A Quote by Jon Krakauer
Chris would use the spiritual aspect to try to motivate us. "He'd tell us to think about all the evil in the world, all the hatred, and imagine ourselves running against the forces of darkness, the evil wall that was trying to keep us from running our best. He believed that doing well was all mental, a simple matter of harnessing whatever energy was available.
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Evil is real - and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where we stand, how we're going to live our lives. We can try to persuade ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn't so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it , and say it's none of our business. Or we can work on God's side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.
I've got childhood friends who are working for non-profit foundations, or who are running for state senate and doing things that actually do fight evil in this world. And what am I doing? I bang on some drums in a rock band. I try to tell myself that by doing that, I'm fighting evil - which is completely absurd. Music is not equipped in any way to fight against anything. Other than, I guess, it could fight against silence.
The basic cause of all our difficulties is immaturity. That's why I talk so much about peace within ourselves as a step toward peace in our world. If we were mature, war would not be possible and peace would be assured. In our immaturity we do not know the laws of the universe, and we think evil can be overcome by more evil. One symptom of our immaturity is greed, making it difficult for us to learn the simple lesson of sharing.
Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.
To then say that our own actions in combating evil have led to evil, is nothing more than saying, "Islamic terrorists are somewhat justified, at least we can understand why they hate us because we've done things to make them hate us. ... We have been evil ourselves, and we are evil and that justifies them being evil."
One of the most astonishing things about Jesus is that as God he actually chose to come into our fallen, sick, twisted, unjust, evil, cruel, painful world and be with us to suffer like us and for us. Meanwhile, we spend most of our time trying to figure out how to avoid the pain and evil of this world while reading dumb books about the rapture just hoping to get out.
Good and evil are not what our parents told us, not what our church tells us, or our country, not what anybody else tells us! All of us decide good and evil for ourselves, automatically, by choosing what we want to do!
Divine Providence has played a great part in our history. I have the feeling that God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose. It is not given to us to know fully what that purpose is, but I think we may be sure of one thing, and that is that our country is intended to do all it can, in cooperating with other nations to help created peace and preserve peace in the world. It is given to defend the spiritual values-the moral code-against the vast forces of evil that seek to destroy them.
God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.
It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us. This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say.
We should use our economic power in lots of different ways. I think we can use that in order to keep [Vladimir] Putin contained, because he is a one-horse show. Energy. And we have an abundance of energy, but we have archaic energy exportation rules. We need to get rid of those, allow ourselves to really make Europe dependent on us and other parts of the world dependent on us for energy. Put him back in his little box where he belongs.
Inspired men have been raised up, who have given us our form of government, and the code of laws by which we are controlled, the best ever evolved by man, so far as we are able to judge. The Lord has strengthened the arms of the patriots who have defended us against the assaults of all those who have come up against us, and delivered us until today, from those who would have torn us asunder. Against all opposition, I sometimes think almost against ourselves, the Lord has brought us to our present condition, until this nation, like a city set on a hill, has become the light of the world.
God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.
Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?'
I think the Bhagavad Gita is about both the forces of light and the forces of darkness that exist within our own self, within our own soul; that our deepest nature is one of ambiguity. We have evolutionary forces there - forces of creativity, and love, and compassion, and understanding. But we also have darkness inside us - the diabolical forces of separation, fear and delusion. And in most of our lives, there is a battle going on within ourselves.
This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-card monte with our souls from day one, and when we couldn't find the queen, you sent us to Hell to be tortured for eternity. That was your great plan for humanity? All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn't even tell us about it?
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