The Problem With Man

One day, a scorpion wanted to cross a certain pond. He asked the turtle to give him a lift across the pond. The turtle exclaimed, “Are you joking? You will sting me while I’m swimming and I will drown.”

“My dear turtle,” laughed the scorpion, “if I were to sting you, you would drown, and I’d go down with you. Now where is the logic in that?” “You’ve got a point there,” said the turtle. “Hop on.”

The scorpion climbed aboard, and halfway across the river, he carefully aimed his powerful stinger, giving the turtle everything he had. As they both sank to the bottom, the turtle said, “You said that there is no logic in your stinging me. Why did you do it?”
“It has nothing to do with logic,” the drowning scorpion replied. “It’s just my nature.”

This story clearly illustrates the problem with man. In the beginning, God created human beings in His own image, set apart from the rest of creation. As a result, men and women possess a deeper, spiritual dimension. As Scripture says, God “has also set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

This creates a longing in our hearts to discover God’s eternal purpose and meaning for our lives. C.S. Lewis poignantly describes the hints of Heaven God brings our way to intensify this longing:

“All the things that ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of Heaven. Tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. . .If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . .Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy, but to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

Yet, in spite of our best efforts to find that missing piece, we come up short. We keep running into some sort of invisible wall. It’s called sin.