Hi everyone!
Once again, please accept my apologies for my extended absence. Every once in a while, life throws a bit more than we are really ready to handle, and that has been the case for me over the past month or so.
But I'm back today, and hope to be a lot more regular with my postings now. And today, I want to start off with a challenge to a popular mindset that seems to be present in many people's minds today. That mindset believes that people are by nature good. While I think that would be an admirable thing to see and to believe, I believe God's Word enough to challenge that way of thinking a bit.
If people are by nature good, then where do the bad things that we do come from? If we are naturally good, then doesn't it stand to reason that the next generation would have to learn bad or evil from someone? If so, who did they learn it from? And true, it may be popular to believe that there are some people who are born bad or evil, but wouldn't we typically warn our kids to stay away from those kids? After all, we don't want that kind of influence in their lives.
So if people are by nature good, then they shouldn't be doing bad or evil things. And it seems to me that we, society in general, always seem to be surprised to learn that our "good" neighbors sometimes are doing the very worst things. How often have you watched the news and seen a criminal of some type or variety get caught, and there's always someone there saying how they thought that person was the nicest person in the world, and how could they ever do something like that?
Now, one of the points that gets talked about a lot today is the whole idea of self-esteem. Supposedly, if we tell our kids that they are good for a long enough period of time, they should start to believe it, and that natural goodness should then sprout forth, and they should feel good about themselves. And yet, I've seen it happen way too frequently, that the "good" kid ends up doing something that is wrong (and that they know is wrong), and suddenly they seem to be crushed. How could I do such a thing? I must be a horrible person. I can't claim to be a good person since I did that.
Tomorrow I plan to write about a more realistic view that we should take of ourselves, and how, if we take that more realistic view, it actually helps us to see ourselves in a more positive light. But I hope this short post gets your mind kicking along again, and gives you a little bit of a sense of anticipation to share some thoughts on the subject.
Once again, please accept my apologies for my extended absence. Every once in a while, life throws a bit more than we are really ready to handle, and that has been the case for me over the past month or so.
But I'm back today, and hope to be a lot more regular with my postings now. And today, I want to start off with a challenge to a popular mindset that seems to be present in many people's minds today. That mindset believes that people are by nature good. While I think that would be an admirable thing to see and to believe, I believe God's Word enough to challenge that way of thinking a bit.
If people are by nature good, then where do the bad things that we do come from? If we are naturally good, then doesn't it stand to reason that the next generation would have to learn bad or evil from someone? If so, who did they learn it from? And true, it may be popular to believe that there are some people who are born bad or evil, but wouldn't we typically warn our kids to stay away from those kids? After all, we don't want that kind of influence in their lives.
So if people are by nature good, then they shouldn't be doing bad or evil things. And it seems to me that we, society in general, always seem to be surprised to learn that our "good" neighbors sometimes are doing the very worst things. How often have you watched the news and seen a criminal of some type or variety get caught, and there's always someone there saying how they thought that person was the nicest person in the world, and how could they ever do something like that?
Now, one of the points that gets talked about a lot today is the whole idea of self-esteem. Supposedly, if we tell our kids that they are good for a long enough period of time, they should start to believe it, and that natural goodness should then sprout forth, and they should feel good about themselves. And yet, I've seen it happen way too frequently, that the "good" kid ends up doing something that is wrong (and that they know is wrong), and suddenly they seem to be crushed. How could I do such a thing? I must be a horrible person. I can't claim to be a good person since I did that.
Tomorrow I plan to write about a more realistic view that we should take of ourselves, and how, if we take that more realistic view, it actually helps us to see ourselves in a more positive light. But I hope this short post gets your mind kicking along again, and gives you a little bit of a sense of anticipation to share some thoughts on the subject.
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