Misuse Of Trust Quotes

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.

Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.

I broke her heart and misused her trust. I lied and cheated on her. But still she loves me like the old days and patiently waiting for the day that I may feel and understand her true feelings.

Quatermain (while climbing down): We are above an abyss such as satan's own, Miss Murray.Pray not to look down. Mina: And you, Sir, should not look up.You have me at a disadvantage and I trust you'll not misuse our situation.

This is why the camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time; and is why in turn I feel such rage at its misuse: which has spread so nearly universal a corruption of sight that I know of less than a dozen alive whose eyes I can trust even so much as my own.’   ‘If

In a pre-scientific society the best the common man can do is pin his faith on a leader and give him his support, trusting in his benevolence against the misuse of the delegated power and in his wisdom to govern justly and make war successfully.

those who repent and place their faith and trust in Jesus alone for their salvation become “children of God,” are adopted into God’s family, and become members of the spiritual kingdom he has established on earth. Believers who live in this kingdom are called to live differently, and Jesus is explaining what that looks like in a very practical sense. His words are not hard to understand as he sets up a strong moral ethic that reflects what it means to love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. It is here that Jesus addresses the issue of hypocrisy.

Morning comes. I go to my class. There sit the little ones with folded arms. In their eyes is still all the shy astonishment of the childish years. They look up at me so trustingly, so believingly - and suddenly I get a spasm over the heart. Here I stand before you, one of the hundreds of thousands of bankrupt men in whom the war destroyed every belief and almost every strength. Here I stand before you, and see how much more alive, how much more rooted in life you are than I. Here I stand and must now be your teacher and guide. What should I teach you? Should I tell you that in twenty years you will be dried-up and crippled, maimed in your freest impulses, all pressed mercilessly into the selfsame mold? Should I tell you that all the learning, all culture, all science is nothing but hideous mockery, so long as mankind makes war in the name of God and humanity with gas, iron, explosive and fire? What should I teach you then, you little creatures who alone have remained unspotted by the terrible years? What am I able to teach you then? Should I tell you how to pull the string of a hand grenade, how best to throw it at a human being? Should I show you how to stab a man with a bayonet, how to fell him with a club, how to slaughter him with a spade? Should I demonstrate how best to aim a rifle at such an incomprehensible miracle as a breathing breast, a living heart? Should I explain to you what tetanus is, what a broken spine is, and what a shattered skull? Should I describe to you what brains look like when they scatter about? What crushed bones are like - and intestines when they pour out? Should I mimic how a man with a stomach wound will groan, how one with a lung wound gurgles and one with a head wound whistles? More I do not know. More I have not learned. Should I take you the brown-and-green map there, move my finger across it and tell you that here love was murdered? Should I explain to you that the books you hold in your hands are but nets with which men design to snare your simple souls, to entangle you in the undergrowth of find phrases, and in the barbed wire of falsified ideas? I stand here before you, a polluted, a guilty man and can only implore you ever to remain as you are, never to suffer the bright light of your childhood to be misused as a blow flame of hate. About your brows still blows the breath of innocence. How then should I presume to teach you? Behind me, still pursuing, are the bloody years. - How then can I venture among you? Must I not first become a man again myself?

Mrs. Heath wanted to sprinkle their minds with grass seed and watch the blades spike up through the earth, flat and predictable as a golf course. She wanted dependable students, well fed but not necessarily nourished. But he was not in that category. Admittedly, he could not count on his perceptions of letters and words, and he was not always accurate. He misused words most when he liked their sound. A sentence had a kind of music, and the word sounded right. The definitions were never as interesting as the sound they made coming out of your mouth. He rolled their flavors around on his tongue, tasting every nook and cranny, but he could not be trusted to deliver the right answer and she would never give him better than a C, no matter what genius work he produced. The way he saw it, his mind was a big unruly field of wildflowers. One day he would shower the world with blossoms.

I used to be like that once. I never gave anybody a second chance. It’s a very sad way to live your life.” “Do you believe the dragons should provide patternform technology to humans?” “Yes, I do. Denise is convinced that because we didn’t create it for ourselves we won’t be able to handle it properly, that it will be constantly misused. To me it’s completely irrelevant that we didn’t work out every little detail for ourselves.” “Why?” “Other than pride? We know the scientific principles behind technology. If we don’t understand this particular theory, I trust in us to learn it soon enough. There’s very little we can’t grasp once it’s fully explained and broken down into its basic equations. But that’s just the clinical analysis. From a moral point of view, consider this: when the Americans first sent a man to the Moon, there were people living in Africa and South America and Asia who had never seen a lightbulb, or known of electricity or antibiotics. There were even Americans who didn’t have running water to their houses, or an indoor toilet. Does that mean they shouldn’t have been given access to electricity or modern medicine, because they personally didn’t invent it? It might not have been their local community’s knowledge, but it was human knowledge. We don’t have a clue how to build the nullvoid drive that the Ring Empire’s Outbounds employed in their intergalactic ships, but the knowledge is there, developed by sentient entities. Why shouldn’t we have access to that? Because it’s a shortcut? Because we don’t have to spend centuries of time developing it for ourselves? In what way will using ideas other than our own demean and diminish us? All knowledge should be cherished, not denied.” “I believe you would make an excellent dragon, Lawrence.” A

Bible translations succeed or fail based on Christian trust, because only a vanishingly small percentage of Bible readers can, and even fewer do, go through the laborious process of checking their English translations against the Greek and Hebrew. The vast majority of Bible readers simply take—they have to take—the word of others that the translations in their laps are faithful. When scholarly Christians and ministry-leading Christians go to battle over Bible translations, in dog fights far above the it’s-all-Greek-to-me heads of people in the pew, some of the flak falls on the flock. The sheep today have many resources—like this book—and can do some good homework, but if they can’t read the original languages of Scripture they must still take sides based largely on whom they trust.

