evil on Storytelling

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 ...

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...

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.

It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil,...

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.

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...

The Gospels tell the story of how the evil in the world—political, social, personal, moral, emotional—reached its height, and how God’s long-term plan for Israel (and for himself!) finally came to its...

I think the mistake most of us make about beauty is that we expect it to be pretty—to please us with its proportions, its balance, its harmony, its rhyme. If those are your requirements, I doubt I wil...

The Old Testament isn’t written in order simply to “tell us about God” in the abstract. It isn’t designed primarily to provide information, to satisfy the inquiring mind. It’s written to tell the stor...

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...

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

What the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it’s there, nor a set of suggestions for how we might adjust our lifestyles so that evil will mysteriously disappea...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Destruction No More Bonus Content: Video prep session with Scott Bullock on Genesis 9:8-17 . Password: fHUk*p2* AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we ...

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.

Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

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

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...

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish...

It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.

A friend of mine who is a child psychologist told me about something one of her young patients said. It is common practice to give toys to children in the treatment room so they work out their conflic...

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gr...

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...

"Eomer said, 'How is a man to judge what to do in such times?' As he has ever judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among...

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...

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

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...

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

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