The Russians drove my father’s family from Europe, not the Nazis. My paternal grandfather, living in the neverland between Ukraine and Russia, fled to America in the 1920s. Pogroms that decimated Jewish villages in Eastern Europe had been sending Jews west for decades, fueling bursts of Jewish immigration to the U.S.
“Satan” in the Baha’i writings symbolizes our inclination to turn from God. Satan’s persona is “a product of human minds and of instinctive human tendencies toward error,” according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha. Pride, ego, the “insistent self,” symbolized by Satan, represent baser human instincts.
As long as I can remember, something inside of me has nudged my heart to make a healthy difference in someone else’s life. Not so much in my own, but in someone else’s life. It’s no surprise, kids, that making some effort has always made a healthy difference in my own life. I am so proud of you three today because I see you all trying to make healthy differences in other people’s lives in what you are doing right now
whether Kohberger ate at the Mad Greek is not the issue. The issue — as far as I'm concerned — is that Kohberger has waived rights to due process for six months. A Moscow, Idaho, resident would hope that the media would lay off our fair city for six months.
I can’t find the passage now, but I know it’s there. Sometime in the late fall or early winter of 1853, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal that nature now has Quaker colors.
The fact that God is the God of Love doesn’t mean He’s not also the God of Hate. The opposite of love isn’t hate but indifference. Your Bible doesn’t teach a Zoroastrian-style dualism. Satan is a fallen angel, and we don’t need to make him a god. Don’t you see? None of us understands how to love properly, and we always hate far worse.
I believe I’m seeing far more evil in the world than ever before in my lifetime. There’s a constant barrage of antisemitism, gun violence, racism and homophobia. And not only is there a lack of empathy, but there’s a gleeful viciousness about it from perpetrators. However, for this piece, I’m going to focus specifically on the evil I’m seeing in response to COVID.