The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good. The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one. (Psalm 14:1-3)

The Truth Is The True Self Of Mankind Is In Fact Evil

Let’s see what Christ Jesus of Nazareth–the LORD God Himself in human flesh–has to say about mankind’s “true self.” During His teaching about the importance of persistence in prayer and the incredible Gift of the Holy Spirit the Master asks the following question:

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7:9-10)

Now let’s note carefully what our Creator says next – “If you, most wonderful people who are simply trapped behind your false self, would discover your ‘sacred call to self-discovery’ and the precious ‘gift of being yourself’ then you’ll be able to find your ‘true self.’ ” No! Our Lord says – “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will Your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” Did catch that? Jesus says – “Your Father” – so these are His Own disciples He’s talking to here. And the Master didn’t even spare them the awful truth that God the Holy Spirit would further reveal through His inspired Apostle Paul:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (Romans 7:18-20, NASB)

You can forget the argument that this is the Apostle Paul talking about before he was born again/born from above because the unregenerate man has no such struggle. And this is really nothing new. It was written as far back as Genesis 8:21 not long after righteous Noah and his family had stepped off the ark – The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” So you see, when Christ Jesus our Creator told His disciples we are evil the Lord is simply being consistent with what He had already told mankind in Genesis after the fall and again after the flood.

And if you still have a doubt that these fools in the Ecumenical Church of Deceit wish to take you back into the bondage of their mercurial mother the apostate Church of Rome then consider this a little further on in the inerrant and infallible Word of God in the Gospel of Mark. The spiritually dense of that day were overly concerned about outward appearances and performing ritualistic disciplines as religious people are prone to do. You know like: Hey, look at me I’m a powerful Christian leader because I go around the globe trying to solve the problems of the world. Or I am the real Emergent follower of Jesus because I am very spiritual and much more involved in social activism than you are. Or I show you just how special you one as of the King’s kids and can help you to claim your best life now.

So Jesus gets His real disciples together after they had been confused by these other hypocrites who were claiming to be children of God. And who is the author of confusion even today? Try Satan. Then in an expression of true love the Master sets these obtuse sheep (us) straight in no uncertain terms:

“Are you so dull?” He asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”)

He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ ” (Mark 7:18-23)

The Way To Life Is Death…To Self

So there’s the sad situation of your evil “true self,” and mine. This would be a tragic story indeed if this is where our loving and merciful Creator left it…but He didn’t. God came into the world in Christ and lived the life of perfection required to be in His awesome presence. What you need to understand here is that the Lord isn’t some kind of cosmic meanie demanding perfection just for the sake of perfection. No, the LORD God Almighty literally cannot have evil in His presence so our Creator Christ Jesus Himself paid the unspeakably awful price on the Cross for those who will believe and thus become God’s children (see–John 1:12).

This is written to exhort you that rather than looking around in Christian bookstores for silly little self-help books that will only tell you want you want to hear, open up the Word of God and read what it says about the true nature of mankind. Because the only way you will ever come to know the absolute Truth about the only God (see–John 5:44) is to go the way of the Cross. And what happened when someone went to the cross? Did they go discover their “true self”? Or maybe this precious gift of being themselves while nailed to the cross would then lead them on the “sacred call to self-discovery”? No, they went there to die and by so doing they ceased being themselves. And the Master already said to you – “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24).

There are at least two things that now come emerging here. The Christian Church in America isn’t producing “seeds” because it simply refuses to go to the Cross and die. And unless we tell people the real truth about our evil “true self,” which I have just shared with you here from the Bible, they will never be driven by the Spirit of God to that Cross and cry out:

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
(Romans 7:24-25)

And the real truth is that telling people what they want to hear is killing them…forever…