sin.

Many years ago I started praying for Christian friends. Yes, I had friends at the time, but to be completely honest, we basically did the following things together:
1. shop
2. talk about other people(PUT DOWN other people, I should say)
3. search for other ways to fill our pleasure boxes

I prayed for Christian friends, even though deep down i didn't feel like i really deserved 'em.
Today, God is revealing these Christian friends to me...in fact, "my cup runs over"(see Psalm 23:5)
One of these dear fiends is named Mallory(such a lovely name!)...but she's known as "Poppy" to me...don't ask.
Although the following excerpt was written over a year ago, and at such a tender age(!), she unknowingly put into words one of the many reasons why i homeschool my children. Listen to her recall a time when she was 7 years of age(the same age my son is now) and was beginning to realize the truth of sin...

"Up until this time, I understood the world, or my world, rather, in terms of cause and effect. Obedience merited rewards, even if the reward was just a lack of a punishment. But as I got older, I began to understand the sin problem less as a behavioral or social issue but as a fundamental, intrinsic, even ontological malfunction that existed within me. Sinning did not only involve the breaking of rules or the damaging of another human being. I could sin alone just as easily. And sometimes I felt bad when I did certain things that no one even said were wrong. It was like there were invisible and unspoken rules inside of me, and I could sense when they had been breached. Like Adam and Eve, I became aware of my own nakedness. Something was wrong with me."
http://www.theoddityoftheodyssey.blogspot.com/
*emphasis added by me.

Rom 5:12
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned--