My Heart is Good(?)

I don't know about you but I've heard this statement a lot lately: "inside, man is basically good." It's a nice sentiment. I'd like to believe it, actually. I don't like thinking badly about other people. I want to trust that others will have my best interest at heart and if given a choice between harm and good, we will choose good.

I wish it were so, but sadly, it's not. The trouble is, our own hearts fool us into believing it is so. Recent studies of the human mind show that it is a more powerful thing than we ever imagined. The mind actually is self justifying. When you do something, your own thoughts will convince you that it was the right thing to do. That's how people like Adolf Hitler could do the things he did and stay functioning.

Jeremiah the prophet knew this a long time ago. He wrote:

17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"

Thanks to a decision made by Adam, we have all been infected with a sickness called disobedience. It separated us from God and began to spread as a cancer throughout our race.

The biggest problem is we don't know we are sick because our minds are "deceitful above all things."

How do we learn about the truth of our hearts? We go to an outside objective source. That's God, who created us. That's God's word, which he shared then verified through the prophets. That word tells us we are sick, and it gives the antidote: Jesus Christ - God Himself.

God becomes the cure for our sickness by taking on our sickness and killing it. Isn't that cool!?

Pastor Tom