Human Depravity

A Texas man stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness. Nurses ran a Breathalyzer test. And sure enough, the man's blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.37 percent, or almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas. There was just one hitch: The man said that he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that day.

"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says Barabara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Texas. "His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.

So, the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.

Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut. In the absence of healthy gut flora, brewer's yeast had taken up residence in his stomach, and was turning any starch he ate into alcohol—and enough to inebriate him. The problem is by no means common, but happens from time to time. Usually, it's after a round of antibiotics that inadvertently wipe out the good bacteria that our bodies need to stay healthy and in balance.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The man's staggering experience is a powerful picture that sometimes we look for external explanations for internal problems, but sometimes the real problem is inside, deep inside in our life.

London's metropolitan police force has seen just about everything in terms of crime, and they've saved much of the evidence. A forward-thinking officer in 1874 began saving items from historic cases to show new recruits. The museum includes items like: Letters from the Jack the Ripper case, an oil drum used to dissolve murder victims in acid; Cannibal Dennis Nilsen's cooking pots; The umbrella-fired ricin bullet that the KGB used to kill a Bulgarian dissident in London during the Cold War; Items that once belonged to Charles Black, the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere, including a set of printing plates, forged banknotes, and a cunningly hollowed-out kitchen door once used to conceal them.

The museum houses evidence from some of the most twisted, barbaric criminal cases of recent history. It is not open to the public, as some people think it's just too gruesome for public viewing, but it is used as a teaching collection for police recruits. It also may show the monstrous side of humanity, what we have been and still are capable of doing to each other.

As a prisoner in Nazi death camps during World War II, Lily Engelman vowed that—if she survived—she would one day bear witness to the systematic slaughter of Jewish people. After the war, she emigrated from Hungary to Israel, where she found sewing work in a mattress factory. She married another Hungarian-speaking Jew, Shmuel Ebert, who had fled Europe before the war.

Despite her vow, however, she found herself rarely even mentioning the Holocaust after the war. People noticed the number tattooed on her left forearm but didn’t ask questions. They could never fathom the horrors she had endured, she thought. As for her own children, she preferred not to terrify them.

Only in the late 1980s, spurred partly by questions from one of her daughters, did she begin to open up. Resettled in London, she told her story in schools, in gatherings of other survivors and even in the British Parliament. Once she sat in a London train station and talked about the Holocaust with anyone who stopped to listen. In one video recounting her experiences, she says the Holocaust was the first time factories were built to kill people.

Lily Ebert, who died October 9, 2024 at the age of 100, once summed up her mission as trying “to explain the unexplainable.” But one of her obituaries noted that according to Ebert, words really matter. As she explained, “The Holocaust didn’t start with actions. It started with words.”

According to a new poll, more Americans over the age of 50 are using cannabis now than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among a sample of over 2,000 older adults (ages 50-80), 12% said they had consumed a product containing THC within the past year and 4% reported doing so multiple times per week.

Study leader and addiction psychologist Anne Fernandez, Ph.D. said,

As the stress of the pandemic and the increased legalization of cannabis converged, our findings suggest cannabis use increased among older adults nationally. Older adults represent a vulnerable age group for cannabis use due to interactions with medications, risky driving, cannabis-related mental health impacts, and increased possibility of falls and memory issues.

The 12% using cannabis in 2023 is notably higher than the 9.5% in 2019, and much higher than the 3% reported in a 2006 study. Back then, only 12 U.S. states had legalized medical cannabis laws. The National Poll on Healthy Aging reported in 2017 that 6% of older adults were using cannabis for medical purposes.

Those who were also unemployed, older adults who said they were unmarried and had no partner, and those who said they drank alcohol, were more likely to use marijuana. Dr. Fernandez notes an especially concerning finding: People with alcohol use high enough to potentially cause physical and psychological harm were close to eight times as likely to use cannabis in the past year.

