Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. "Reasonable people, " he said, think that "with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints." Then there are the ethical "fanatics" who "believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles." Men of"conscience" become overwhelmed because the "countless respectable and seductive disguises and masks in which evil approaches them make their conscience anxious and unsure until they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience." They must "deceive their own conscience in order not to despair." Finally there are some who retreat to a "private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. but.. they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. . Eric Metaxas
Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering,...
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Thomas Hardy
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
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Richard Bach
I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.
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Mark Twain
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
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Leo Tolstoy
More Quotes By Eric Metaxas
Christianity contains within itself a germ hostile to the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
This was one of the casualties of war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.
With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.
Each era has the fatal hubris to believe that it has once and for all climbed to the top of the mountain and can see everything as it is, from the highest and most objective vantage point possible.
The author of the hymn 'Amazing Grace', John Newton, who once was a slave ship captain, and who became a Christian preacher and an enemy of the slave trade, once said: 'I have reason to praise [God] for my trials, for, most probably, I should...
