The Surprising Reality of Sin

I was reading Time Magazine this morning when a little mini-story caught my eye. It seems USAID has decided to cancel a $20million program in Pakistan where they were creating a Pakistani Sesame Street (starring Elmo and Pakistani characters). The reason? Corruption in the local theatre's puppeteer community.Yes, the corrupt Pakistani puppeteers messed the whole thing up.

I was shocked!
$20 million of foreign aid for a Sesame street knock off? I am thinking that is a whole lot of cash. So that really blew me away; until I thought about our government spending habits.
Then the concept of crooked and corrupt puppeteers really took me for a loop. Itis a surprise, but almost comically so. I laughed as I considered some sort of invesitgative reports (like Sixty Minutes used to do). How far up the puppet chain does the corruption run?????? And that leads to a movie, about an innocent puppet in the hands of the dirty puppeteers. At some poiny, one of the characters, holding his hairy puppet would ask, "How did we come to this?"
Yes, the concept "puppeteer corruption" just shocked me. How can it be? Which led to the last insight, "why is someone who believes in fallen humanity shocked that puppet shows are touched by evil?"
It seems we say sin is everywhere but tend to think that sin is not. We figure people who work with kids would be decent types. We expect them to be better than other kinds of people. But in reality, wherever a human is there is sin. Period.
My shock at this story is similar to the shock of those who encounter corruption in the church. Corruption leads to reformation (and a whole new kind of corruption). The work of human  hands, even when led by the Holy Spirit, continues to wreak of human hands. Some folks seem to be shocked when a person in the church does wrong. It is really no surprise at all. Any institution created by and run by and populated with people will be corrupt. Sesame Street is no less infiltrated by human sin than prositution and gun running. It is, of course, not intentionally evil in the same way. Yet it is present. Just as it is present in sales departments, churches, governments, sports teams, and everything else we touch. Why this surprises is a bigger surprise. It is also a reminder why we pray each day for the coming of God's kingdom.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!