Quotes about Evil

You and I are, by birth, by nature, and by choice, inwardly depraved, which is to say that we are entirely corrupt. That's not to say that we have no good in us; we do. However, anything good in us has been tainted with evil. It touches everything. Without the redeeming power of Christ we cannot halt our own moral slide.

I can't imagine Christ being weak and carrying on about his burdens to women, let alone an Oprah type of woman. We respect and believe in Christ because of the way he dealt with life and how he overcame evil with good. His strength and love encourages those sincerely seeking to believe in God.

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

Anger is the rising up of the heart in passionate displacency against an apprehended evil, which would cross or hinder us of some desired good.

Oh! what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided conscience(93)!

religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usual list of hot sins. God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything.

The game is over once we see clearly because evil succeeds only by disguising itself as good, necessary, or helpful.

Ability to laugh at evil, to relativize symbols without dismissing them is usually a sign of a rather healthy person. Puritans and reformers can never laugh.

The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history.

True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.

Like any true spiritual master, Jesus exposed the root causes of evil (almost always some form of idolatry), and did not waste time punishing the mere symptoms, as moralistic people usually do.