Trusting in people

Right now I am not a huge fan of people. Let me explain. I noticed this past Saturday that the gas can for fueling my lawn mower was missing from my garage. Maybe I loaned it to a neighbor, I thought, but none of my neighbors had it. Oh well, I'll just get a new one. Then last night I noticed that my weed eater was also missing from my garage. And not just my weed eater but also the chain saw attachment that I had used all of 45 minutes since I got it last month. I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty ticked off when I realized that someone stole from my garage.

You see, we leave our garage door open most of the time when we are home. It's where we let the dog in and out and it's where we come and go (the front door is for salesmen and people who don't know us well). If we aren't home, we close the garage door and we close it at night. If our garage door is open that means that we are home. So for someone to come into my garage and take things that belong to me while I am at home is truly bothersome.

I realize that I am going to have to keep the garage door shut more than I used to and put my lawn equipment in other places that are safe. It's not the era of Leave it to Beaver anymore where people don't have to lock their doors. But I assumed that I could at least leave my garage door open while I was home. To me, an open garage door sends the message that we want our friends to drop in if they are in the neighborhood. Instead, a thief came to visit us.

This incident has got me thinking about the nature of people. Are people naturally good? What causes someone to steal, kill, or commit any other acts against other? Romans 3:10-12 paints a pretty graphic picture of the heart of man:

There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become useless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.

The heart is deceptively wicked, naturally inclined toward sin and not the things of God. Before I knew Christ I was not as concerned with my sinfulness as I am now. This is not to say that whoever stole my weed eater is a lost sinner bound for the pit of hell; I'm not trying to overreact like that. Yet it is a sobering reminder of the sinfulness of man that causes us to seek our own gratification and desires and not those things that glorify God or build up each other.

I am often struck deep in the heart with my own sinfulness. How many times have I broken a promise or sought my own interests over the needs of others? Too many times to count. So while I haven't lost faith in my fellow man just because someone stole my weed eater, I am vividly reminded that we aren't inclined to naturally seek after God and as long as that is the case then people will keep on stealing and living lives opposed to God. Yet in spite of all of this, while we were still helpless in our sins Christ came in due time to die, the godly for the ungodly, that we might be saved from our sins and be reconciled to God through His beautiful sacrifice on the cross. No thief can steal that truth from any of us.