Back in the 1930s the poet and dramatist T.S. Elliot wrote a play called The Family Reunion.

In it he tried to describe the depth and extent of human sin. Sin is portrayed as an old house afflicted by an all-permeating

stench that no one can seem to get rid of. Sin is an inconsolable sobbing in the chimney,

bumps in the cellar,

a rattling of the windows,

evil in a dark closet.

It is a private dising puzzle deeper than cancer.

As Elliot knew, this tireless evil from within affects every part of our human nature.

We're in a state that the Scottish pastor Thomas Boston described as entire depravity.

The 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards says the same thing when he writes

all mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin. What they're describing is what theologians have called total

depravity. Now that is not to say that every part of our nature is as bad as it could possibly be.

No, thankfully by God's grace, that is not the case. What the term total depravity describes is the fact that no part of our nature

escapes the defilement of sin. And the reason for that is because sin isn't some kind of virus that lurks outside us.

It's not a contamination we can somehow isolate or avoid by doing certain things or not doing certain other things, which is the view of every

religion apart from Christianity.

Sin is already, as T.S. Elliot knew inside the gates. It's inside each one of us.

That's what Jesus says in Mark Chapter 7.

There is nothing outside a person

that by going into him can defile him.

But the things that come out of a person

are what defile him.

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