This group of dual-substance users is one that doctors and public health officials need to pay special attention to. Dr. Fernandez explains, “Other research has shown that using both alcohol and cannabis increases the chance that a person will drive while impaired. They are also more likely to have physical and mental health issues, including substance use disorders.”

Could normalizing marijuana use lead to a heart health crisis? A dire new study has found a significant association between cannabis use and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke among adults in the United States. This comprehensive analysis, which included data from 430,000 individuals, sheds new light on the potential cardiovascular dangers of cannabis.

Cannabis, also known as marijuana, remains illegal at the federal level in the U.S., yet 24 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized its recreational use. Its popularity has soared, with the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reporting that 48.2 million people over the age of 12 used cannabis at least once that year, a significant rise from 25.8 million in 2002.

Lead study author Dr. Abra Jeffers says,

Despite common use, little is known about the risks of cannabis use and, in particular, the cardiovascular disease risks. The perceptions of the harmfulness of smoking cannabis are decreasing, and people have not considered cannabis use dangerous to their health. In addition, smoking cannabis — the predominant method of use — may pose additional risks because particulate matter is inhaled.

Researchers discovered that any form of cannabis use was associated with a higher number of adverse cardiovascular issues. Notably, the risk increased with the frequency of use. Daily cannabis users had a 25% higher chance of experiencing a heart attack compared to non-users, while their risk of stroke was 42% higher.

Particularly alarming was the finding that younger adults at risk for premature cardiovascular disease showed a 36% higher likelihood of suffering from coronary heart disease, heart attack, and stroke due to cannabis use.

Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller were recently convicted for the killing of Fairfield teacher Nohema Graber. Goodale told investigators that Miller was failing her Spanish class and was afraid he wouldn’t be able to go on a study abroad trip. Goodale and his accomplice, Willard Miller, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Graber, who disappeared on November 2, 2021, while walking in a local park. Her body was later discovered concealed under a tarp and wheelbarrow.

During the sentencing hearing, Barbara Graber delivered a victim impact statement expressing her readiness to free herself from haunting thoughts of Goodale and Miller. However, what stood out was the unexpected forgiveness extended to Goodale by members of the family. This is a decision that Barbara Graber, Nohema's former sister-in-law, hopes will aid their collective healing.

In a surprising turn of events, several family members expressed not only forgiveness but also prayers for Goodale. Other family members called the crime “a horrific act.” Several said they believed Goodale could have prevented the murder but instead had not only failed to act, but also participated. Yet several also told Goodale that they will be praying for him.

Goodale, in turn, tearfully apologized for his role in Nohema Graber's death. He acknowledged the irreparable loss caused by his actions and expressed regret for not considering the impact on Graber's family, the school, and the broader community. His sincerity was evident as he accepted responsibility and expressed a genuine desire for redemption. The judge stated, "Unlike your co-defendant, it’s clear to me you have regretted your role in Ms. Graber’s murder."

Ultimately, Goodale's 25-year minimum sentence with the opportunity for rehabilitation was seen by the prosecutor and the Graber family as a just outcome. The unexpected act of forgiveness highlighted the family's resilience and their belief in the possibility of redemption, even in the face of such a tragic loss.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The endless grace and mercy of God means that none of us are beyond forgiveness; therefore, living as a Christian means we must learn to forgive others in the way that God forgives us.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently unveiled a comprehensive strategy to target the legal materials used by traffickers in the production of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. The agency aims to use data-driven intelligence to disrupt the supply chain for the illegal contraband, including the postal service and air carriers, to identify and intercept suspicious goods along potential transit routes.

Troy Miller is the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and recently emphasized the evolving nature of the trade, which has recently included air cargo from Asia and sophisticated concealment methods. He said, “These criminals are sophisticated, innovative, and relentless. But so are our efforts to stop them.”

The initiative will target not only the drugs themselves, but any legal materials that can be used in their manufacture, distribution, or sales, such as necessary chemical elements and compounds, or the molds and presses used to create pills.

