Insanity

  "As it is written:

"There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands,

no one who seeks God.

All have turned away,

they have together become worthless;

there is no one who does good,

not even one."  

"Their throats are open graves;

their tongues practice deceit."

"The poison of vipers is on their lips."  

"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."  

"Their feet are swift to shed blood;

 ruin and misery mark their ways,

and the way of peace they do not know."  

"There is no fear of God before their eyes."  

Rom 3:10-18

"For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'"  Mark 7:21-23

"…loaded down with sins…swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth." 2 Tim 3:6-7

"Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards they go to the dead." Eccl. 9:3

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Some of the wisest of men have been the worst of men. 

When placed in authority they may be the worst of monsters. This is proved by history, and by common experience.

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A few words from one of the wisest of men: Blaise Pascal:

“Nothing is so important to man as his state: nothing more fearful than eternity. Thus the fact that there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of eternity of wretchedness is against nature. With everything else they are quite different; they fear the most trifling things, foresee them; and the same man spends so many days and nights in furry and despair at losing some office or at some imaginary affront to his honor is the very one who knows that he is going to lose everything through death but feels neither anxiety nor emotion. It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor things and so strangely insensitive to the greatest.

To settle down in such ignorance is a monstrous thing.

“Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace. Nothing shows him the truth, everything deceives him.”

All that it is important for us to know is that we are wretched, corrupt, separated from God but redeemed by Christ…

Our imagination so magnifies the present, because we are continually thinking about it, and so reduces eternity, because we do not think about it, that we turn eternity into nothing…

“Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”

...bias towards self is the beginning of all disorder… The will is therefore depraved.

Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, concupiscence, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him?

The mind naturally believes and the will naturally loves, so that when there are no true objects for them they necessarily become attached to false ones.

What a chimera (illusion) is man! What a confused chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth! The great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty! The glory and the scandal of the universe.

Jesus Christ is the object of all things, the center towards all things tend. Whoever knows him knows the reason for everything.

But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Christians is a God of love consolation: he is a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses: he is a God who makes them inwardly aware of their wretchedness and his infinite mercy: who unites himself with them in the depths of their soul: who fills it with humility, joy, confidence and love: who makes them incapable of having any other end but him.”

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  2 Cor 4:18