evil on Condemnation

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. He protects all of their bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall kill the wicked. Those who hate the righteo...

In the interior silence that contemplation opens, Merton recognizes his own complicity in the injustices of society. While the news-as-scoreboard model invites us to view ourselves as the “good guys” ...

A number of years ago I was discipling a young man who had recently been released from the state’s juvenile detention center. As a teenager he had been hooked on drugs, and he had resorted to stealing...

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it for what it is, and then seeing the good as better.

Sometimes evil can feel so strong, so powerful, that its damage seems permanent and the final word on the subject. In this short excerpt from Philip Yancey, we see a reversal, perhaps a foretaste of w...

Have mercy on us, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out our transgressions. Wash us thoroughly from our iniquity and cleans us from our sin. For we know ou...

W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, who grew up in England but who spent some of his life in the United States. In November 1939 he found himself in a German-language movie th...

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they a...

So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear, Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good. . . . Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

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.

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 ...

It is characteristic of those who are evil to judge others as evil. Unable to acknowledge their own imperfections, they must explain away their flaws by blaming others.

We boast of taking advantage of others, love evil more than good, speak deceit rather than tell the truth. We relish words that hurt and harm. We take refuge in wealth, security in savings and in succ...

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

Generous One You entrust us with the goodness Of your faith and field Yet We grasp We scheme Deliver us from wickedness We reject We harm Deliver us from wickedness We murder We seize what ...

A predominant characteristic . . . of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach...

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

There are few words in any language that can equal dikaiosis for theological depth and resonance. It has been at the center of scholarly debate for centuries. Known largely as “justification,” it is s...

Leader: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. People: Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin. F...

[The exodus] points beyond itself to a greater need for deliverance from the totality of evil and restoration to relationship with God than it achieved by itself. Such a deliverance was accomplished b...

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

One of the most powerful illustrations of grace and mercy in all of western literature has to be the great scene between Monseigneur Bienvenu and Jean Valjean in the stirring epic Les Miserables by Vi...

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we don’t take evil seriously after all; it means that we do. In fact, it means we take it doubly seriously. To begin with, it means a settled determination to name evil a...

The Old Testament oscillates among three things: evil seen as idolatry and consequent dehumanization; evil as what wicked people do, not least what they do to the righteous; and evil as the work of th...

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today ...

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.