Are People Basically Good? Quotes

“Nu există nicio cale prin care să putem să înțelegem cu adevărat ce înseamnă să fim oameni până când nu înțelegem mai înainte caracterul lui Dumnezeu.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“If He’s not perfect, then He won’t be bothered by imperfections in you. Or, of course, you can deny the existence of God altogether.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“You can deny it by rationalizing your own sin, or by minimizing your sin. Another thing you can do is to minimize God’s holiness, to assume that He is not perfect.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“That’s who we are in our natural state. Does that concern you? The gap between the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of His image bearers is a serious problem. God commands us to be perfect, and we are not perfect. What do we do about it?”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“God creates a being, stamps His own image and likeness onto that being, and gives that person dominion over all of the earth—and then, day after day, that person lives a life of estrangement and disobedience to God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Pelagius claimed that Adam’s sin injured only Adam; there was nothing passed on to Adam’s posterity. Adam’s sin was merely a bad example. Augustine, on the other hand, maintained that Adam’s sin affected not only Adam but the whole human race.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“So then, why does one person believe and another person doesn’t? Pelagius would say it’s because man has options: to embrace Christ or not to embrace Him; to obey God or not. It is within the power of a human being to obey God at every turn without any assistance from God’s grace. But Augustine would say man is dead in his sins. He has no desire for Christ, and the only way he will ever choose Christ is if God softens his stone-cold, recalcitrant heart and puts in him a desire for Christ.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“No one seeks for God,” Paul says (v. 11b). No natural person, outside of regeneration, searches for God. People are desperately seeking peace of mind, relief from guilt, meaning, significance, and value to their lives. All the while, they’re running as fast as they can from God. God is not hiding; it’s not that He can’t be found. It’s not our nature to seek God—it is our fallen nature to flee from Him.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“One theologian has said that how human beings understand their own existence determines how they think, how they behave, and the type of culture that they produce; thus, the culture that we live in is a product of our understanding of what it means to be human.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Pascal said man’s grandeur is located in his unique ability to contemplate his own existence. Man alone can think of the future and speculate upon or imagine a better life than he currently enjoys or could ever bring to pass, and this is the source of his misery.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Man is the creature possessing the highest grandeur in all of the created universe; at the same time, he is the creature that endures the most abject misery of all creatures in the universe.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher said, “Man is the supreme paradox of all creation.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“the portrait that we get in the Scriptures of man in his fallen condition is that he is utterly and thoroughly infected by sin in his whole person. In other words, sin is not an external blemish, but something that goes to the very core of our being.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“When we sin, we want to describe our sinful activity in terms of a mistake, as if that softens or mitigates the guilt involved.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Two things that every human being absolutely must come to understand are the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. These topics are difficult for people to face. And they go together: if we understand who God is, and catch a glimpse of His majesty, purity, and holiness, then we are instantly aware of the extent of our own corruption. When that happens, we fly to grace—because we recognize that there’s no way that we could ever stand before God apart from grace.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“Man alone can think of the future and speculate upon or imagine a better life than he currently enjoys or could ever bring to pass, and this is the source of his misery.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“When I was in high school, my biology teacher told me that my value as a person was $24.37. He was adding up the value of all the minerals in the body—zinc, copper, potassium, etc. Today, thanks to inflation, that total would be around $160. That’s still a paltry sum. But it is one way to take the measure of a man.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“We’ll also have to answer for the fact that fish eggs are more protected than human embryos, and that there are people who worship cattle while others are dying of starvation.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“One of the things for which humans will have to stand trial before the heavenly tribunal is their ecological transgressions. Instead of dressing the garden, tilling and keeping it, we have polluted, exploited, and violated the garden. We’ll also have to answer for the fact that fish eggs are more protected than human embryos, and that there are people who worship cattle while others are dying of starvation.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?