This is part of a larger strategy to intensify efforts to combat the ongoing drug crisis. This includes recent indictments and sanctions against Chinese companies implicated in the illicit importation of chemicals to produce fentanyl. Acknowledging China and Mexico as primary sources of fentanyl trafficking, the DEA continues to grapple with the challenge posed by these global supply chains, often masked by deceptive labeling and false return addresses.

Paul Ford writes in an article on Wired, what happened when he switched his weight loss meds and found a miracle cure. Decades of struggle with an insatiable desire for food, gone in an instant. But his reflection on the experience is less of an advertisement as it is a probing of human nature amid advances in pharmacology. He writes:

This is a technology that will reorder society. I have been the living embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony, judged as greedy and weak since I was 10 years old — and now the sin is washed away. Baptism by injection. But I have no more virtue than I did a few months ago. I just prefer broccoli to gloopy chicken. Is this who I am?

How long is it before there’s an injection for your appetites, your vices? Maybe they’re not as visible as mine. Would you self-administer a weekly anti-avarice shot? Can Big Pharma cure your sloth, lust, wrath, envy, pride?

On this front, the parallels between Ford’s weight loss drug and every other drug are almost obvious (whether they be coffee, THC, or any fill-in-the-blank name brand). The alluring promise that frailty is simply a matter of chemistry. More interesting is what happens to Ford himself after the one signal pathway is silenced — his brain averts its gaze elsewhere:

Where before my brain had been screaming, screaming, at air-raid volume — there was sudden silence. It was confusing. […] “I urgently need, I thought … Something to fill the silence where food used to be. Every night for weeks I spent four, five hours twisting Moog knobs. Not making music. Just droning, looping, and beep-booping. I needed something to obsess over, to watch YouTube videos about. I needed something to fail at every night to feel normal.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The flesh is never satisfied and cannot be conquered by human will or science. Impeding one of the desires of the flesh simply ignites another. The church of big pharma might provide a kind of cure, but there is no panacea for human nature, except “the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

In the popular, BBC murder mystery series Broadchurch, the mystery is who in this lovely little seaside town could have murdered a child. The local detective, Eli Miller, is dubious that anyone from the town could’ve done it. This is a tight knit community of good people. She says, “We don’t have these problems.” In response, Detective Inspector, Alec Hardy argues with her.

Hardy: Anybody’s capable of murder, given the right circumstances.

Miller: Most people have moral compasses.

Hardy: Compasses break.

Tim Keller adds: “The fictional detective inspector is telling us exactly what the Bible says. You must not be in denial about your capacity for evil. You will do some really bad things in your life that will utterly shock you, unless you get ahold of this particular truth from the Bible. Blame shifting is therefore one of the most dangerous things that you can do.”

Legend has it that G. K. Chesterton, the famous philosopher/theologian, was asked by a newspaper reporter what was wrong with the world. He skipped over all the expected answers. He said nothing about corrupt politicians or ancient rivalries between warring nations, or the greed of the rich and the covetousness of the poor. He left aside street crime and unjust laws and inadequate education. Environmental degradation and population growth overwhelming the earth’s carrying capacity were not on his radar. Neither were the structural evils that burgeoned as wickedness became engrained in society and its institutions in ever more complex ways.

What’s wrong with the world? As the story goes, Chesterton responded with just two words: “I am.”

His answer is unlikely to be popular with a generation schooled to cultivate self-esteem, to pursue its passions and chase self-fulfillment first and foremost. ... (But) maybe there is something to Chesterton’s answer after all. In fact, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was fond of saying that original sin—the idea that every one of us is born a sinner and will manifest that sinfulness in his or her life—is the only Christian doctrine that can be empirically verified. Everyone, whether a criminal or a saint, sins. Insofar as that dismal verdict is true, it’s hardly surprising that there is a great deal wrong with the world.

