"He's Lying!"

One of the objections raised by skeptics of Christianity is whether humans are really born sinful. Some want to believe “we’re basically good people who occasionally do bad things.” But the truth is we’re basically bad people who occasionally do good things – and never the good required by a holy God whose standard is perfection. Hence, our need for a perfect savior to stand in our place, which God so graciously provided in His Son, Jesus Christ.

I’ve often heard it said that if you don’t believe people are born with a selfish nature (which is really what sin is), then just look at your own kids. Did you have to teach them to say, “Mine”? Did you have to teach them to want their own way, and to protest when they don’t get it?

I don’t have kids of my own, but I see it every day in the children I work with in Living Hope’s life skills program. We have a set of rules – e.g., no fighting, no swearing, and so on – and violators are dealt with appropriately. If two offenders are involved – say, one accuses another of swearing – invariably the response is, “He’s lying, Al!” My response is, “Well, somebody’s lying, because either he swore or he didn’t.”

Self-preservation is a universal instinct, and it goes hand-in-hand with our sinful nature. The prophet Jeremiah aptly summed it up when he wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9). Beyond cure by itself, that is. Thank God for His Son who fixes blackened and broken hearts.