In the following few short verses Paul the Apostle describes the state of the world today.

Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps  is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways.” Rom. 3:13-17.

We rampage through the earth indiscriminately, without rhyme or reason, totally oblivious to the pain and hurt caused by our unthinking actions.

Imagine the New York beat cop Rafael Ramos. He saw the streets of New York as his ministry. In fact, he was just hours away from becoming a lay chaplain when he and fellow officer Wenjian Liu were gunned down in their patrol car on December 20.

While you consider the assassination of these two men coupled with the Pakistani school massacre and the slaying of the eight babies in Australia, while you mourn the recent events in Western Canada, you should now realize this world is a hazardous place.

Beneath the superficial veneer of culture, breeding and civilization, we are bloodthirsty savages.

In many quarters, we are known as rabid dogs or blood-sucking  vultures -- identified more with an unintelligent animal rather than a cultured, intellectual human being.

As Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame so rightly explained, the Vulcan civilization only survived because the population arrived at the conclusion that if they did not find a way to subdue their innate violent impulses, they would destroy themselves. The story may be fiction but the sentiment is absolutely correct.

With the killing of Abel, mankind placed himself on a destructive path to murder,  mayhem and exploitation of his fellow man.  Possessed with an unforgiving war-like character, thoroughly infatuated with doing in his fellow man, he rushes to create chaos upon the earth.

Can you think of any corner of the globe without some kind of conflict? The Book of Romans declares, “And the way of peace have they not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Astoundingly, many consider their wicked deeds as doing the world a favor or doing a service for God.

“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

“The lesser breeds must be subjugated and controlled.”

“The infidels must be converted, enslaved or stricken with the sword of Allah.”

These are the kinds of words spoken throughout the recorded history of men and are never far from their lips even today.

In short, the prevailing nature of man is to be arrogant, pompous, insane and unbalanced. He is selfish, single-focused and unconcerned with the grand scheme of things. He acts as if immortal and will always be on top of the world.

Ironically, our nefarious deeds and despicable acts occur against  the backdrop of what transpired in Washington Court House, Ohio on Christmas night.

Three boys worried that their grandmother would spend Christmas alone decided to sleep over to keep her company. For some as yet unknown reason, a fire engulfed the home leaving in its wake four dead bodies. Like an inanimate, callous, unfeeling monstrous vacuum cleaner, life sucked all the joy out of living. In one fell swoop, an instant, a family witnessed its past disappear and its future go up in smoke. Hereafter another shocked condemned family, wallowing in deep sorrow, just to survive tomorrow, must snatch moments of joy from the joyless viselike grip of life.

Now fully acquainted with the biblical verse, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust,” they must trudge on, trying to understand it all which will turn out to be a futile, fruitless exercise.

That is the ultimate destiny of every man. No matter who you are, where you are or what you are, age time and life will steal from you everything that you cherish and hold dear. Just ask the passengers and distraught family members of the Air Asia flight or the mother of the transgender teen who committed suicide days ago.

This world, this temporary existence will never, nor is designed to work out to our complete satisfaction and comfort.

Hence the reason why I cast in my lot with the man called Jesus. I realized a while ago to maintain my equilibrium and sanity there must be some hope somewhere in the universe that eventually things will even out.

If you sincerely search the scriptures for him, you will discover the same for yourself.

For your sake and eternal benefit, I strongly urge you to do so.

I know the critics, cynics, atheists and facts of life are all shouting that this is naïve and simplistic. The intellectuals have a way of making you feel stupid and weak-minded in taking such an unsophisticated approach to the complex issues of life. Nevertheless, with all their strenuous opposition and sophisticated arguments, they have not yet offered up a better more successful way.

I hasten to remind you that these are the same people who demanded that Jesus, Bible-reading and prayer be banished from public schools. How did that work out?

So, to such objections I simply respond, “What if they are wrong again, can you really chance that?

Standing ill-prepared before the judgment seat of Christ is a horribly inconvenient place to discover that PT Barnum was right.

For it is ominously written, “it is appointed unto man once to die but after this comes the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27.

And if this righteous judge finds you in the wrong you will have just received a blow from which you cannot recover.