Natasha Murphy Neeley

“Well-respected psychologist and researcher Dr. Erich Fromm lived through both world wars and lost his Jewish faith on the other side of that trauma. After researching Nazism for years, he came to the conclusion that no one starts out evil;12 instead, people become evil “slowly over time through a long series of choices.”13 His book The Heart of Man, which is an exploration of evil and the human condition, is worth quoting at length: The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens—or better perhaps, becomes alive…. Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme when I can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme when I have lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice…. Most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot lead a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide.14”
― John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace

“We make our decisions, and then our decisions make us. In the beginning we have a choice, but eventually, we have a character.”
― John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace

“Therefore, we must run every habit, every thought, every relationship-everything-through this simple grid:
Does this sow my flesh or my spirit?
Will this make me more enslaved or more free?
More beastly or more human?”
― John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace

“It’s by Spirit and truth that we’re transformed into the image of Jesus, but the reciprocal is also true. It’s by isolation and lies that we’re deformed into the image of the devil.”
― John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace