Evil — the next time I look away and do nothing.
To understand evil one must look no further than their own borders.
We do everything with evil but admit that it is evil and deal with it. We laugh at it, we ignore it, we call it beautiful, we give in to it, we say it is harmless, we make rules to guide it, we abhor it in others, we excuse it in ourselves, we get others to join us in it, and when it eventually gets messy, as it always does, we call it somebody else’s business.
The most fundamental form of evil is the selfishness we excuse in ourselves.
Judas wasn’t the devil incarnate, but merely another greedy person crushed by his own sin and bad decision making.
Hate rots and leaks from brains that house it.
Evil smoothers to death conscience under a pillow of desire.
We live in an era of unoriginal sin. Our generation sins in the same old boring, uninspired way as the last.
The most destructive evils of history have often been sanctioned by the church, the goverment and the family – pride, greed, lust and violence stand out. Indeed these seem to be the way to the top of the public pile.
Evil masquerades as what is absolutely necessary to bring about some needed end; beware the well-reasoned necessary.
Evil is ever the smooth, slick, charming champion of the public good. Beware when your leaders want to do something just for you.
The sneer, the put-down, the back-stabbing quip– evil is alive and kicking in social life.
Why has the church not policed itself well regarding some of its own sins — sexual abuse, greed and pride? Where there is a lack of moral integrity there is a lack of the power to discipline.
Most everyone draws a line in the sand somewhere, cross this and you have entered the wasteland of unthinkable evil. Consider, for example, the sexual abuse of children.
It is modern to think the devil a myth, but one only need bring to mind the radical evil of the 20th Century, assassinations, serial killings, purges, massacres, atrocities and holocausts to prove the reality of the influences of the devil. Massive, personal and collective societal hatred and violence –the devil is alive and thriving.
When evil is what you do and never what I do then it has free rein and rules.
The most pernicious and distructive evil exist between the borders of apathy, inertia, indifference and neglect.
The most profound, pervasive and harmful forms of evil hatch and flourish wherever there is an absence of love.
Evil is the absence of love.
