A predominant characteristic, however, of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image of perfection.…Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection. Since the evil, deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad….In The Road Less Traveled I defined evil “as the exercise of political power — that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion — in order to avoid…spiritual growth”. In other words, the evil attack others instead of facing their own failures.
Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgment of one’s need to grow. If we cannot make that acknowledgment, we have no option except to attempt to eradicate the evidence of our own imperfection.…Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They worry about this a great deal. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them.…the words “image,” “appearance,” and “outwardly” are crucial to understanding the morality of the evil. While they seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their “goodness” is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. This is why they are the ‘people of the lie.’”
—M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie
The people of the lie are the people of well-being. How do we escape becoming these people? So many of us are, to some extent. Whenever we choose well-being over salvation we are people of the lie. So, how is one today supposed to know that there is a purpose to life other than well-being, that the purpose of life is salvation, and that salvation is possible only by dying in a state of friendship with God that is made possible only by cooperation with the Grace of God in a life of repentance through the worship of Jesus Christ as a member of the Roman Catholic Church? The short answer is to choose authority over power, always. Power is antithetical to the mode of salvation.
Jesus Christ, the omnipotent, came to save us from enslavement to power. He did this by overpowering the powers of this world, not with His almighty power, but with his divine authority. When he told Pilate that He could at any moment summon legions of angels to defend Him, but would not do so due to His Kingdom being “not of this world,” He was telling Pilate and us that authority trumps power, and the kingdom based upon true authority is sovereign over all others. The Jews rejected Him because they worshipped power, their own, and He both refused to join in their idolatry and unmasked it as such. The Jewish leaders crucified Authority itself, and any person from that day on who knowingly and deliberately rejects the divine authority of Jesus Christ does the same.
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