He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:20-23)We have this idea that people are generally good and that when they do bad things (Joe Paterno & Jerry Sandusky are in the news now...but it could be any crime in any time) the badness is not normal. Therefore we can sit back in our "basic goodness" and judge them because we would never do whatever it was that this "bad person" did. The thing is, it's inside all of us. We're not "basically good". Goodness is the thing that's not normal. We're all basically sinful, rebellious people who have the same kinds of things inside of us that Osama bin Laden or Bernie Madoff or Jerry Sandusky has inside of them. It's only the power of God working in a person's life that enables any goodness.
Evil comes from inside...not from the outside. Jesus said so.
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