READ: Jeremiah 17:9-10
“The heart [unsaved spirit] is DECEITFUL above all things, and DESPERATELY WICKED: who can know it?” – Jeremiah 17:9
No one teaches a child to be wicked. Wickedness comes naturally to many little children. Why do children lie, cheat and steal without being taught to do so? It is because the unsaved sprit is at work again.
When I was in secondary school, I couldn’t understand the manifestation of wickedness in some of the students. They devised all sorts of unbelievable punishments. When I was in form one, I experienced torture at the hands of senior students. These senior students were not torture specialists. They were just seniors with an unsaved nature.
They could mash chloroquine tablets (a bitter anti-malarial drug) in gari (ground grilled cassava granules) and give it to people to eat. They had punishments called “tower of liberty” and “monkey dance” which would make all your muscles go into spasms. I was once forced to do a “monkey dance” until I was virtually paralyzed. I couldn’t walk for hours.
Punishments were devised in which you would be sent to collect twenty buckets of manure from a farm two kilometres away. After doing this twenty times, you would have walked eighty kilometres with a heavy load.
Where did all these ideas come from? They originate from the depraved and wicked heart of the unsaved man. I ask myself, “If such people were to come into political power what would they do to their enemies?”
All over the world, the depraved and perverted nature of the human race is manifest. When I hear of the atrocities committed during wars I wonder, “What has become of the human race?” Wickedness abounds in the heart of man because the heart of the unsaved man is dead and desperately wicked. This is not something that affects White people or Black people; it is the nature of all mankind.