evil on Meaning

The man who prosecuted the infamous Manson family for their murders later wrote a book titled Helter Skelter. This phrase was taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Manson...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The Books of the Psalms and David The Book of Psalms is divided into five books, like the five books of the Torah. While it is not obvi...

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Nature, Law, & Holiness Bonus Content: Video prep session with Austin Hill on Psalm 19 . Password: %h+CNTJ7 AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we ...

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...

I met a man who watches The Lord of the Rings movies every night. When he told me this I pushed back: “Every night?” He said that when he gets off work he goes home, fixes his dinner, turns on the m...

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

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...

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

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 ...

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 character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the crea...

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.

Jesus, you sow yourself The Word of Truth, generously The Word of Life, graciously Defend us from the Evil One Who seeks to snatch us away Fortify us for hard times and costly discipleship That we m...

How Do We Deal With Jesus? Jesus’ own family asked the question. The Pharisees asked it as well. Both groups arrived at slightly different answers, but their aim was essentially the same⸺to shut Jesu...

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

Evil is but the shadow, that, in this world, always accompanies good. You may have a world without shadow, but it will be a world without light – a mere dim, twilight world. If you would deepen the in...

Save my soul, Good Gardener Evil flies in wanting to steal my hope Work piles up, insecure boulders ready to crash, leaving no room to root My faith begins to wither as does our relationship Distract...

[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...

Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that ...

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 ...

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

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.

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot an...

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...

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 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.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? How did we get here? When relationships disintegrate and fall apart it is a fair question to ask. The question may come on the brink of...

How Do We Deal With Jesus? Our lectionary passage this week forces us to ask this question. Jesus’ own family asked the question. The Pharisees asked it as well. Both groups arrived at slightly diffe...