A series of political, cultural, and social events in the early 1980s led to many Germans to deal honestly with the Nazi horrors of the past. Before 1980 most Germans regarded themselves as victims of the Second World War. Vast numbers had lost family members, friends, colleagues. As the post-war generation was coming of age, "more and more Germans came to grasp the enormity of Nazi crimes against others, especially Jews." The actions of the nationally repentant were numerous and mostly local.

In schools and communities, research soared, as ordinary people … got to work. Teachers, housewives, retirees, and students researched what happened in their neighborhoods. They affixed plaques to destroyed and desecrated synagogues, and restored local cemeteries (often with the help of Jews who could read the Hebrew inscriptions). They figured out the places where Jewish people were deported from and where the barracks of nearby concentration subcamps were located. They also established an enormous network of contacts.

In many communities, Germans wrote letters to Jews who were forced to emigrate or had lost kin in the Holocaust. They wrote to get their stories. They wrote to help identify other Jews from the city, town, or neighborhood. And they wrote to invite them back. In large and small cities communities invited Jewish people to return for a “visitor week,” with the communities typically paying for travel and lodging. People gave speeches, wrote articles, and even books. Some local historians wrote about nefarious hometown Nazis. Other historians worked out the fate that befell local Jews, “members of our community,” as many Germans began to call them.

This German-version of the civil rights movement, if it may be called that, dramatically changed how people in the Federal Republic thought about their history and who belonged to it.

A Lutheran church has stood at 400 S Logan Street in Denver since the early 1900s, but as of recently it has become unoccupied. In April of 2017, the church was reopened as a place of worship for the followers of a brand-new religion: “Elevationism,” dedicated to the spiritual benefits of cannabis.

It’s only fitting that the home of the International Church of Cannabis is in Denver, a city that is literally a mile high. The church’s overgrown, antiquated exterior is in striking contrast with its flamboyant technicolor interior, complete with a huge “WEED” sign, rows of pews to smoke on, and a neon rainbow mural on the ceiling.

Elevationism does not have any specific dogma, nor does it require conversion from other religions, so long as its adherents recognize cannabis as a sacrament.

The church was opened on April 20 (420 is a popular code for marijuana) and recently launched BEYOND, a fully immersive, meditative experience with projection mapping, laser lights, and sound. BEYOND begins with a nine-minute guided meditation and contemplative journey through the wisdom of the ages, followed by a 25-minute psychedelic light show set to your favorite classic rock songs.

In the early 1960s, political writer Hannah Arendt attended the trials of Adolf Eichmann, the German officer who had orchestrated much of the Holocaust. In 1934, Eichmann had been appointed to the Jewish section of the “security services” of the SS. From then on, he became deeply involved with the formulation and operation of the “final solution to the Jewish question.” He drew up the idea of deportation of Jews into ghettos, and went about gathering Jews into concentration camps with murderous efficiency. He took great pride in the role he played in the death of six million European Jews.

At his trial, Arendt expected to find a monster. Only a deranged psychopath could lend his considerable organizational skills to the mass murder of millions in Nazi Germany. What stunned Arendt was her startling discovery of a “normal” and “simple” man at the trial. The notorious architect of the Holocaust did not appear as a devil but as a banal bureaucrat doing what he was told.

Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provides an unnerving account of unreflective living. Eichmann insisted in the trial that he was not a murderer but that his conscience demanded of him unquestioning submission to the demands of his superiors. Those demands resulted in the calculated deportation of millions of women, children, and men to their orchestrated deaths.

As Arendt reported, psychologists diagnosed Eichmann as “normal” with familial affections that were enviable. Herein lies the horror. Eichmann loved his wife; he was a good father. He was not a monster. He was banal, unremarkable, and commonplace. This “normal” man could be transformed into the abhorrent perpetrator of humanity’s grossest crimes because his banality and ambition kept him from an inner examination of his life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Eichmann’s crimes seem far removed from anything ordinary people would commit. But without self-reflection and confession, normal people are capable of horrific evil. Psalm 36:2 (“In their blind conceit, they cannot see how wicked they really are,” NLT) has something to say about Eichmann and the banality of evil. It has something to say to us.

