Last time I mentioned that we need to explain to people that life has problems and to explain that in such a way so that they could see it clearly. Next, we have to explain why that is. For Christians raised as I was, the answer is simple. The problem is sin. We need to tell people that they are sinners. Well, they are, but I doubt that using the word 'sin' is going to be very helpful. It's a word that most people don't understand. Sin is about breaking some celestial rule. As a result, the Ogre of heaven gets mad and takes it out on you. (Alas, there are lots of Christians who think about sin in this way.) Using 'sin' is not helpful if our goal is to communicate clearly enough for people to come to some very important decisions.
So, how do we go about explaining that the problem is sin without using that word? We describe the concept of sin. One way to get at that is to talk about choices. Our lives (yes, we include ourselves) have the problems they do because of the choices that we make. We choose poorly. Life would be so much better if we made better choices. (Isn't that, in part, how the Bible describes the concept of sin?)
It's important that our friends understand why we make such poor choices. To be sure, there are things that we don't know which affect how we make decisions. Our lack of information results in bad choices. But that isn't the basic problem. The basic problem has to do with a more fundamental choice. The God who created us has explained how we are to live. He can do that because He has created us. (Here, we're back to the whole thing about God's expectations which I wrote about earlier.) It's important to make clear that He hasn't simply imposed a bunch of arbitrary rules. He has described how we can live well. He knows what that means because He has created us. But we don't want to listen to Him. We choose not to listen to Him. We want to figure it all out on our own. And that results in lots of very poor choices. And that's why life has the problems that it does.