An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
This world ultimately comes down to a choice: fear or love. The past two years have made who chose what pretty clear for all to see.
Absolute truth....
I fundamentally disagree with these types of world-views because I don't consider any emotions to be inherently good or evil. Feeling the full spectrum of human emotions is what healthy, balanced people do.
Anger is no less inherently good or evil or dangerous than love. Love can compel people to do far worse acts of evil than anger.
Starving your "evil wolf" will lead to mental illness.
A far more emotionally mature choice is to use the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to help guide you with dealing with all emotions. Work through your emotions and manage them rather than suppressing them.
Jesus would say feed your good wolf with the water of life...
and tell the evil wolf to get behind me Satan....
There are no good or evil wolves because both love and hate are healthy.
I'm sorry, but pretending that love is always good and hate is always bad is Care Bears level psychology.
You are confusing emotions with making rational and informed choices based on emotions.
And no, Jesus was not evil or Satanic when he flew into a rage during the Cleansing of the Temple. Jesus was righteous to feel anger and his was righteous to act on it. Your entire argument crumbles when you realize that love and hate can be good and evil.
That depends on whether or not you can hate actions and not hate people. Jesus was rightfully angry at the behavior of the moneylenders who were both taking advantage of His fellow Jews, and blocking the Court of The Gentiles.
Matthew 21: 12-13
Isaiah 56: 6-7
Jeremiah 7:11
Amen....
Jesus overturned tables and used physical violence against the greedy Jews.
That said, Jesus still felt ANGRY, likely mostly because the the sin and perhaps a little anger was directed towards the sinners as Jesus beat the greedy Jews with a whip as they ran for their lives.
But my point still stands. Anger is not inherently evil. Jesus felt anger and acted on His anger and his actions were good, not evil or Satanic. This is the single best example I can thing of and we both know that you can't rebut it even if Jesus did feel some anger at the sinners or not.
Granted, but the moneylenders (not all Jews, as you seem to insinuate twice,) were essentially 'setting up shop' where they did not belong. Nehemiah 5 or 6 describes a similar incident with Sanballat and Tobiah, who tried to do the same thing, essentially. Nehemiah kicked them out as well as the Gentile merchants who tried to come to the gate to make a sale on the Sabbath.
I somewhat agree with your baseless interpretation of scripture, however nitpicking at my metaphor doesn't rebut anything about my argument. We may as well be arguing about the best flavor of ice-cream.
What? I back this up with two scriptures and you define it as baseless?!?! You didn't bother to find a cross-reference or any other reference.
I honestly agree with the idea that there are things we should hate, as well. (And said so!) But when we carry that hatred from things to people, we cross a line that should not be crossed. You never know whom God will call to serve Him. All of the twelve were Jews, and Paul (aka Saul of Tarsus) was actually a Pharisee who disagreed so vehemently with the Apostles that he tried to kill all who had an alliance to them ---Until Jesus showed up and turned his whole life around 180 degrees.
God bless you, have a good evening....
God bless you too, my friend.
...wasn't there an episode of "The Office" where one of the characters wanted to debate the philosophical validity of the motivational posters that were displayed on the walls?
...just asking for a friend...
...doggy winks....
Probably. The difficulty I have with some people who start this type of debate is the coloring of motives - It's one thing for any people group to call each out for faults, it's another thing when someone starts painting all of any group, Black, White, Hispanic, Cherokee, or Jew in a negative light. Just because some prominent Englishman (or German) is an idiot doesn't make them all idiots.
...you are a pretty sharp cookie...
...doggy winks....
Great example and you couldn't be more wrong.
This fat alcoholic is not feeding his evil wolf - he's starving it just like the foolish old Cherokee recommended and using food and booze to hide from his painful emotions.
His depression is the product of suppressing his emotions / "starving the wolf" rather than embracing them and managing them.
Suppressing emotions / "starving the wolf" leads to mental illness.
I dont see where there is any reference in the story to show any repression of emotions? What you pay attention to thrives ..what you don't pay attention to...ie feed....withers away....not grows through repression.
Anger happens because of the fear behind the anger...perfect love casts out fear and the ego . The negative me ..and so anger does not arise. Neither does any of the negative emotions .
This is what we are here to accomplish and then help others do the same....
regard everything as a challenge to solve in the right way without negative emotions at play
Evil wolf defined as - "he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” - it is being consumed by all of these things (not just which ever one part you think isn't as bad) that defines the counter part of evil. I think by feeding things like self-pity, arrogance, greed etc you will starve what is good in you. The reverse can be true.
Yes but the list provided by the OP is flawed. Some thing like false pride is inherently wrong because it's false. Pity is another word for compassion and compassion for yourself isn't evil either. Lies isn't an emotion. Ego is another word for self worth and that is healthy.
Ugh... I feel like I'm repeating myself again and again: emotions are too complex to categorize as good and evil, right and wrong.
The premise of this entire post is fundamentally flawed.
Yeah, it's a big Light/Dark side Star Wars talk. Ultimately it IS the balance between the two and having the wisdom not to be consumed by either. Self Pity isn't good to feed. You are not being compassionate to yourself and are likely poisoning your ability move on. - That is if all you do is feed something like Self Pity - "Oh I'm so fat, I can't lose weight, I can't stop eating, me me me..." VS "Man, look at this gut I'm getting; I better go run it off."
It's only bad because you use a negative term like "feed" where I can counter it just like I did before by using the word compassion. And we're playing another game of semantics because there are no inherently good or evil emotions.
Ugh, so let's go through this again: over consuming any emotion is dangerous. The right amount of self compassion and the right about of self respect and the right amount of righteous anger and the right amount of guilt is good an the right about of regret is good.
This is where you say, "But too much guilt is bad and too much ego is bad". And people have committed war crimes over love.
And too much sodium is bad, but that doesn't make sodium evil either.
You keep saying self compassion. I have never heard self pity referenced like that before. Not passing any judgement, just new to me. LOL - it's okay friend, metaphors are supposed to evoke thought and discussion - and here we the participants and audience may find value from this interaction in our irl world in the future. The goal is to not get worked up reasserting your point as you'll likely "feed" the vapors parts of the metaphorical wolf.
People who get angry can't think straight.
I have won many arguments by staying calm and stating truths logically.
And using the distraction of personal attacks rather than rebuttal means you have lost this argument.
It' OK because you tried, but you should have bowed out gracefully rather than devolving into mud throwing.
I'm sorry for all of the people who felt disgusted or enraged after interacting with you.