The e-mail Saturday said the young adult son of some longtime friends had been in a serious automobile accident and was in intensive care. The Sunday night phone call and the Monday morning e-mail said he had died. We are devastated for these precious friends.

No one who has ever raised a family thinks the time may come when they hold a funeral for their child. It’s unnatural, it’s not in the correct order of things.

The 1996 Christianity Today Book of the Year was “Not the Way It’s Supposed to be: A Breviary of Sin” by Professor Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. The title alone was worth the price of the book. It gives me a certain amount of comfort when looking at the world around us with its strife between nations, war between religions, and ugliness between families and friends to be reminded that this is not the order of things as the Creator set them up.

Plantinga says sin distorts our character, perverts human excellences, and both causes and results from misery. Sin produces death, and by that we mean both kinds: spiritual and physical.

The front page of the Times-Picayune in my city this morning tells of a fellow who murdered his 72-year-old mother over the weekend. Neighbors told the story of this hard-working, devoted mother who knocked herself out raising two boys by herself. She kept the cleanest house and neatest yard in the Carrollton section of New Orleans and, they say, she doted on her sons. She sang in the choir of her Missionary Baptist Church and was the centerpiece of her community. And now one of her sons has killed her. Police say he stabbed her and choked her. He admits it, saying he did it for drug money.

There’s something bad wrong with this world when this sort of thing happens.

In 1993, Woody Allen was asked to explain his incestuous affair (and later marriage!) with the Asian daughter he and Mia Farrow had adopted. “The heart wants what it wants.”

Plantinga says, “That’s the conversation stopper.” The heart wants what it wants. “The imperial self overrules all.”

He explains, “A central New Testament conviction is that the evil one gains no ground that we do not give him. Satan seduces only those who are in the market for seduction. Satan deceives only the self-deceived.”

This is a fallen world. Ignore that — that is, think of everyone as naturally good and this world as the best of all possible situations — and you are left with a make-believe universe bearing no connection with reality.

The doctrine of original sin, long a staple in the theology of Christians, is explained in numerous ways depending on who is talking. My own take on it goes like this….

If you wanted to create havoc on the interstate, it’s not necessary to put a crazy person at the wheel of every automobile. You can have well-meaning, reasonably-minded drivers behind every wheel if you do just one thing: tamper with the steering mechanism so that no car responds as it should. The resulting confusion would resemble the bumper-cars at the fair.

We’re not saying everyone in the world is a crazy or a loony. Only that sin has tampered with the steering mechanism, the will (and heart and mind) of each person. We want what we want, and we want it now.

Every human is born into this life with his steering mechanism a tad off.

In trying to figure how to restructure the economy in this country to put us all back on sound footing, economists are having to come to terms with the heart of man. More than one has concluded, “Nothing is going to change until people decide to start living differently, to stay within their means, to buy only what they can afford, to love their neighbor as themselves.”

It’s a spiritual thing. It has to do with the self-centered heart of man.

People like Billy Graham — and I hope all the rest of us evangelicals — draw boos from critics and laughs from scorners in suggesting man needs a conversion of his heart in order to save the world from self-destruction. Even when man gives his all and does his best, the result is still something seriously flawed until he is changed on the inside.

Man is not able to save himself. He needs a Savior. Someone to rescue him from himself.

“Am I saved? From what?” Every Christian witness has heard that question at one time or another, usually delivered with a touch of scorn. But it’s actually a great question and deserves an answer.

When the Bible calls Jesus Christ our Savior, Matthew 1:21 explains, “He shall save His people from their sins.” That’s the first, but not the whole story.

Acts 2:40, in Christ we are saved from this wicked generation.

James 5:20, we are saved from death. (The eternal kind, the only type that ultimately matters.)

Romans 5:9, we are saved from God’s wrath.

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world (John 4:42), of Israel (Acts 13:23), and of the body (the church) (Ephesians 5:23).

And the plain fact of the matter is: there is no other Savior. We have no other choice.

Peter told the rulers of Judea, “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Earlier, when Jesus asked the disciples if they would follow the example of the departing multitudes who had no heart for self-denial and what they called “hard words,” Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of life.” (John 6:68)

The words of life.

That makes all the difference in the world to my friends Dale and Larry today, as they contemplate attending the funeral of their beloved Robbie. Their hearts are broken, but only for a little while. The final chapter on this young man’s life was not written in the hospital intensive care unit. “He who believes on the Son of God has eternal life.” (John 3:36)

We have the Lord’s word on that.

There is a place where and there is coming a time when death will be a thing of the past. “We who are in this body do groan,” Paul wrote (II Corinthians 5:4)

We’ve about had it up to here with death.