56 quotes
Paraphrase: Evil may be thought of as a failure to complete the Oedipal process.
Paraphrase: Since the primary characteristic of evil is laziness, and since laziness is so common, it is obvious that evil is commonplace.
The only real route to peace is through self-purification. We must purge ourselves of our own pride, our need to control, and our unwillingness to suffer for the sake of others. Peacemaking begins inside each of us.
The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (1987)
Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
This is a dangerous book.
People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983)
Paraphrase: Evil is actively opposed to love. It is not laziness but militant refusal. It is anti-love.
Paraphrase: If masochism is as common as it seems to be, then it should not surprise us that human evil exists, or occurs.
Paraphrase: We live in a profoundly mysterious universe, and it is a universe in which we are constantly being called to grow.
Paraphrase: Many people, because they have not successfully resolved the Oedipal stage, remain emotionally children; they are afraid to grow up, afraid to risk independence, afraid to risk real love.
Paraphrase: Evil originates in failure to acknowledge one’s own pain and sin.
Paraphrase: I find the average quality of most parenting in the U.S to be appallingly poor.
Paraphrase: The whole point of having a brain is to use it by thinking.
Paraphrase: In theological language evil is not just a defect but a real spirit of unreality. It is that which refuses to acknowledge reality, to acknowledge truth; it is, therefore, a form of unconsciousness.
Compartmentalization is not the root of all evil; it is, however, the principal psychological mechanism of evil. Deprive an evil man of his capacity to compartmentalize, and he will be like a general without an army. Or better yet, he will undergo a conversion to goodness — a conversion to integrity.
People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983)
Liberation theology proclaims that Christians are called to play an active role in doing battle with the systemic sins and evils of society – called to take responsibility for liberating people from the burdens of poverty and oppression... As (Tom) Langford points out, people who focus exclusively on liberation become fanatic and glum...
The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety (1997)
I believe that all psychological disorders are bascially disorders of consciousness. They are not rooted in the unconscious but in a conscious mind that refuses to think and is unwilling to deal with certain issues, bear certain feelings, or tolerate pain. These issues, feelings , or desires are in the unconscious only because a pain-avoiding conscious mind has thrust them there.
The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety (1997)