Dark Hearts and Churches

I was saddened to read about a church in Georgia that had between $200,000 and $400,000 stolen over a 10-year period by a church secretary. Victory Fellowship in Bremen, Georgia has about 250 members. That amount of money for a church that size is a beyond a huge loss. Our church experienced the same thing, and I don't think we've ever fully recovered. Both the Georgia church and ours caught and prosecuted the respective church secretaries, but the money will never be recovered.

I think, as Christians, there's an implicit trust of people of the Faith. We also tend to see the good in others first. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it sometimes causes us to lose the Biblical view that we humans have dark hearts. That's part of what the story of the "Fall" is about. We were made in God's likeness, and have a choice to grow in it, or reject God. Mankind rejected God and as a result we have dark hearts. We become self important and God gets diminished.

We have alienated ourselves from God. At the core of all our human problems is this. Not poverty, lack of 'social justice', ignorance, or anything else you want to pin it on. It is that we've rejected the pure Spirit of God. We have rejected pure Love. We have put ourselves before Him. Secularists and atheists, advocating for the separation from God in the first instance, and atheists denial, only take us back to the worst times of human history. Paganism does not value human life at all. At least Judaism and Christianity teach to love, care for, and value others.

The story of the flood, whether you believe it happened or not, is about how Man can become so vile and disgusting we shouldn't really exist. That's sad. People of Faith work away from that the best we can, and tend to trust people that we perceive are trying live more in an imitation of Christ. Sadly, as in these cases of theft, our dark hearts are always there, always an influence. We are all sinners. Sadly, even among people of Faith, we must be aware of our nature, and be constantly vigilant of harm people will do to ourselves and the institutions we cherish.