Lord of the Flies and the Jerusalem Psychologist

“I’ve come to a powerful realization. There really is so much goodness in the human heart. We all need to get in touch with this inner goodness. We are, truly, overwhelmingly good.”

The psychologist’s (reconstructed) comments from across the Shabbat dinner table were especially jarring as we sat in Jerusalem, a city with myriad of its own monuments to human depravity and indecency, not least the Roman-destroyed stones lying at the base of the Western Wall, the irreparable schism between eastern (Palestinian) and western (Jewish) Jerusalem, and the still-needed automatic rifles seen on every Jerusalem street. That very week, our tour group had to take shelter in a specially-designed bunker as a Houthi missile approached from Yemen. Indeed, only several minutes before this we had been talking about the October 7 massacre, the effects of which our group had already witnessed--a whole street of burned out homes, living rooms with Swiss-cheese-bullet-hole walls and ceilings, a pair of Converse shoes left vacant by a murdered youth, and weeping residents awaiting the return of hostages. We had stood in southern Israel in Kfar Aza and watched the plumes of smoke on the horizon and felt the thuds in our rib cages as the war continued in Gaza. And days before, we had visited the 2,000 year-old climax of all human darkness: the hill of Golgotha.

And yet in the human breast, we were told, there lies a heart of pure goodness. A true beauty that we must unearth. 

“You . . . are evil.” This is what Jesus tells us (Luke 11:13). 

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:10-18) God’s catalog of the human heart. Flowery, I know.

Over the snowy weekend, I reread William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I highly recommend it. It is powerful in its symbolism and its indictment of the depravity of the human heart. In it, a group of proper British boys are stranded on a deserted island. With the restraints of civilization removed, they slide steadily toward degeneracy, decay, and unrestrained violence. The tokens of self-control and order quickly disappear before the tsunami of inner human darkness.

The boys desperately fear an external beast when they ought to realize the beast within. In one of the most symbolic scenes, the Lord of the Flies (Beelzebub) says, “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?” 

This, unfortunately, is much more closely aligned with the Bible’s view of humanity than the Jerusalem psychologist was. I won’t spoil the book, but suffice it to say that it ends with a reminder that only a veneer of society suppresses some of these sinful instincts of humanity. This accords with Romans 13, which tells us that the government exists to check some of the base sinfulness of our hearts.

Our situation really is dire. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” (Jeremiah 17:9) Not a happy, joyful place of light and submission to God. No. Outside of the work of the Spirit of God, it lies in darkness, sin, and hatred of God. We can psychologize sin and think about it mainly in terms of the bad things humans do to one another. But the true depth of sin is that it is committed against God. “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” (Ps. 51:4)

This background makes the restoration wrought by Christ’s death and resurrection and the outpoured Spirit all that more beautiful. Through Christ, our hearts are restored, and the evil realm of the human heart is made to resound in “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). Think about it. The psychologist’s understanding of human nature renders Christ’s cross not only profane and backwards. It renders it totally unnecessary. In truth, our sins are so grave and pervasive that they require nothing less than the death of the sinless Son of God. And God was willing to offer him up for our salvation and the reclamation of our wayward hearts. The gospel of the crucified Christ and his life-giving Spirit is the answer, not the empty words, “You are good, you are strong, and you are enough.”