Human Heart

[aball1035]

If this is in the wrong section, forgive me ahead of time.

Scripture seems to say that the human heart is evil. I’m wondering what the heart would be like without any spiritual influence, good and bad? If there were no good angels nor God to help us, yet no fallen angels to hinder us. Yet if we still had a free will, what would we be like?

 

[Bookcat]

See post in Scripture section.

In a fallen state after original sin…the heart would fall more…

Without God…we can do no good…

for that matter we would not exist…

 

[Ron_Conte]

The human person has a good nature, created by God. And so we are able to do certain types of good acts, even without grace, such as eating a meal, taking a walk, obtaining the necessities of life, etc. The human heart and mind are good.

However, acts of true and lasting value are always done in cooperation with grace, e.g. prayer, works of mercy and love toward other persons, etc. The natural human person is good, even though in a fallen state. But grace makes us good in a greater sense. Actual grace makes our acts holy. Sanctifying grace makes our selves holy. Our human nature is good at the natural level. But supernatural grace makes our acts and our selves like God, who is Goodness itself.

 

[philippaul]

If this is in the wrong section, forgive me ahead of time.

Scripture seems to say that the human heart is evil. I’m wondering what the heart would be like without any spiritual influence, good and bad? If there were no good angels nor God to help us, yet no fallen angels to hinder us. Yet if we still had a free will, what would we be like?

Not to belittle the question at all (I do love hypotheticals and they can help us think for sure) but I think you are asking about a question with a non-viable environment – totally unrealistic. There are some people who do delude themselves into thinking they’re not spiritual creatures. Some of them do well, some of them don’t. Some of them manage to appear moral and others don’t. I believe if we had no spiritual influence (which again I believe is near impossible), we would tend downward as in bad. In this manner we would think we were God. We are not gods. We’d seriously disappoint ourselves.

Maybe you’re wondering if atheists could come up with a moral code on their own? I think this ends up being a chicken or the egg debate. Let’s imagine a closed off group of people who are atheists and they had to make up their own laws so that they could live with each other. What kind of laws/rules would they come up with? Number one probably for them: murder is out. Stealing would be another restriction. Where would they get these ideas? I believe the Lord of creation writes these laws in our hearts. We know they’re wrong. Even before we read about Cain and Abel in Genesis.

So to shorten everything, I don’t think we can make an absolute test of your situation. We can only imagine. Peace and blessings to you.