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What's Wrong With People?
It was a beautiful September morning. The last remnants of summer were just chasing away the chill of the morning autumn air. What a perfect day to take our three young boys to the magical world of Sesame Place!
After finishing our first rollercoaster ride together, my middle son and I followed the crowd toward the narrow exit gate. From behind we heard an older man loudly excusing himself as he elbowed his way past the line of waiting children to get out first. A woman in front of me promptly protested his rudeness, and the two of them began bickering, each one putting down the other in colorful and bold language new to my son’s ears. Even as they parted they were screaming at each other, and all the while both were holding the hand of a wide-eyed little one gazing up and drinking in this interaction.
Shaking my head and redirecting my son’s attention to our next ride, I met up with a friend of mine who had been waiting on a bench for us to return. As it turns out while we were gone, he overheard a woman boasting about all of the expensive toys she had just stolen from the gift store. Without any remorse, she had shoved them all into her child’s stroller, and was laughing about it with a friend while encouraging her child to eat stolen snacks.
Saddened, I was thinking about these events on our drive home when a car pulled up next to me. The driver glared at me, and then passionately demonstrated her sign-language abilities, though I don’t think the gesture she gave me would actually be found in the sign -language handbook. Trying to think of what I did to offend her, all I could muster was a puzzled look in return. As she sped off, I let out a frustrated, “What is wrong with people???!!”
The kids had fallen asleep, knocked out from all the amusement park “fun,” giving me an hour and half to drive, and ponder that question with just me, my minivan, and I-95. As I mentally chewed on the events of the day, the Holy Spirit reminded me of my own attitudes that morning. In the frenzied rush to get my family out the door on time, I had directed several careless words in my husband’s direction. I recalled my feeble apology to him, and his trademark grin that wiped away my failures before the word “sorry” made it past my lips. And I realized that the question isn’t really “what’s wrong with people?” It’s “what’s wrong with me?” Because the answers to both are the same. The Bible calls it “sin.” It’s like we’re all broken, all just a little bit skewed from how we were meant to be.
The depth of this brokenness goes beyond a few stolen Elmo’s or prideful, petty bickering. Every frame of movies like Saving Private Ryan aches with the brokenness of our human condition. Behind heavy news headlines, I can almost hear a faint echo mourning the fact that this wasn’t how it was meant to be. From the leaders of Nazi Germany to the manipulative televangelists on TV, no one is immune to sin. I see its power over my children everyday as I train them to share and to treat others with kindness. Strangely, I’ve never had to teach my children to be selfish. It seems to come naturally to them, to all of us.
But the oddity is that there is another part within each one of us that is repulsed by this very brokenness. We know that it’s wrong. And it is this duality within my heart that compels me to believe in Jesus. Outside the Bible there is no explanation as to why every human on earth has a natural bent toward sin yet at the same time has a moral repulsion of it. Scripture teaches us in Genesis that we are made in God’s image, and yet as a result of our ancient ancestor’s disobedience in Eden we all have a sinful nature. Within each one of us there is the pressed-in signature of our Creator, and out of that sacred mold, we all somehow instinctively feel the vast distance between how God intended things and how things are. We know deep down when little eyes gaze up to behold brokenness reacting with brokenness, this wasn’t how it was meant to be.
And then Jesus enters the scenario. Like a doctor resetting a broken bone, Jesus came to fix what has gone awry in our hearts. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” When we come to Christ, we break the soul-shrinking cycle to which our brokenness would have us enslaved. How freeing to know that Jesus doesn’t condemn us for our sinfulness, but offers us forgiveness and a new life-giving pattern to order our lives.
As Christians, God doesn’t take away our sinful nature. If anything He makes us entirely more aware of it, causing us to lean on Him daily for strength to deny that part of us, and choose His other-worldly ways instead. His example teaches us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to refuse to “be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) These are foreign and refreshing concepts in a tit-for-tat world.
In Christ, I find that “what is wrong with me” is not beyond God’s ability to forgive and heal. There is hope for a heart like mine. There is hope for a world like ours. When I feel suffocated by the darkness so prevalent in this world, at Sesame Place, and within my own heart, I look to Jesus and find I can breathe again. 