What is WRONG with people?

I offer here ten possible reasons for what is wrong with our world:

10. Discontented, we look around at what we don’t have – possessions, pleasure, power, stuff of all kinds – and we desire them! Not content with what we have or what we can earn on our own, we start wanting what other people have, or what we imagine that other people have, or what the many forms of advertisements say we need to have. We are discontented.

9. When people don’t respect the very concept of truth, the result will be lies and deception. Unhappy with the way things are, we lie to convince ourselves that things are or that they ought to be the way we want them to be! Or we lie to make others think something is true that isn’t. Unhappy with what is, we deceive.

8. Having no respect for what others possess, our discontent coupled with dishonesty and a lack of respect for others, we become thieves! Why should they have what I don’t?

7. Without respect for marriage or our marriage partner, or the marriage partner of another, we imagine that we aren’t loved and seek the love of another. Due to a lack of love and a lack of respect for ourselves or anyone else, we cheat sexually. People look at others as potential partners who can meet their needs. Needs that we think we have, that our husbands or wives aren’t meeting. And with the sexual boundaries lowered or removed in the society that surrounds us, we give ourselves and others permission to commit adultery, or have sexual relations in many other ways that should be off limits. Once the sexual boundaries have been removed, there will be no limits to which people will not go seeking fulfillment, or love, or simply pleasure.

6. Disrespect for life, our own lives and the lives of others, will result in anger, bitterness, resentment, hatred, and grudges. In turn, these emotions will produce conflict and violence. Then, murder or attempted murder, or random violence and the killing of innocent people, the shedding of innocent blood.

5. Disrespect for the family – not only for parents, but for children, and for the very idea of marriage – will result in broken hearts, broken homes, more anger, rebellion, and more violence.

Note: All of the above listed problems have to do with the way people treat one another. All are motivated ultimately by a lack of love and respect for other people or for ourselves. This lack of love and respect for people is really the result of a lack of love and respect for the One who created us. The next four reasons for the unacceptable situation of our world actually precede those already named.

4. Disrespect for the one day a week that God gave us for rest and for worship, His day, will cause us to treat all days alike and will result in life becoming overly stressed and too full of too many things, too many activities. Such busyness will not allow our bodies the rest they need; our minds and emotions will not rest. Disrespect for the Lord’s day will keep our minds away from any thoughts about God.

3. Disrespect for the reality of God, for the name of God, for God Himself, will result in disrespect for one another. Disrespect for God will also result in crude vocabularies, referring to God in unacceptable ways. There will also be disrespect for the people who claim to be God’s people, much of which is deserved because we have taken the name of God, calling ourselves “Christian” but not living as Christ taught us, many not even trying to live worthy of God!

2. Instead, we make “idols” of many things. We serve ideas, or possessions, or pleasures, or people, or more likely we simply worship and serve ourselves. People become their own gods.

1. Finally, the most basic cause of all that is WRONG in our world today, is simply that people refuse to submit to the God who created the universe that we live in. He has given us guidelines that, if followed, would make life better, would make the world a better place, would create a safer environment for our children, a more enjoyable and fulfilling existence for us all. Acknowledging God and being grateful to Him for all He has given us, including the gift of salvation, is the place to begin.

For background, read Exodus 20:1-17.