Everyone is acting so weird! The most obvious recent weirdness was when Will Smith smacked Chris Rock at the Oscars. But people have been behaving badly on smaller stages for months now. Last week, a man was arrested after he punched a gate agent at the Atlanta airport. People also found ways to throw tantrums while skiing—skiing. In one viral video, a man slid around the chairlift-boarding area, one foot strapped into his snowboard as he flailed at security guards and refused to comply with a mask mandate.

During the pandemic, bad behavior of all kinds has increased. Americans are driving more recklessly, crashing their cars, and killing pedestrians at higher rates. Health-care workers say their patients are behaving more violently, as a result, Missouri hospitals planned to outfit nurses with panic buttons. In 2020, the US murder rate rose by nearly a third, the biggest increase on record, then rose again in 2021. And if there were a national tracker of school-board-meeting hissy fits, it would be heaving with data points right now.

What on earth is happening? How did Americans go from clapping for health-care workers to threatening to kill them? More than a dozen experts on crime, psychology, and social norms suggest few possible explanations:

We’re all stressed out: One explanation for the spike in bad behavior is the rage, frustration, and stress coursing through society right now. Everyone is teetering slightly closer to their breaking point. Someone who may have lost a job, a loved one, or a friend to the pandemic might be pushed over the edge.

People are drinking more: People have been coping with the pandemic by drinking more and doing more drugs. A lot of these incidents involve somebody using a substance. Americans have been drinking 14 percent more days a month during the pandemic, and drug overdoses have also increased since 2019.

We’re social beings, and isolation is changing us: The pandemic loosened ties between people: Kids stopped going to school; their parents stopped going to work; parishioners stopped going to church; people stopped gathering, in general. Sociologists think all of this isolation shifted the way we behave. The rise in disorder may simply be the unsavory side of a uniquely difficult time—one in which many people were tested, and some failed.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Extraordinary times reveal that our civilized veneer is very thin. Stress strips away the manners that people use as masks and shows true character of the old nature. Only the new nature that God implants in the redeemed can cope with stressful, disruptive times (2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 8:1-39).

On August 11, 2017, the world's oldest man passed away, just a month short of his 114th birthday—making him one of the 10 longest lived men since modern record keeping began. If you knew nothing else about him than this, you might expect to discover that he had led a peaceful life, free of fear, grief, and danger.

The truth is the opposite. The man in question was Yisrael Krystal, a Holocaust survivor. Born in Poland in 1903, he survived for years in the Lodz Ghetto, and was then transported to Auschwitz. In this ghetto, his two children died. In Auschwitz, his wife was killed. When Auschwitz was liberated, he was a walking skeleton weighing a mere 82 pounds. He was the only member of his family to survive.

He was raised as a religious Jew and stayed so all his life. When the war was over, with his entire world destroyed, he married again, this time to another holocaust survivor. They had children. They moved to Israel and centered in Haifa, there he began again, setting up in the confectionary business, as he had done in Poland before the war. He made sweets and chocolate. He became an innovator. If you have ever had Israeli orange peel covered in chocolate, liqueur chocolates shaped like little bottles, and covered with silver foil, you are enjoying one of the products he originated. Those who knew him said he was a man with no bitterness in his soul. He wanted people to taste sweetness.

Walt Whitman, one of the greatest of American poets writes in, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" of his capacity for evil:

I am he who knew what it was to be evil,

I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,

Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,

Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,

Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,

The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,

The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting, ...

Notorious cult leader Charles Manson was responsible for the brutal deaths of nine people in the summer of 1969. The murders were so gruesome and sensational that Manson has been an obsession for many people even after his death.

This summer (2019) a Quentin Tarantino movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is being released. It is based partially on Manson’s crimes and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Kurt Russell, and Al Pacino. Film historian Peter Biskind writes about Manson’s appeal in an issue of Esquire.

