This is Paul’s third reflection on the film Amazing Grace:

I fight “the truth about myself” [and the world] all the time. It is not nice or fun, usually, to give in to the truth - our utter need of God’s love, grace, and mercy. Catholic and Orthodox theology even fight ideas like “total depravity” - usually misunderstanding them. That doctrine, properly understood, does not say, I think, that we are as bad as we can be, but that badness is everywhere. Like the tares among the wheat, it is in amongst every goodness and that goodness is never “pure”, but always tempted. Good is really good when it acknowledges that proximity of evil and fights it. I do believe Catholics and Orthodox are at times better at noting “goodness” here and there than Protestants (Evangelicals), - but this also carries with it the weakness of unwillingness to face “self-deceptions”, and unwillingness to really face the depth of the evil virus inside of us all - including collective societal diseases, like the one’s challenging now our Wilberforce idealisms.