CHRISTIANS -- How do you define "evil"?

Question

And I mean it... how do *YOU* define evil? I don't want a dictionary copy/paste or some block of text from Wikipedia, etc. I want answers from your own head.

Answer 1

As God gives life abundantly, evil gives nothing, a void. The opposite of love is not hate because hate is a response. Not to respond is evil.

So during WWII, we had a chance to see evil. The Germans
were evil in because they view other people not worthy of the air they breathe.

But the Japanese unit 731, http://www.ww2pacific.com/unit731.html

did "medical" experiments with no regard for the person they did them on. Everything from freezing limbs on people until the limb sounded like a log to infecting people and communities to see what happens. No one lived through the experiment as the final step was dissection...with nothing given for the pain.

So evil is the absents of any compassion...depreciating a person's value to be meaningless or worthless.

Answer 2

I'm not a theist but I think Evil like Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

A Xian may think: I could never slaughter a whole buncha people.
Well; the 'god' you worship sure did when he did The Flood thingy and that was after getting all those people to help build The Ark ... all that help and he still murdered them.
Good 'god'?
If you really thought an old man and his three sons built The Ark all by themselves then you haven't thought the thing through at all, have you?
This thing wasn't a 7" dinghy.

Answer 3

There is no possible way I could answer that question in the space allowed, but to put it (far too) simply:

Harming = evil.
Helping and healing = good.

There are many exceptions, of course (for example, if someone is harming others, then it may not always be possible to get them to stop harming others without harming them) but this is the basic law I live by, and this is the basic law I have learned as I have studied the Bible.

Answer 4

Paul said he didn't know about good and evil until the Lord made it known. The Lord knows the concequences of wrong actions so he made the law known so man could avoid the suffering that comes from breaking the law.

Answer 5

The absence of God's presence, the force sent by the Father of Lies to destroy the human race by intelligently deceiving mankind, the presence of sin stained hearts and minds, the presence of sin to destroy nature at its core, the absence of peace and morals, the beginning of hate, and wickedness, the destruction of truth, the perverse view of right and wrong, the adsorption of pride, the collapse of Gods standard and direction all sum up what evil is

Answer 6

Whatever drives a person to not think of others when he or she does something i.e. I don't like this person so I will kill him. I don't care if there are others who care about him. Also, to some extent I think extreme hubris can generate evil. Then, I think cancer is evil, but that's just me.

Answer 7

Evil = Bad. The opposite of Good.

Mind you, what's a bad thing, belief, or deed for any one individual can be a good thing, belief, or deed for another individual.

It's whatever you want to believe, or not believe.
If you don't want to believe in anything, then don't.
It doesn't mean you're evil or good; and it doesn't mean that you're not evil or not good, either.

Answer 8

My definition of evil is this: Evil is anything that intentionally harms someone without any regard to the person or persons that you are intentionally hurting.

Answer 9

Evil is a point of view. If you're GW Bush you think Saddam Hussein is evil. If you're Saddam you think Bush is evil. If you're a soldier you think your opponents are the bad guys and they think the same about you.

Answer 10

I define evil as a malicious intent, malicious thought, or malicious action. That's evil as a noun. When I think of an evil person, I think of someone who wishes to destroy a person, place, or thing.

As an adjective, I use 'evil' to describe almost anything violent, malicious, vicious, atrocious.

& you know
that is the
Best Answer!