*EVIL - also see DEVIL, SATAN, SIN, FALL, PRIDE, IGNORANCE
Antonyms: GOOD, MEEK, HUMBLE, KNOWLEDGE
Without good, evil would not exist. Good allows evil to occur. In Mere Christianity the chapter on "Pride" (the most evil of all vices) shows how "power" is what pride wants. ( C S Lewis)
Admitting your a bad person. - C.S. Lewis 'Mere Christianity' page 88
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. YOu can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both bad and evil: bad people do not know about either.
Resist not evil. Antagonize any situation and you give it [life and] power against yourself. (p75) Realize the Indwelling Christ in your enemy. (p83)(sermon on the Mount)
False accusations are more difficult than cancer because they involve moral evil, whereas cancer is an illness, a part of the human condition. (Gift of Peace, p65)
One of the problems of monotheism has been its reluctance to accept evil in the divine. Hindus say that evil is one of the masks of God. (Beginning, p47)
Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself. (Taoism, Wisdom, p160)
You will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil (Gen 3:5).
I wonder if: God didn't want us to know of evil because He knew that to know it is to suffer. (Randy)
For the love of money is the root of all evil. (1 Timothy 6:10)
Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good. (Rom 12:21)
Do you not realize the power you have through love, faith, and prayer? You have the power to destoy evil if you all focus on Me and allow Me to live in you. (IAM, p70)
In life we are always choosing between the lessor of two evils. I think even God had to do the same, either not to allow evil (thereby humans would be like animals/robotic) or to allow humans free a free will (thereby evil would be brought into the world by us). (Randy)
There is no organized, conspiratorial evil in the world, no satanic plot
to which we fall prey. Satan is a metaphor, a symbolic way of warning people to look to the divine for security. Blaming an outside force obscures the truth and avoids responsiblity. (Tenth, p146)
Evil was not just inevitable but actually necessary because it threw into relief and brilliance the virtues of goodness, just as shade and obscurity revealed the highlights of a painting. Just as a painter cannot reproduce 3 dimensions on a 2 dimension canvas without the use of shadows and darkness, so God cannot bring home to us the splendour of goodness, including his own, without the contrast of evil. Evil in all its forms co-exists with goodness and sinful man is left to choose between the two. It is an act of God's nobility to allow them to choose evil as well as good, and evil must exist to make the choice meaningful. Clearly evil and free will are somehow connected. (Quest, p62-63)
Let evil destroy itself.
See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil.
Who does evil and is afraid of letting it be known has still a seed of good in his evil; who does good and is anxious to have it known has still a root of evil in his good. (Wisdom, Confucianism, p143)
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*DEVIL - also see *18
You create in your imagination a power equal to God, in order that you may find a way for God's will to be thwarted. And so you have created in your mythology the being you call "devil." (Conversations, p15)
Dance with the devil and you will have to pay his dues! ( )
I wonder if the Devil is not existant because of his attributes of destruction and dis-unity. If we in being demi-devils don't co-operate with other demi-devils because of our selfishness and pride, then the evils may even oppose each other as in a "tug of war." (Randy)
Eve's name: it no longer echoes "even," "eve," "evening," but now, henceforth, "evil". (Paradise, p40)