Stupid pride. The doctrine of total depravity affirms, among other things, that the impact of the fall hits us on all fronts. It is not just our wills that are fallen, but every faculty we possess, including our faculty of thinking. We err in our thinking because we are the children of Adam. While I’m willing to concede that it is possible to err without falling into sin, I would argue however that errors are a fruit of sin. I don’t confess before the Lord the typos I am prone to. But I believe I would not be prone to them had I not been born a sinner. This does not mean, of course, that to be a non-sinner makes one omniscient. There is, after all, a great difference between not knowing everything, and knowing what just isn’t so.
That we can err without falling into sin, however, doesn’t mean that sin never contributes to our errors. In fact I suspect our sin impacts our thinking far more than we like to confess. In part because we don’t like to confess. We not only don’t like to confess doing wrong, we don’t like to confess being wrong. To acknowledge error, even if that error is not in itself sinful hurts us right where it counts, in our pride. We often fall into error by believing what we want to believe. We stay in that error; we double down when we refuse to acknowledge we were wrong in the first place.
This afflicts us not just individually but corporately. That is, I not only want to be right, but want to be in the right crowd. We’re a tribal people and are quick to not only believe what our tribe believes, but to believe that what other tribes believe is not just wrong but stupid. It’s one thing to admit that I was wrong about this or that. It’s another to admit that not only was I wrong, but so were my ancestors, my heroes, all those closest to me.
If the problem is pride, and it is, the solution is humility. We’re not called to a skepticism disguised as humility, where we refuse to make any assertions, where we proudly claim to know nothing can be known. Instead we’re called to be bold about the truth and humble about ourselves. We’re called to not conflate the Scripture itself and our understanding of it. We’re called to listen like children and to check like Bereans.
Jesus has promised us that the Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:13). This must not lead us to affirm that we now have all truth. If He is leading us there it must mean that we’re not there yet. If we insist we’ve already arrived we won’t move, and plant ourselves in our ignorance.
His Word is truth. It tells us we yet struggle with sin, in our hearts and in our minds. He, however, has promised to conquer all His and our enemies, including our foolish pride. He is washing us with His Word. And He will finish what He has begun in us.