If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted in C. Plantinga, Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living, 49
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
--The Apostle Paul, Romans 6
In Christ, we have not only been given a chance to destroy the evil part of our heart; our whole selves have been slaughtered and remade. We are statues, as Lewis described, in need not of a bit of sculpting here and a bit of fresh paint there, but of coming to life.
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