evil on Self-Awareness

The worse a person is the less he feels it.

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

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...

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 ...

Dear Everybody, We have a serious problem: All of us think we’re good people. But Jesus says we’re not. Sincerely, Brant P. Hansen

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.

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...

“But how am I to know the good side from the bad?” he asked, puzzled. “You will know,” Yoda answered. “When you are at peace . . . calm, passive.”

“I’m not a good person” is a shockingly countercultural thing to say. We all want to think we’re “clean” and that we’ve avoided whatever “big sins” are on our own personal lists. But we trust ourselve...

Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

Leo Tolstoy, the writer of some of the most beautiful and complex stories in literature, had this to say on the topic of human nature and qualities that define us: One of the commonest and most gene...

The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge.

In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a...

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...

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...

The psychotherapist M. Scott Peck spent many years of his practice as an agnostic. He, along with thousands upon thousands of his colleagues were taught that evil was a social construct, and therefore...

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.

Gracious God, we ask for Your forgiveness and receive it with joyful hearts. Renew our minds so that we may discern what is good. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may be Your witnesses in the world...

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.

There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.

A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it.

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” ...

The famous American psychotherapist M. Scott Peck was for many years an agnostic. He learned his psychiatry according to the standard model in which there was no such thing as evil. But at around the ...

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

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

Pastor: For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. All: For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the...

If we’re unable or unwilling to discern a norm to judge what is good and evil, the whole moral order will tumble into confusion. If we don’t get the moral facts straight, a variety of “crises” will co...