Quotes about Corruption

Enron - although an extreme case - is hardly the only company with a hollow set of values.

There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell-fire, if it were not for God's restraints. There is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell: there are those corrupt principles, in reigning power in them, and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell-fire.

“For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.

For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.

But none speaks with a single voice. None with a voice free from the old vibrations. Always I hear corrupt murmurs; the chink of gold and metal. Mad music...

He oppresses the poor and needy; he commits robbery and does not restore a pledge. He lifts his eyes to idols; he commits abominations.

and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

Destruction is within; oppression and deceit never leave the streets.

When we say, "Jesus died for our sins" within a message about how to escape this nasty old world and go to heaven, it means one thing. When we say, "Jesus died for our sins" within a message about God the creator rescuing his creation from corruption, decay, and death, and rescuing us to be part of that, it means something significantly different.

“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The venom of vipers is on their lips.”

The corrupting and corrosive lifestyles he describes are not arbitrary, but rather the result, the consequence, of the original idolatry. This doesn't mean that God is not involved in those consequences. God, as Creator, hates the idolatry and dehumanization that deface and damage his beautiful world and his image-bearing creatures. Unless that is so, God is not a good God, but a careless, faceless bureaucrat.

And the LORD said to me, “Get up and go down from here at once, for your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten image.”