Quotes about Evil

The creational monotheism of the Bible and of the church seems to logically require something like a prehistoric fall, regardless of how we interpret the Chaoskampf material of the Old Testament. Assuming that there is one eternal Creator God who is all-good and all-powerful, it is illogical to posit a foundational structural evil within the cosmos.

Love is the central command in Scripture and judgment the central prohibition. Indeed, judgment is the "original sin" in Scripture. This is why the forbidden tree in the center of the garden—the prohibition around which life in the garden revolved—was called the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

There is no single, all-determinative divine will that coercively steers all things, and hence there is here no supposition that evil agents and events have a secret divine motive behind them. Hence too, one need not agonize over what ultimately good, transcendent divine purpose might be served by any particular evil event.

Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created and saved us to do, namely, love like he loves.

God is light and in him there is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). Indeed, God's "eyes are too pure to behold evil" (Hab. 1:13). How are these verses consistent with the view that everything— including all the evil that people have experienced throughout history—is part of God's sovereign will?

We can acknowledge that while all good things in creation come from God (James 1:17), all evil in creation comes from wills other than that of God. God allows evil to take place because he desires humans to have the potential to love, and for this they must be free. But in no sense does he will their evil.

I'd like to write a series that, in an adventurous and fun way, teaches kids a way to discern between good and evil, to establish a foundation on moral absolutes.

Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

WIDESPREAD EVIL ALWAYS HAS ITS ROOTS IN WIDESPREAD DECEPTION

Whenever communities, families, nations, churches are divided, we sniff out the diabolic.

Fear is the original sin," suddenly said a still, small voice away back—back—back of Valancy's consciousness. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something." Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice.

Fear is the original sin, wrote John Foster. Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.