If people are inherently sinful why do most people lead relatively good lives?

Another answer from our community:

I don't know that most people lead a 'relatively' good life and one cannot lead a 'relatively' good life anyway - either you follow God or you don't and Jesus explained this very clearly. The answer to your question is in your question. You ask, "If people are inherently sinful why do most people lead relatively good lives?" You're right, according to the standards of many most people do live relatively good lives and that's the problem. According to the Christian faith God created people at first to live perfect lives not relatively good lives. Christians believe that humans turned away from God and fell away from that perfection. Because of that people are now born inherently sinful and imperfect. So there is a difference of standards in play here. You may think people live good lives but that is because you are measuring them against the standard of other imperfect people. According to Christianity we're not measured by other people, we're measured by perfection. So even though you may think people live good lives according to God's standard they don't. And I think if we use our imaginations we can see the credibility in this. Imagine a world we're everybody loved everyone else more than they love themselves. Wouldn't that be a wonderful world? In this world, on the other hand, most people (even the ones who are relatively good) naturally think of their own desires before the desires of others. The reason for this is that in this world people are born inherently sinful (aka inherently selfish). Christians believe that God saved us from this situation by sending Christ to die for our sins on the Cross. now because of what Christ did (the ultimate example of selflessness) we can follow Him (with the help of the Holy Spirit) and slowly become people fit for a perfect world (the world to come aka heaven). This is done through a process by which God helps us love others more than ourselves just like Jesus did when He went to the Cross. This is not to say that Christians think they are perfect. Most Christians are far from it. They are just sinful people going through a process of transformation.