The face of true evil
Posted on 04/14/2009 4:51:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
When the average person thinks "evil," he thinks of a cruelly-featured, sneering, bestial man wickedly twirling his mustache as he draws perverse delight from inflicting misery on his fellow human beings.
People who fit the almost cartoonish definition we've grown accustomed to viewing as evil, certainly do exist -- and we hear about those dictators, serial killers, hit men, & psychopaths on the nightly news.
But, it's a mistake to believe that those are the only people who do evil or that only activities that rise to the level of murder, rape, or armed robbery are sins. The worst of the worst may deserve especially strong condemnation, but small cruelties committed by unthinking people -- who view themselves as good and just, despite their sometimes malicious actions -- have done more than most people realize to spread evil, degrade civilization, and drag our culture into the sewers.
That's the everyday reality we live with, especially in prosperous, civilized nations like America. For the average person, on a typical day, the evil that comes into his life isn't from some modern day Snidely Whiplash; it's from other ordinary people: his co-workers and random folks he passes on the street during his everyday life.
Yes, "good people" can and often do perform evil acts that should be incompatible with their view of themselves as decent human beings. Unfortunately, it's our nature to lapse into malevolent behavior sometimes and if we're not paying attention, we can sometimes engage in it for quite a while without even truly realizing how far we've drifted from our values.
With that in mind, evil is...
1) Anonymously emailing death threats.
2) Suing someone who did nothing wrong in order to try to collect a big payday.
3) Passing on information that you know is a lie about a political opponent.
4) Posting someone's phone number or address online in an effort to intimidate him or worse yet, in hopes that someone will try to hurt him.
5) Putting an earmark in a bill in order to enrich your friends, family, or yourself.
6) A witty comedian telling a brilliant joke about how dumb people are to do the right thing.
7) Breaking into a house and encouraging people to engage in squatting.
8) Lying to a woman to get her to sleep with you.
9) Being an online troll.
10) Trying to convince people to do something that's immoral, unethical, or just plain old wrong so that you'll feel better about doing it yourself.
11) Spreading a conspiracy theory you don't believe in to draw in traffic for your website.
12) Spraying graffiti on someone else's property.
13) Watching someone drop money on the ground and keeping it instead of giving it back to him.
14) A pastor who waters down his Christian beliefs because they conflict with political correctness.
15) Hacking into someone else's computer.
16) Choosing not to help pay for your own children's livelihood.
17) Spreading malicious rumors about friends and co-workers.
18) Aborting your child because it's inconvenient.
19) Deliberately undermining someone else's marriage.
20) Trying to rig an election, win a seat in the courts that you lost at the ballot box, or trying to insure phony votes are counted.
21) An atheist trying to ruin other people's faith in God to make himself feel better about his own unbelief.
22) Writing a virus that infects someone's computer.
23) Living off the charity of others or the government dole AND feeling no shame over it.
24) Mocking someone whose politics you disagree with right after he dies.
25) Knowingly accusing an innocent person of racism.
I’m not sure what point the author was trying to make?
Some of these examples may qualify as evil, but a lot of them are simply morally wrong. To classify relatively trival moral lapses like being an online troll as “evil” diminishes and trivalizes what true evil is.
Most of these are approved by the Democratic party
Setting out to destroy a political opponent by spreading false rumors or mocking him/her because he/she is not PC. (ala Sarah Palin).
Hitler didn’t rise to power with promises of mass murder and global warfare. He came to power with the face of smiling children and social justice.
An example of true evil: breaking a bank of a country to make billions, and then later leveraging that ill-gained wealth and political acornery to break an even bigger country
And the difference is....? Immorality is evil in all of its decadence. It's all about following Satan's siren call.
Sending any child to a government school.
Sending almost any child to any school.
The face of true evil
[Hitler didn’t rise to power with promises of mass murder and global warfare. He came to power with the face of smiling children and social justice.]
And it is happening in America today. The main cause is the abandonment of the Word of God for the lies of mankind.
If a man will beleive how that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day, he shall be saved.
All else results in death,destruction and despair. And so it is.
#1 should be: Being a liberal.
I thoroughly agree.
I don’t see Obama on the list. PPpppfffffttttt....
And the difference is....?
If you can’t see the difference between being a relatively harmless selfish jerk and being a monster who destroys peoples lives you have no wisdom or judgement. Again, to lump them all as “evil” trivalizes true evil, and actually helps it to continue. Most people have some small moral lapses during their lives. If people call them all “evil” they are less likely to be outraged by true evil.
Are you kidding? I think he made his point well... people tend to think they are “good” b/c they are not murdering someone or stealing thousands of dollars or some more obvious wrong, but there are myriad ways people commit evil everyday...
I think bearing false witness is one of the worst and is a form of murder.
There may be gradations of evil, but it IS evil nevertheless. I think these things are evil. A moral wrong might be something like knowing your mom is alone (a widow) and knowing that you should call her up and/or visit but you are so busy you keep procrastinating. THAT is a moral wrong.
There is a difference b/t things like that and thinks like the author listed. Huge differences.
I don’t think his article trivializes anything.
“I’m not sure what point the author was trying to make?”
That Evil is not an extreme but rather a mundane condition. How one responds or regards himself after doing one, some or many of the things on the articles list determines the degree to which one might be regarded as ‘evil’. Acts don’t necessarily determine evil, it is more of an ‘attitude’ that comes of displacing God’s Truth rather than accepting it.
LOL. True.
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