bible and theology on Perversion

In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

Before Christians can say things about what the church ought to be, their first need is to say what the Church is, here and now amid its own failures and the questionings of the bewildered. Looking at...

The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the s...

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.”  With its Latin roots, “across” and ...

Manipulation is the use of influence to control others for personal gain. It is the dark side of influence. … While manipulation is inherently evil, influence is the best way to lead and move others t...

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

In the early 1900s, a “respectable” woman wore an average of twenty-five pounds of clothing when she appeared in public. The sight of an ankle could cause scandal. Over the next hundred years the pend...

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.” With its Latin roots, “across” and “...

The more enlightened we are, the more greatness and vileness we discover in man.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

For though [something] be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.

When you pass beyond good and evil, you pass into the realm where might is right, and where anything that reminds you of the old moral values—for instance, a large Jewish community—stands in your way ...

Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.

Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.

Evil is the force of anti-creation, anti-life, the force which opposes and seeks to deface and destroy God’s good world of space, time and matter, and above all God’s image-bearing human creatures.

Some skeptics today speak about “evolving” from a primitive condition, but the Bible (Romans 1:18-32) sadly portrays a  descent  rather than an ascent. The result has been given the theological term “...

Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

Loving and faithful God, You are holy, righteous, and pure; You are compassionate and just; You are perfect in all of Your ways. But we have slipped away from Your will; we have been selfish and self-...

Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

The chief evil with relation to the body is love for the body and pitying it. This takes away all the soul's authority over the body and makes the soul the slave of the body. And on the contrary, ...

O God, our Father, in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus you have given us the remedy for sin. In him you have opened to us the way to forgiveness for all our past sins, and you have given u...

Perfection....it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

The devil may also make use of morality.

Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.

In today’s world, holy is the most offensive of all four – letter words. It’s far more acceptable to say, “My life is so messed up,” than it is to say, “I am striving to be holy.” For many, Christiani...