Some examples of our fascination with Charles Manson and evil:

-At least 50 books have been written about Manson.

-Helter Skelter, the book on his investigation and trial, has sold over seven million copies. It is the “best-selling true-crime book of all time.”

-One opera entitled The Manson Family was produced.

-Eleven feature films, documentaries, and TV series focus entirely on him or he is a large part of the subject covered.

-According to the recent article in Esquire: “In addition to comic books and multiple websites devoted to him …, jewelry, coffee mugs, and T-shirts displaying his image sell on eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. ... You can download his singing and talking ringtones to your cell phone—for free.”

Biskind ends his article by delving into the essence of this fascination:

One thing Charlie liked to say was “Look straight at me and you see yourself.” Maybe one answer to the riddle of Manson and his girls is that they remind us of the ultimate unknowability of other people, even the seemingly unremarkable ones. Theirs is the story of Little Red Riding Hood in reverse: The smiling young girl at the door selling Girl Scout cookies is herself the Big Bad Wolf, and may be hiding a dagger under her cloak.

President Mobutu reigned as the dictator and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. But after global political changes, Mobutu was forced out of power and the country collapsed and descended into conflict and chaos. British pastor Mark Meynell tells the story of his good friend Emma, who witnessed many atrocities committed against his friends and family members. He and his wife and three daughters fled east on foot. Weeks later they arrived in Uganda as refugees, with nothing. After a few months of a miserable existence, he walked past a local seminary and sensed that the Lord was calling him to ministry. The family had been living in one room, without water or electricity, and enough to pay for one meal every two days.

Meynell said that one evening they met in the seminary's tiny library and started talking. As Emma opened his heart and shared the story of the violence and injustice he had witnessed, he started to openly weep, despite the fact that African men never cry in public. Then Emma said these sobering words, "You know Mark, I could never believe the gospel if it were not for the judgment of God. Because I will never get justice in this world. But I couldn't cope if I was NEVER going to see justice done."

Meynell commented, "We in the West often recoil from God's justice for a very simple reason: We've hardly had to suffer injustice. But most people around the globe recognize that God's justice is praiseworthy and great. Of course his mercy and redemption are even greater, but we need his perfect justice as well."

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Joe Walsh, the lead guitarist for the band Eagle's, was asked to describe the worst part of success:

The worst part of success is that a lot of things come along with it that you didn't really know you were gonna get in the package. There are distractions: Money, drugs, women, partying. You get a royalty check, and you go get a new car, and then you party, and then you get high—and then you forget what got you there in the first place. It's all ego stuff. When you're young it's really easy to lose your perspective, which I did, really losing sight of who I was. I started believing I was who everybody thought I was—which was a crazy rock star. You know "Life's Been Good," that story. It took me away from working at my craft. Me and a lot of the guys I ran with, we were just party monsters, and it was a real challenge to stay alive and end up on the other end of it.

The interviewer then asked, "So many of your friends from that era—like Keith Moon and John Belushi—didn't make it. What do you think caused you to survive it?" "Don't know," replied Walsh. "I wonder every day. People often ask me if I believe in God and I kinda have to, because I'm still here. I had not planned on living this long, and here I am."

Author Rosaria Butterfield says that being born with a sin nature is a little bit like inheriting a garden. In a radio interview Butterfield put it this way:

Let's say that you inherited an enchanting garden. And for 10 years, you just let it thrive. You let it do anything it wanted. You never pruned back the weeds. You never got rid of the pests. You never worked with the roses. You just let it quote-unquote "thrive."

And after 10 years, what is it? It's a disaster. It might even be way past the point of no return. And you go to a master gardener and you say, "Hey, this is not fair. I want my money back. I just did everything I could to let this garden thrive. I let it do exactly what it wanted." You know, the master gardener's going to laugh at you and say, "Buddy, gardens come with weeds! It's part of its nature and by failing to deal with that, you destroyed it."