If humanity's greatest problem is that it became separated from God, then evil is the natural result of that separation.

Many people believe evil exists only in certain people. We point to murderers, dictators, terrorists, or criminals and convince ourselves that evil belongs to them. But the Bible paints a very different picture.

God was showing humanity that the problem was never simply the evil around us—it was the evil within us.

When Adam and Eve rejected God, they didn't merely break a rule. They rejected the very foundation of truth, love, righteousness, and life. They chose to determine good and evil for themselves instead of trusting the One who created them. That choice affected every human being who came after them.

The evidence of that separation quickly appeared. Cain murdered his brother. Violence filled the earth before the flood. Nations rose against nations. People enslaved one another. Families turned against each other. Human history became the story of mankind trying to build a world without God, while continually proving that it could not.

The Israelites experienced this firsthand. Even though they were God's chosen people, they found themselves enslaved in Egypt. Later, after God rescued them, they repeatedly turned away from Him, worshiped idols, oppressed one another, and fell into the very sins they had been delivered from.

Why?

Because the real problem wasn't Egypt. It wasn't Babylon. It wasn't Rome.

The problem was the human heart.

That is one of the greatest lessons of the Old Testament.

Humanity has always tried to justify itself by blaming someone else. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. Nations blamed other nations. We blame our parents, our culture, our circumstances, or our enemies. But God keeps bringing us back to the same conclusion:

The problem is us.

Jesus later made this even clearer when He taught that murder begins with hatred, adultery begins with lust, and evil actions flow from the heart. Long before the act is committed, sin has already taken root within us.

That is why humanity cannot build lasting peace apart from God. We were created to be united under one Father, receiving our life from Him. Once that relationship was broken, we lost the very foundation that held us together. Instead of loving one another, we began using one another. Instead of serving one another, we competed, envied, manipulated, and fought because every person was trying to fill the same emptiness.

The wars, injustice, oppression, greed, and violence recorded throughout the Old Testament are not there because God delights in violence. They are there because they reveal what humanity becomes when it lives apart from Him.

The Old Testament is holding up a mirror. It is showing us ourselves.

Until we see that the evil we condemn in the world also exists within our own hearts, we will never understand why we need a Savior.

Related Scriptures

Jeremiah 17:9
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"

Mark 7:20–23
"What comes out of a man, that defiles a man... For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts..."

Romans 3:23
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."