When he gets home, he will set an alarm. He will tell his wife: when the alarm goes off I will beat you up. He will demand sex and force himself on her when he feels like it. In his anger he will take plates from the cupboard and smash them on the floor. He will smash his fist through the glass door. He will expect her to think his thoughts, do his bidding, make everything right so he never feels bad. He will take every opportunity to put her down, subtly, without her knowing. He will undermine her and reduce her to a husk. Everything she says will be wrong, only what he says counts.
At the respectful relationships course, ten men listen to facilitators question them on how it must feel for their children to live in an atmosphere of fear and violence; to hear the kicking, shouting, screaming, the dull thud of head against wall. As it dawns on them, as they look at their victims, and they see themselves how the victims do, a sense of shame and fear envelopes them. “You’re making me feel bad” one shouts in anger. At the coffee break, the group plots to undermine the facilitators, to distract, to disrupt, to steer the focus away from considering their true state.
The pretence is stripped away and the sheer pain of facing their state, their inward poverty, their sin (for want of a better word), their shame is more than they can stand. Even this brief shining of light into the filthy basement of their soul is enough to illicit an explosive anger.
We don’t want to feel bad. The darkness and the wall of denial are comforting because it hides us from facing ourselves. We do not want to feel our inadequacy, our shame, our embarrassment. And if anyone holds up a mirror, or calls us to account we will squirm, and try to excuse ourselves. Our excuses range widely in nature and ingenuity. The first thing we might do is blame someone else. By distracting attention from ourselves we take the pressure off. If that doesn’t work, we will move to justification. Arguments and rhetoric as to why it was the right thing to do are pursued, or reasons why there was no choice. Such justifications can descend into fiction and fantasy.
We will minimise, explaining our evil away as an error; a small omission. We are no way in the league of Hitler or Pol Pot. We like to think ourselves as good. We derive comfort from newspaper reports of atrocities, of major crimes. Murder and robbery are not something we do. We look like generally good people when compared to the newspaper headlines and the crime reports. We adopt disguises, developing images of how we want to be seen, disguising ourselves. Lying becomes something we do without thinking as we seek adulation, applause, affirmation from those around us.
We sanitise evil. Even the concept of evil is not helpful. We portray it as something we will grow out of, something that is a temporary phenomenon for humanity. We deny the fact that not only is evil part of the human constitution, a starting point, it is something we grow deeper and deeper into rather than out of.
We do not need to teach a child to do evil. Though some do, rewarding the child for swearing, for hitting out because it makes us feel better about what we do, to feel less evil. There is a built-in selfishness in the child. A wish to possess, to hit out, to steal, which the parent has to reign in until the child is competent enough to exert self-control. Any idea that humans are naturally good and altruistic flies in the face of our common experience.
But disciplining doesn’t feel good. Rather it can elicit anger and fear. We don’t want to be dragged into the light. Our first reaction is one of fear. Not just fear of being discovered and facing the consequences of our actions and the justice that is demanded. But the fear of what is inside ourselves. We are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And Mr Hyde prefers the darkness. While Dr Jekell dwells in self-denial, unwilling to face the source of evil which is inside, not in the external world.
The primary response to an awareness of inadequacy and need is an effort to control. The prime object of control is relationships. In an effort to plug the gap, to fill in the gaping hole, all effort is invested in engineering acknowledgement, agreement and acquiescence to the controller’s agenda. In an effort to cover up the lack of love, of attachment, of meaning that the controller has suffered, he will create an image. That image is designed to attract people to him. It is an image of competency of power, of invincibility. Then everything and everyone must line up with that image. Through the means of fear, coercion, and intimidation, or perhaps just the appeal of rhetoric, people are forced to accept the controller’s image and agenda.
Pride helps us maintain the image we wish to put across. The controller reacts with pride to promote the identity he has created. When that identity fractures, is shown to be of clay not steel, a sense of fear grows. And that fear breeds anger, expressed in evil.
If there is a God, a God whose characteristics must include absolute purity, the mere indication of His presence will expose our nakedness and vulnerability. Our human reaction is to flee, to hide from the blinding light.
The humanist flees from the light. Afraid of the light, he welcomes darkness, a darkness such that he can’t see his own hand. Such is the pain of the light that anything is better: killing the idea of God, not permitting one possibility of God because the personal consequences are so dreadful.
We retreat behind a wall, create a climate of denial, of pretence. This is not reason but prejudice. The humanist does not want there to be a God.
The human argument is an argument of the heart. We pull up the drawbridge of reason to resist an evasion of doubt. Generally, we think we’re good. Generally the humanist does not wish to control, and thinks of himself as reasonable and good. But our best efforts always fail because we are driven by a selfishness which undermines our wishes. The problem of the human is a problem inside the human.
Humanism pursues a denial of the heart. It creates a delusion of perfection. It is a faith in the nature of humans which flies in the face of all the evidence and requires a faith more extensive and strong than what might be required to believe in fairies and flying teapots. It is at the heart of human problem that humans rely on their own efforts to attain perfectionism. By reason, by ritual, by rhetoric, we try to achieve the impossible and present ourselves as perfect.
It seems reasonable to worship a perfect God who is all love, all light, and perfect humanity expressed in Jesus Christ. It seems wholly unreasonable to worship the human state: degenerate, flaw immersed in lies, hate, wars, intrigue and a selfishness which penetrates every aspect of the human psyche.
The Human Argument 
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