The thought of cracking open the Bible and looking inside for guidance would cause most politicians to choke with laughter.

Sure, they may invoke images from the Scriptures or pepper speeches with biblical allusions. But the notion of turning to the Bible as a textbook on human relations would be considered absurd.

What a shame. The Bible, in addition to being a source of spiritual instruction and insight, is a goldmine of knowledge on how to understand human nature and manage relations—even between countries. The following nugget, for example, penned by the Prophet Jeremiah (17:9), ought to be carved in granite and hung over the entrance to the U.S. State Department:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Think about that.

Your heart, and mine, and Barack Obama’s, and Vladimir Putin’s, and Hu Jintao’s, and even the pope’s, is “deceitful” and “desperately wicked.” The Hebrew word translated deceitful means sly, insidious or slippery. Wicked means sick, frail, woeful or incurable. And notice, our hearts are not just sick or woeful, they are “desperately” sick and woeful, to the point of being incurable.

Reading the Bible can be a humbling, corrective experience. But it can also be intensely enlightening and rewarding. Consider, for a moment, the impact the Prophet Jeremiah’s profound insight into the human heart could have were it to inform and shape America’s foreign policy.

If Jeremiah 17:9 were valued and considered, foreign-policy strategies and decisions would take into account the tendency in other governments for lying, deceit and trickery. America’s leaders would be cautious about investing their trust and hopes in the promises and platitudes of others. Aware that the hearts beating within their counterparts in other states are fundamentally selfish—and entirely focused on advancing their own creed, and hopes and people and nation—foreign policy would be developed that would reflect appropriately cautious realism.

That may sound pessimistic, but such an outlook would inform a more resilient, more stable, more effective foreign policy—one less likely caught off guard by lies and exploited by deception.

Informed by Jeremiah 17:9, the wise statesman would be wary of trickery, vesting his trust and hope in action, not pious promises or rhetoric. Policies of appeasement and compromise would be practiced slowly, with caution. And while the foreign policy that takes Jeremiah 17:9 into account would not always incite conflict, it would always be ready for it should it arrive.

What an insightful little scripture. Jeremiah 17:9 really is a key to developing a successful, stable foreign policy.

Yet, the guiding moral standpoint of many in the West today, particularly liberals—including the U.S. president—is diametrically opposite to that taught by Jeremiah. Today, Mr. Obama and his staff in the State Department are developing a foreign policy founded on the belief that the human heart is fundamentally good. Humans experience conflict and conflagration, but Mr. Obama firmly believes that the “interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner calls this the “Obama doctrine,” and says (emphasis mine throughout),

[I]ts very objective is to undercut America’s preeminent global role, reducing its great-power status to that of a multilateral partner equal to Russia, China or the European Union. At its core, the Obama doctrine maintains that all societies and cultures are morally equal. More important, promoting democracy and human rights has been abandoned in favor of “improving America’s standing in the world.”

Convinced that all societies, cultures and governments are “morally equal,” Mr. Obama’s goal is to redefine America as merely a nation among nations. Observing the messiah-like role Mr. Obama seems to see for himself in the international community, Charles Krauthammer wrote in June: “Traveling the world he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding.”

Driven by a fatal misunderstanding of the human heart, America’s president is practicing a foreign policy that will see America shun its traditional moral, political and military role in the world, put itself on par with its enemies, and then walk hand in hand with them to the “sunny uplands of comity and understanding.”

That may sound fair and altruistic, but this type of thinking has a fundamental flaw: It fails to take into account the deceptive, desperately wicked nature of the hearts of America’s enemies.

Other world leaders and non-state actors are motivated by an entirely different world view—one marked in many instances by imperialistic ambitions and even the desire to destroy America! Failure to recognize this results in a suicidal foreign policy.

Today, many have fallen into the trap of believing their own heart is good, pure and righteous. Blinded by confidence in their own heart, they believe the hearts of others are also inherently good. This deception underpins the politically correct tenants of multiculturalism and tolerance.

This is why, as Kuhner put it, “Mr. Obama is able to find common cause with the world’s tyrants—from the butchers in Beijing, to Mr. Putin’s Great Russian nationalists, from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Islamic fascists to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s Bolivian socialists.” Because Mr. Obama and those shaping his foreign policy in the White House refuse to see the human heart as sick, deceptive and desperately wicked, they fail to see—and adequately take into account—the deadly motives and ambitions of other nations.

It’s inevitable that this failure will one day be made evident.

Notice what American author Joseph Conrad wrote about human existence: “I have never been able to find in any man’s book or any man’s talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world. … The only remedy for … us is the change of hearts.”

Many today would ridicule Conrad as a pessimist. But he was simply looking into human history and making a realistic observation. The human heart does not know the way to long-term peace, happiness and stability. We simply don’t know how to forge a world without conflict, unhappiness and destruction. Conrad was absolutely right: The only remedy for mankind is a “change of hearts.”

Thankfully, that time is nearly upon us.

No one in modern history understood the depths of Jeremiah 17:9 like the late Herbert W. Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong was an expert in the human heart, and knew exactly why it is so deceitful and wicked. God did not create the human heart and mind to be evil, explained Mr. Armstrong. The reason it is desperately wicked is that it falls, virtually from birth, under the influence of an evil power, called Satan, also called the “wicked one” (1 John 2:13-14) and the father of lies (John 8:44).

“[T]he selfishness, hostility, deceitfulness, wickedness, rebellion, etc. that we call ‘human nature’ is actually Satan’s nature,” he wrote. “It is Satan’s attitude. And broadcasting it, surcharging the air with it, Satan actually now works IN the unsuspecting all over the world today! That is HOW Satan deceives the whole world today” (The Incredible Human Potential). To learn more about human nature, read Human Nature: What Is It?

Although the human heart is terribly sick—incurable in humans’ hands—there is a cure. The cure lies in the Spirit of God—the divine power by which mankind was created, by which converted Christians produce the fruits of peace, joy, gentleness, long-suffering, and that will one day—in God’s time—be made available to all men. At that time, when the Spirit of God enters the minds of men, the human heart will be healed of its infirmity.

Until then, it would be wise for the stewards of America’s foreign policy to study Jeremiah 17:9.