This old tract that was originally published in 1940, but was slightly modified and reprinted by the Pilgrim Tract Society in 1960. As an evangelistic booklet, it offers a Christian story intended on countering easy believism in America (details here).

Salvation and eternal life come not from our efforts (how we appear to others), but from what is at the core of our hearts (what we believe about God).

Ephesians 2:8-9 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Though a powerful lesson demonstrating the need for a heart change in the life of the believer, the story misses the underlying reality that Christians remain sinners in constant need of a Savior and a willingness to accept Him as our Lord.

A Potato That Wasn’t A Christian

Well, you see it happened this way. The huckster (peddler) had been selling potatoes on the street and mother had bought a bushel of beautiful and fine-looking potatoes and put them away in the basement of the house. A little boy lived in this house, one of a family of four children. He did not go to school: he helped mother. Everyday he went down and got the potatoes and brought them to mother. Then he would watch her pare them and prepare them for cooking. One day she cut a big potato right through the middle and it was black and rotten; and he said, “Mother that potato is not a Christian, is it?” Mother said “Why what do you mean? Of course potatoes are not Christians, only people.” “It isn’t a Christian, Mother” he said, “Because it is [flawed… and] rotten inside.” 

You see when his mother cut the potato and found it bad in the center, the little boy remembered his mother had told him; those who are not Christians had old hearts that were bad and rotten with sin on the inside. She had told him how nice they could look on the outside and yet be so very bad on the inside. So when he saw the rotten potato he thought of what his Mother had said and told her “That potato is not a Christian.” 

A Christian is a person who has a new heart. God never changes the old heart: for the bible says it is desperately wicked and cannot be cured. God says that it is so “deceitful above all things,” that none can know it. 

You cannot always tell when a potato is bad at the heart, and it often looks fair and fine on the outside; but God knows what is in the heart. If you want to see how bad it is in the heart of a man who is not a Christian, then we will let the knife of God’s Word do for the human heart just what the knife did to the potato. Read Mark 7:21-23 and you will see the bad in the heart. The Christian has a new heart. There is no way to fix up the old heart. The new heart is created. It is a clean heart. Therefore the Psalmist when he had gone wrong, prayed “Create in me a clean heart.” Now you understand what the little fellow meant when he said “that potato is not a Christian.” After this when you cut an apple or potato or crack a nut and find it bad on the inside, you can think of the same thing and say “That potato is not a Christian;” for it is a good illustration of corruption (filthiness) of the human heart. A worm gets into the heart of a potato and rots it. It was the serpent of sin that got into the heart of man and made it bad. 

The Blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. (1st Jn 1:7) 
Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth. (Ecclesiastes 12:1) 

Jesus loves you! Pray to Jesus now and ask Him to come into your heart to live. He wants you to have a clean heart and not be rotten on the inside.

The Problem With the Story

The Biblical Christian “heart” is a mixed bag of both good and bad. Unfortunately, the heart of mankind does not disappear when we are saved.

As Paul, one of the greatest Christians ever born, lamented…

Romans 7:22-24 – For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

And as Mark concurred…

Mark 7:21-23 – For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

The same is true of Jeremiah the prophet…

Jeremiah 17:9 – The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

And yet, as the 1940s tract offers, the Biblical believer desires the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, our Counselor, in order to help cleanse our heart from our personal sin nature.

Psalm 51:10 – Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Romans 10:10 – For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Conclusion

The sin nature of man remains sadly alive and well in the heart of Christians. The new heart is the Holy Spirit that is available, if we, as born-again Christians would only reach out and listen to Him. Sadly, we have the Spirit as medicine in order to manage our sin nature. But, unlike the conclusion of the 1940s story, our sin nature remains with us, fully and completely curable only at the end of our lives. To expect anything more is being naive as a Christian, and hypocritical from the perspective of an unbeliever.

As the Psalmist laments, our desire and prayer should be to ask the Lord to create in us a clean heart through repentance, by His grace.