Spurred to muse. - Reid, over at Faith Gambler, has a great discussion going on under his posting, 'The Core of a Human's Heart is Good."
The following is my circuitous thoughts on the post and comments left:
Even when a Christian does good that good will be thought evil by someone in the world. You cannot be a Christian and not find that someone is offended by the good you do.Of course Christians must act in a humble way. Of course Christians should see others through the eyes of Christ. But when doing so there will be those who view that as arrogance and superiority. What better example do you need than Christ? He brought spiritual and physical healing, He brought freedom now and eternally, and He brought words from God. But still there was a part of the world that saw His words and acts as arrogance, superiority, and a threat to itself so the world crucified Him.
Missionaries across the globe face threats daily because they bring the same message that Christ brought. They go into areas of the world where poverty and slavery and sickness reign. Why do they go? Because they are listening to God and trying to bring hope and a way out of the chains of sin and death that shackle souls. These brothers and sisters go into these "strongholds of Satan" knowing that they will be hated by many of those to whom they seek to bring the message of salvation.
Knowing that the heart of the world would murder Him for the love and salvation He brought didn't stop Christ from coming. Knowing that beatings, fines, and death await them doesn't keep Christians in India, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or China from doing Christ's Love, from healing wounds, or from feeding souls.
We must come to a point when we recognize that we will be rejected by the world because of the good that God gives us to do. If we don't, if we believe that fallen man will immediately open up to the love of Christ that we bring because we believe his heart to be the same heart as pre-fallen man, and good as God defines good, then we are setting ourselves up for a lot of disappointment that will lead to major disillusionment. When we accept by faith what God has told us in His Word and act upon it, we do not need worry about offending the world. Because, when we are Christians living and seeking after His Kingdom and following the example set by Christ (being humble, putting on the righteousness of God, living for God, loving the world though it hate us), it isn't with us that the world will be offended, it is with God.
Now, having said all this, let me return to what Reid asked in a comment:
So this leads me to a questtion to all of those who disagree with the idea that our heart, is at the core, good.
Is it then made good, at the core, after becoming a Christian?
what John Tindor brought up...
Without being born again--born from above,and receiving a new heart in exchange for one of stone (jer.36.26,27) [the correct verse reference is Ezekiel 36:26,27], no one can see the Kingdom of God.
That once we become christians, we have a new heart and it is filled with Goodness, even though no matter how new it maybe, it is still sinful, but redeemed?
What is it we have received from God as reborn Christians?
The reference above is to Ezekiel 36:26,27 which reads:
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do [them].” (Ezekiel 36:26-27 AV)
When we accept Christ as our savior and enter into death through His crucifixion, our spirit dies. That spirit in us that governed our heart and led us into sin, hardening our heart against God, is put to death upon the cross with Christ. Why? Because it was one with sin.
What we are then given is a new heart that is receptive to God and we receive not a new spirit, but more importantly we receive His Spirit which is one with God and which will lead and direct our hearts under Him, our new master. The new heart is under the authority of His Spirit now, whereas the old heart of stone was under the authority of our old spirit which was one with sin. The new heart is of little good without His Spirit.
Is this new heart and Spirit good? Yes, because it comes from God untainted by sin.
Will we as Christians mess up? Absolutely, because though we have received a new Spirit and the old is dead, we still are at war with the flesh. Why? Sometimes I think it is to keep us humble. Also, had we received the new bodies that don't perish we could not remain in this world and share Christ's love. When we do sin against the world, we need to ask forgiveness from those we've sinned against. That too is a witness.
Now does the hardened heart of fallen man seek good? Yes. If it didn't man would not be able to come to the recognition of the True Good. I was talking with a friend last night and he reminded me of something we had read; even in doing evil the heart of a man is seeking good, because evil is just a corruption of good. Example, fornication is a corruption of sex in the boundaries that God has given us or idol worship is a corruption in place of worshiping the True God. When a person does something evil, in his mind he is seeking after something that appears good to him, but it is a corruption because of sin. Eventually, as in the day of Noah, when man continues to seek his good and not God's, man will find his heart fully evil.
Finally, we must realize that it isn't us that brings change to the heart of man. It is Christ. God's task for us is to be sowers and to let Him bring the harvest because we are not given to always see the heart of a person and know where that person is before God.
