On Monday, Marc Perkel wrote a letter to the Daily challenging Christians to show how God has transformed his or her life through his or her behavior. Let me speak for a moment to those like Perkel who are looking at Christianity from the outside in.

I wholly agree with your desire to look at Christians and compare them to the rest of the world. After all, anyone who claims to be following a God that commands his people to love and esteem others higher than oneself, should, in fact, be loving an esteeming others in such a manner. However, if you are looking at Christians with a standard of, “Christians shouldn’t, under any circumstances, be doing ,” every Christian you know will in some way fail to meet your expectations.

Like Marc, I come from a reality-based community: the reality is, all humans, including Christians like myself, are inherently evil and will do horrible things. The Bible said, “All have sinned.” Christians will do bad things. Even rape and lying about it.

If Christians did no wrong, they would not be in need of the God they claim to follow. After all, why would Jesus come down to earth to die for mankind’s sins to if mankind was perfect?

This is the reason that I am a Christian: not because once I am saved I do no more wrong, but that once I am saved I am forgiven of all my wrong-doings, past and present. Through God’s help I am able to overcome my naturally evil human nature. This isn’t an instantaneous process — I still do evil things. But I know that I am forgiven, and I press on, striving to conform more to my God’s perfect standard of living.

So to you who are skeptical about believing in God, take a look at your Christian friends. But don’t go about fault-finding them; I guarantee you, you will find plenty. Instead, look at how they deal with their faults.

Andy Mungons is a junior in computer engineering and a member of Cyclone Bible Fellowship.