In the past you were spiritually dead because of your disobedience and sins
Listen carefully now:
all our struggles are the result, whether directly or indirectly, of disobedience and sin.
Some of you will scoff at that statement, but let me ask you a question: do you have to teach a child to be disobedience? Of course not. Left to his own devices, troubles easily find him.
And, we never grow out of it. For mankind’s basic problem is self-centeredness. We simply want things our way. Our basic motto in life, whether we like it or not, is that “Rules were made to be broken; Rules are for the other guy”
If this were not so, we would not need people like police, or lawyers, or counselors. We would not need anyone to show us right from wrong. Crimes would be gone. Wars, a thing of the past.
Now, over the centuries, people have tried to address our problems by writing self help books, developing therapies, and building institutions, but all fail and will continue to fail until we begin to accept the fact that we all are spiritually dead