Is mankind wicked? Is there any doubt? Jeremiah 17:9

The prophet Jeremiah, a man called of God to warn a people gone astray who did not listen to him, wrote this chilling thought, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)  While it would be easy to speak of the wicked/fallen nature of humanity based upon historical events like the many genocides exemplified by the Holocaust, reading my local paper this past week provided, unfortunately, ample evidence.  In just one week, our local paper (which is excellent by the way) reported on two ongoing cases involving the trials of local teachers accused of a sexual relationship with a student, of two men accused of raping children, one of whom was also his own child, and to top it off, a two year old child found naked in the middle of a busy road while his parent was passed out drunk on the couch with a second one year old child being neglected in the crib.  Are you kidding me?  This isn't the big city, our county only has 53,000 people living in it, and yet these five incidents represent evil that was both reported and prosecuted, in other words, there is more than this going on, these are just the people who were caught.
The old saying, "ignorance is bliss" isn't true.  Would I rather not know about child rape and endangerment going on in my community, of course, but only if it wasn't happening.  How can we combat evil if we don't recognize it?  Still trying to cling to the notion that people are essentially "good" and in no need of help from God?  Good luck with that, me, I'll continue to trust in the saving power of Jesus Christ to rescue us from our woeful state transforming those who trust in him through the power of the Holy Spirit, and I'll continue to share that message of hope to a world sorely in need of it.