The myth of the ‘good person’

The Romans had a phrase for when wine starts talking: In vino veritas.

In wine, truth.

‘Good person’ is not a diagnosis, a legal defense, or a Christian understanding of the human heart.

The phrase is linked to Pliny the Elder, who wrote that drunkenness brings out “the secrets of the mind.”

His examples included lust, anger, reckless words, violence, and lost memory.

When restraint disappeared, wisdom did not show up.

Wine is not a truth serum. Alcohol clouds judgment and weakens self-control. We do not get drunk before driving, watching children, or making important decisions. Impaired judgment rarely produces better choices.

Still, nobody says, “He got drunk and spent the evening showing patience, wisdom, and self-control.”

Take away the guardrails, and something besides goodness often comes out.

What does this say about free will? We often talk as though the will sits above our desires. Christianity teaches something different.

The Fall did not make us puppets. We make choices, but sin has bent what we want.

We can do what we want. Our problem is what we want.

Fallen man cannot turn himself toward God. God must renew the will.

Pelagius was a fifth-century monk who taught that people could obey God without first being changed by His grace. Semi-Pelagianism offered a softer version. It admitted that sin damaged us and that we need God’s help. But it still claimed we could reach toward God first. God would then complete what we started.

The church rejected that teaching at the Second Council of Orange in 529 AD. Scripture teaches that even our desire to reach for God begins with Him. God does not merely help willing people save themselves. He makes unwilling sinners willing.

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Why does that ancient argument matter? Because our culture still assumes an untouched pocket of goodness remains inside us. Remove the wounds, diagnoses, and poor choices, and the good person underneath will finally come out.

Total depravity does not mean utter depravity. People can love, sacrifice, work hard, and show courage.

But much of what keeps us from becoming worse is restraint.

Conscience, families, laws, reputations, consequences, and God’s common grace restrain us.

Those things help keep a lid on the pot. They do not clean what is in it.

Restraint is not redemption.

That’s why the conversations following Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial trouble me.

I am not asking whether Clancy met the legal standard for criminal responsibility. That was the jury’s task. I am asking why so many people outside the courtroom seem determined to acquit human nature itself.

Clancy does not deny killing Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Her defense argued postpartum psychosis left her not legally responsible. Prosecutors disagreed. The jury divided.

Clancy’s attorney described her as strong, brave, wonderful, and loving. His admirers joined in. A lawyer should defend his client, but a legal defense cannot declare the human heart innocent.

Someone can show love while remaining capable of terrible evil.

Past good behavior does not erase present horror.

Scripture makes this clear in the life of David. He was called a man after God’s own heart. Then he committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged the murder of her husband.

When confronting him, Nathan the prophet did not defend David by listing his courage, worship, or service to Israel. He looked at the king and said, “Thou art the man.” David did not point to all the good he had done. He said, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

David returned through repentance, not reputation. He was forgiven, but Uriah remained dead. Severe consequences followed David and his family from that moment on.

My father used to say, “God forgives instantly. Man takes a while. Nature never does.”

Sometimes what we do in a few minutes establishes a lifetime of consequences.

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“Good person” is not a diagnosis, a legal defense, or a Christian understanding of the human heart. Nor should three dead children become background characters in the tragedy of the adult who killed them.

Before a holy God, we stand fully exposed. No lawyer can reshape the record. No diagnosis can turn evil into good. No list of past virtues can erase present sin. God knows every illness, impairment, pressure, and intention, and He judges perfectly.

But if I use this case only to point at Lindsay Clancy, I have missed the doctrine entirely. Human depravity gives me no place to stand and announce that I am one of the good people.

I do not need to imagine what I might do without restraint. I see enough of my own sin with every guardrail God placed around me still standing.

The gospel is not God placing a better lid on a basically good heart. Christ gives us new hearts. He renews our minds. He changes what we love.

Alcohol and other mind-altering substances may expose some of what restraint keeps hidden. Stress and pain may do the same. The cross reveals the deepest truth about us. Our sin is worse than we think, but we are not beyond the reach of Christ.

Restraint can limit depravity. Only redemption through Christ can rescue us from it.

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