What is a human being?

We're made in the image of God (and "it was very good") but we are also fallen. Seems odd but best explains the evidence, no?

What are the implications and evidence for being made in the image of God?

• •Each person has intrinsic worth that we cannot measure – explains worth of each human apart from human relativistic, transitory reasons
• •Each person knows right and wrong – explains why people do good without believing in God
• •Each person feels guilt and knows there will be judgment
• •Each person knows there is a God and yearns to have that void filled
• •Each person is afraid of death and expends energy worrying about it and expends energy trying not to worry about it
• •Each person experiences existential angst
• •Each person experiences alienation from self, others, God, creation
• •Each person experiences beauty with joy and delight
• •Each person believes that love is more than deterministic biochemical reactions
• •and…
• •Every atheist acts as though there is a God (Schaeffer, Phillips…)

What are the implications and evidence for being fallen?

• •

• Explains why people do evil
• •Explains why we feel guilty
• •Explains why there is suffering
• •Explains why we are fearful and anxious about non-being and death
• •Explains our desire to hide and control
• •Explains why the non-believer can do good things but cannot be good (Warren)

“There is… no one who seeks God… no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:10, Psalms 14:1, 53:1
"...even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood." Gen 8:21

“Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight… I was sinful at birth, sinful even from the time my mother conceived.” Psalms 51:4

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)

“Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.” Psalms 58:3

“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Matthew 15:19

“All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” Mark 7:23

“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” Romans 6:12

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…” Luke 11:13, Matt 7:11

“I know that nothing good lives in me… For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing… When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” Romans 7:18

"Certainly nothing offends us more than this doctrine [of original sin], and yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves." Blaise Pascal