Many decades ago, I was going to university and still living at home. I had probably been Christian for just a few months.

My dad invited over an old army buddy from World War II for supper. He also happened to be the warden at the local prison.

After supper, the discussion turned to the utter frustration the warden was facing from bureaucrats above him running the prison system. They were making all these bizarre requests and rules without ever having actually dealt with the people who ended up in jail.

In my early twenties, I basically listened to the whole conversation and said nothing.

But as the discussion wound down and the warden was standing at our door ready to leave, I finally got up the courage to give my two cents worth on what he was dealing with.

“The problem is that they think everyone is basically good,” I said to him.

I still remember the shocked look on his face, as he turned to me and said, “How did you get so ?#&% smart?”

I got that smart because I basically read and believed the Bible, which tells us that everyone is born a sinner (Romans 3:23).

Not surprisingly, this is similar to the difficulty that Mike Johnson is now facing. In a somewhat surprising move, he was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Johnson is not only a Republican, but to the horror of the left-wing media, he is also a Christian, and what has gotten the media into an absolute dither recently is that Johnson believes in original sin.

Christian Headlines recently reported on an attack article CNN wrote about Johnson after the news network searched for comments that Johnson had made on hot-button issues such as abortion and LGBT issues.

However, what completely unraveled CNN was a statement that Johnson apparently made in 2010 on original sin.

Johnson believes that everyone is born a sinner and that the role of government is to restrain people who left unchecked will only get worse.

“One of the primary purposes of the law in civil government is to restrain evil. We have to acknowledge collectively that man is inherently evil and needs to be restrained,” Johnson said.

Even CNN’s byline for the article, “Mike Johnson’s America: Revisit landmark SCOTUS decisions and use government to ‘restrain evil’” revealed the left-wing outlet’s outrage that Johnson believes all people are sinners.

The idea that everyone is basically good is the flawed view of human nature held by secularists and those on the left.

This fundamental belief is behind their decision that people should not face the consequences of their illicit and illegal behavior.

This is why they are reducing prison sentences and redefining what is illegal. They believe that if you treat people nicely, they will suddenly and miraculously become loving human beings, that they supposedly already are.

But they are confusing the desire to do good, with the ability to do good. Even the Apostle Paul admitted that though he desired to do the right things, his flawed and sinful human nature dragged him down into the gutter again and again (Romans 7:19-20).

The collapse we are witnessing in society is ultimately the result of bad theology.

READ: Mike Johnson’s Belief in Original Sin Is Labeled ‘Shocking’ by Left-Wing Media