Last week I told you about the nice-guy prisoner who had a lot going for him but ended up in prison because he did “stupid stuff.” For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him “Rick.” When Rick and I met in my office, he told me that after graduating from high school, he attended a trade school and became certified in a well-known trade. He was later hired by a company that paid him $24 per hour to work at his chosen trade.
Do you know the first words of Jesus Christ that were recorded in the Bible? His mother asked Him why He had not told her where He had been for three days, and the twelve-year-old Son of God responded, “How is it that you sought Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49)
We were all born with a strong tendency toward pride, the mother of all sins. Because of our fallen human nature, we were also born with a tendency toward each of the other root passions of lust, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, and sloth; furthermore, as a result of the individual unique traits that each of us were born with, combined with the environment we grew up in and our life experiences, we each entered adolescence, and later adulthood, with a predominant tendency toward one of the other six root passions.