Ken, my brother, don’t labor under the misconception that I am going to let you claim the high ground of “hopeless romantic”. I am a “hoplessly romantic” misanthrope. I am the founder, president and sole member of the Ambrose Bierce fan club. Just kidding.

The problem is not that I expect little of people and am not surprised, it is that I expect a lot from people and am sometimes disappointed.

The wicked heart observation is not mine, nor do I think it can be laid at the door of traditional evangelicalism. There seems to me to be too much Scriptural (and theological) support for the notion that there is a universal tendency of man to sin and seek his way rather than God’s. There are many Scriptural examples contrasting peoples as well as contrasting individuals differentiating between those who served God and those who did not. The circumcision of a believer’s heart and the writing of God’s ways on it seem to me meaningless unless understood in the context that the heart is corrupt in some fashion and needs recreating in God’s image. The same could be said about the concept of a believer being translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

Sin is not a congenial topic these days and when it comes up it might likely be a Hollywood celebrity berating someone who drives an SUV instead of the ecofriendly vehicle he has rented to drop him off at the Academy Awards. Never mind the mindless violence or graphic sexuality of the films themselves and the role he had in making them. And if he has several children with one lover and has recently ditched her and taken another who is now also pregnant with his child, so what. Just don’t call it sin. Gasoline consumption to excess is a sin; Being a human alley cat is not. Pardon my gross overstatement to make a point.

How can Jesus love sinners and eat and drink with them if there aren’t any. How does the Church and her members minister to sinners if there are none? How does she take a stand against anything if nothing is sinful?

Having said that, I do see in the kinds of acts you describe of unbelievers a glimpse of God’s image but I don’t see in the acts themselves evidence that Jesus lives in their heart. It is sometimes hard to see that evidence in believers. I realize we can know a tree by its fruit, however, using one example among several, I balance that with St. Paul’s addresing the folks in Athens. He observed they were very religious. (had good fruit on their trees?) He noted they worshiped a god the did not know and he introduced them to the God he knew. Works of charity are wonderful and we should be grateful for them and encourage them wherever we find them. I do not see them as a substitute for knowing and serving Christ.

Your brother, your friend in Christ

Alario