Before we celebrate Martin Luther, we should acknowledge that his (and Calvin's) misguided understanding of the "total depravity" of the human person has done more to deform the portrait of Jesus in the gospels than just about anything else in history. By imposing their own self-understanding on the gospel, they led generations of human beings -- especially sexual beings -- to believe they stood condemned before God and could do nothing to help themselves. The idea that Luther was entirely right and the Church entirely wrong is based on an uncritical reading of the documents.