bjspurple quote
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."
Contronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.
From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.
And correspondingly, from evil to good."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago
Response
It is obvious that most people understand good and evil, they just don't know what to about it.
The OT did call for society to execution people that allowed evil to prevail in their lives.
The NT deals with good and evil in a different manner. Matthew 6:29 states, And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." This is self examination where each person is required to judge themselves relative to God's Law.
The NT way is best, but some people truly hate God, so I believe there has to be a combination of both the NT and OT in dealing with people.
I believe the Bible teaches all things should be dealt with by the following three levels of action;
1) If it is good - accept it and nourish it.
2) If it is evil - reject it but tolerate it.
3) If it threatens your existence - destroy it before it destroys you. This is self defense, which both the individual and society have a right and responsibility to do.
The first two are from the New Testament of the Bible and represent the Law of Love. The third is from the Old Testament of the Bible and represents the Law of Purity/Self Defense. The New Testament deals more with personal responsibility and the Old Testament deals more with the preservation of society. The Old Testament and the New Testament together present God's Law, a means of survival for a person, a nation and a world.
