Christian Learning Center › Forums › Discussion Forum › How does belief in “naïve foolishness” (stage 1) contradict the idea of childhood innocence?
Tagged: CC202-06
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How does belief in “naïve foolishness” (stage 1) contradict the idea of childhood innocence?
Austin replied 2 months ago 34 Members · 34 Replies
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No one is born innocent since the fall of Adam and Eve. Naive foolishness or unshaped foolishness is the desire to move away from God and toward self and selfishness. Naive foolishness helps me to understand the phrase “we are all born in sin.” Nothing has to be done by a human for foolishness to be bound up in their heart, they simply have to be born. Innocence, the absence of offense, speaks to intent.
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The energy of the soul of a baby is self-focused to start with and moves away from God.
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We are born stained, ruined. Our foolishness, our desire to move away from God is not shaped yet and is less easy to detect than it will be later in life, but we are not innocent. Our desire to move away from God is shaped by our experience, but our anti-God desire is already there.
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It goes against the idea of childhood inoocence, because it says that all individuals from the time of conception are fallen, foolish, and self-seeking creatures.
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If we are born to constantly desire, to want and to never give back, it shows that we are made of selfishness, already moving away from God the moment we take a breath. I think in some ways this can be mislabeled as innocence, depending on the definition, but if you use the phrase “free from moral wrong,” then we can indeed declare that a child is not merely because they were not born instantly glorifying God with their lives. It’s a bit of a unfair expectation, I think, because they can’t really choose that until much later, but I agree that this position of being does contradict the argument that children are born innocent.