There are two ways of answering this question. What is wrong with us is either mental or moral.

Atheists, those who believe that there is no God, say that our primary problem is mental. They say that our problem is that we think and act irrationally and that education is the solution. Or they say that superstition is our problem, and that education in the ways of science is the solution. (For more on Atheism, see “does God exist?”)

Most Buddhists and Hindus, who believe that everything is a part of a divine oneness, agree that our basic problem is mental. However, they say that this mental problem is ignorance. We have forgotten who we are in our true selves. We have forgotten that we are not separate from but rather are fundamentally one with the impersonal divine oneness. Our problem is that we have become attached to our identities as individuals, and we need to merge back into the oneness.

In contrast, those who believe in a personal Creator God see our primary problem as moral. Followers of Judaism and Islam say that we have broken God’s law or that we fail to follow God’s guidance. Most Christians say that in violating God’s laws we have broken our relationship with a personal and holy God. (For more on world religions, see “are all religions the same?”)

While there are many good things that follow from God being personal (see “what God is like?”), the one bad thing is that, if God is personal, it is then possible for us to break our relationship with God. (This is not true of Atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. If ultimate reality is a physical force or if God is an impersonal oneness from which all things come, then it is not possible for us to break our connection with ultimate reality because we are inherently one with it.) And this is what is wrong with us at our core--a broken relationship.

The reasons that motivated us to break our original relationship with God play themselves out in our other relationships as well. By breaking our relationship with a personal and holy God we, in effect, put ourselves in the place of God, which means that we also then declare ourselves to be the judges of what is right and wrong. As a result, we become masters in the art of self-justification. We see ourselves as being in the right and other people as being the ones to blame.

For more on the Christian answer, see “what does the Bible say about our basic problem?”