The World, the Flesh and the Devil

Book excerpt: In this small but masterly-crafted book, Richard Rohr addresses what Christianity views as the three traditional sources of evil - the world, the flesh and the devil – to encourage us to look beyond our personal moral failings and give us principles for resisting evil on a wider scale. Exploring how Christianity has focused almost exclusively on individual evil, or the sins of the flesh, he offers a gripping interpretation of Jesus' teachings and the writings of Paul the Apostle to show how vital it is that we also understand the often subtle and well-disguised evil of the world and the devil. This book offers no easy solutions. Yet, skilfully distilling half a century of teaching and preaching, The World, the Flesh and the Devil will leave you with a greater understanding of evil and its role in the social issues of our time, and better equipped to recognise and fight it. With his characteristic wisdom and compassion, Rohr offers us principles for resisting the social evils pervading our lives, in which we are all complicit, through Christian contemplation and by reaching out to one another in love.