What is wrong with us, and why does it matter? A. Part II

Guntars Baikovs
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How to think about sin and sinfulness

Let’s take a brief look at what God teaches us about sin in His Book. Later we will learn why all of this matters when thinking about marriage.

Matthew 15:19-20
Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”
Romans 3:10-12
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

As you can see, both Jesus and Paul speak not about our actions, nor what we say or think, but about our very hearts. What are they talking about?

Let’s look at an illustration that I’ve used with many different audiences.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) has come up with an exciting invention. Neurological research being one of their interests, they have created a new cutting-edge gadget that can read the activity of your brain and translate your thoughts in real time to a computer screen: you can almost watch them like a movie.
Now, you can’t exactly buy such a device on eBay, but a friend of mine who works for NASA helped me to get one of these.

Now all I need is a volunteer who would be happy to reveal all their thoughts for others to see, for a half an hour or so. 

Can you guess what people’s usual reaction is when I ask for a volunteer? Laughing…fidgeting… But why?
Because we know that if someone saw what we carry inside, perhaps we’d be better off leaving that town…or country.

This is of course made-up story, but it is a great illustration. British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge is credited with this quote: The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.Isn’t it strange? This simple illustration about the NASA gadget reveals it so clearly.
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