thomas
Jefferson, 3rd president. "Free government is founded on jealousy, not in
confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited
constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power. In questions
of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from
mischief by the chains of the constitution."
-James
Madison, 4th president. "It
may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices (government)
should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is
government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men
were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be
administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first
enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it
to control itself."
Madison likely
derived his thoughts from Genevan Pastor and Reformer John Calvin’s commentary
on Galatians. "If we were all like
angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect control, we would not
need rules or regulations. Why, then, do we have so many laws and statutes?
Because of man's wickedness, for he is constantly overflowing with evil; this
is why a remedy is required."
Calvin’s
“constantly overflowing with evil” describes a biblical doctrine that many
call Total Depravity- man is not as bad as he can be but is in every area
sinful.
Other founders
testify to their belief in that doctrine.
-Alexander
Hamilton. “Because of human depravity, there is “little reason to expect
that the persons entrusted with the administration of the affairs of the
particular members of a confederacy will at all times be ready with perfect
good humor and an unbiased regard to the public weal to execute the resolutions
or decrees of the general authority.”
“Why has
government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not
conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint... [T]he
infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than... to fall singly
upon one."
Samuel
Adams, the cousin of John Adams. "The depravity of mankind that
ambition and lust of power above the law are... predominant passions in the
breasts of most men." “[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest
laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are
universally corrupt.”
-John Witherspoon, president of Princeton Seminary. “The cause in which
America is now in arms is the cause of justice, liberty, and human
nature."
Benjamin
Franklin. “In reality, perhaps no one of our natural passions is so hard to subdue as pride.
Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as
one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself.”
This
common belief in the depravity of mankind was foundational in framing the Constitution.
Constitutional lawyer John Eidsmoe lists five corresponding tenets of the framers’ belief.
Because of man’s sinful nature:
1. Government
has limited, delegated powers. (No
official has absolute power.)
2. Powers
are separated: the powers delegated are divided vertically, some to the
federal, some to the state, and some to the local government. At the federal level, the division is horizontal among the three branches.
3. There
must be checks and balances. (Each part has a role in the other parts.)
4. A
concept of reserved individual rights will be considered.
5. Responsibility
will be manifested through religion. People need control. If not self-government then human government will control
through force. The founder’s solution to this dilemma is religion.
The Bible says that all men are born in sin. Sin is man’s natural state. The Founders knew that, and the Constitution reflects their understanding. Every government of man will fail.
Tranquility, quietness, godliness, and dignity can be ours, not through government but through faith in God.
1 https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2020/07/26/poll-americans-think/
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