Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on. .N.T. Wright
About This Quote
We have a responsibility to each other. We can't just sit back and expect our government officials to handle all of the problems for us. We have to do something about them. If we live in a country where people are allowed to do whatever they want, then that's just how it is.
If we live in a country where people have the freedom to express their opinions, then it is up to us as citizens to respond to what they say. If we live in a country where people are allowed to protest, then we must respect their right to do so.
Source: Evil And The Justice Of God
Some Similar Quotes
- When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.
- Buy a gift for a dog, and you'll be amazed at the way it will dance and swerve its tail, but if don't have anything to offer to it, it won't even recognize your arrival; such are the attributes of fake friends.
- May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
- When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.
- We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we're always sick.
More Quotes By N.T. Wright
- Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good...
- ..left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present..is to live as...
- What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead, ' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.
- All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.
- Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail, ' but it has nothing to do with morals,...