Now, this does not negate the fact that God might choose to bless us with a great paying job, a beautiful family, and a healthy life on account of his grace. But the bottom line is we should never expect those things to happen or seek to appeal to the promise of Jeremiah 29:11–13 in order to substantiate our expectations. We have no right to hold God hostage to a promise that we have misunderstood. Friends, in the end, we should never be looking and living for our own glory in this life. Instead, we should be living for God’s glory now and waiting for the glory that we will receive from him in the life to come. The Bible says we should consider ourselves as aliens and strangers in this world. God will fulfill his promises, yes, but not all of his promises were meant to be fulfilled the way we want them to be fulfilled in this life, and we cannot twist Scripture around in order to make that happen, or to make Scripture work for us the way we want it to. We have to live by faith. And those who do will receive what he promised. And when we seek him with all of our heart, we will certainly find him. I’ve grown up a lot since church camp, and I still believe that it’s permissible for someone to choose for themselves a life verse. But let’s agree to study it in context first, lest we make the catastrophic mistake of misusing and misapplying it. Jeremiah 29:11–13 contains some great promises, but if I use it to demand the American Dream from God, then perhaps I should also be willing to literally endure seventy years of captivity first (if that’s what God should choose). I think it’s better to use it to inspire us to look for the spiritual life that is truly life now, while trusting in the future hope of the life that is yet to come.

We discussed what we want from you now,...you who had power and used it to burn the world. You burned a lot. You didn't just burn trees and cities and each other. You burned our admiration for the governments we grew up respecting. You burned our sense of safety in your care. You burned our patience, our ability to believe that the great things in this world you promised to protect will still be there for us and future generations. You burned our trust as you misused the data and surveillance we let you collect, first for O.S. and the Canner Device, then for the war, its propaganda and its lies. You burned our self-trust, too, since we know we are infused with your values, values we thought made both you and us people who would never do what you just did. We have to be afraid of ourselves now, vigilant against what you've taught us to be, since now we know we are something to be afraid and ashamed of. And even if you didn't personally kill in the war, if you carried arms, if you participated, you helped burn what nothing can bring back. No sentence can repair any of that. So, we want you to repair what you can. That's our sentence. We want you to rebuild the cities, replant the trees, replace the art, relaunch the satellites, fix the bridges you can fix to make up for the ones you can't. We want you to rebuild the system, too, fixing the holes this has exposed and making more safeguards so no one can misuse the cars and data and surveillance and trackers and such again. We want you to build it all back but better than it was, and faster than any past war has rebuilt. You weren't as good at peace as you thought you were, but maybe you can be as good at rebuilding. Everyone, even Minors like Tribune MASON who took part, if in your heart you know you were complicit, then build back what you burned with your own hours, your own efforts, your own hands. That's our sentence.

The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate

Well, everyone is going to confront that gorilla on the threshold. Every one has him, unseen by mortal eye, and he whispers into your ear to entertain the unlovely thoughts of the world. And your every reaction that is unlovely, it feeds upon it; and your every thought that is kind and wonderful and loving, she feeds upon it. And the day will come, you will be strong enough to confront this. And may I tell you? it will take you the twinkling of a second to dissolve it. You don’t labor upon it. All it needs is the core of integrity within you. When you pledge yourself, and no one else, – you don’t swear upon your mother, you don’t swear upon a friend, you don’t swear upon the Bible; you pledge yourself to redeem it. At the moment you pledge yourself, – and within you, you know you mean it, – the whole thing dissolves. It’s no time at all in dissolving. And then all the energy returns to you, and you are stronger than ever before to go forward now and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And if you go forward and misuse it again, you start another form building; and one day you will dissolve it again. Eventually you will become completely awakened, and you will use your wonderful power only – not for the good, – that tree will come to an end, – for Life itself. For, eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is this world. The day will come that you will eat of the Tree of Life that bears the fruit of truth and error. Error will embody itself here, and one day you will confront error, and the error will dissolve before your mind’s eye as truth begins to glow before you, because you are eating, then, of the Tree of Life as you formerly ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the combat of good and evil produces this monster, and the combat of truth and error produces an entirely different form of being, more glorious than that one of good and more horrible than this. The error will dissolve just as quickly when you confront error. So, if today your teaching is not true and you live by it, you are building something just as monstrous; but one day you will confront error, and you will discover that you lived by a false concept of God – something on the outside of Self; that you formerly worshipped, a little golden figure, made of gold and silver. It had eyes, but could not see. It had ears, but could not hear. It had a mouth, but could not speak. It had feet, and it could not walk. It made no sound within its throat. And those who made it are just like it. And those who trusted it are just like it, too. So, all the little icons in the world that people worship – these are the little things called “error”; and one day you will discover the true God. And when you discover the true God, you will find that He is all within your own wonderful being as your own wonderful human imagination. You’ll walk in the consciousness of being God. You don’t brag about it.

We believe in God, Creator of the world; and in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of creation. We believe in the Holy Spirit, through whom we acknowledge God’s gifts, and we repent of our sin in misusing these gifts to idolatrous ends. We affirm the natural world as God’s handiwork and dedicate ourselves to its preservation, enhancement, and faithful use by humankind. We joyfully receive for ourselves and others the blessings of community, sexuality, marriage, and the family. We commit ourselves to the rights of men, women, children, youth, young adults, the aging, and people with disabilities; to improvement of the quality of life; and to the rights and dignity of all persons. We believe in the right and duty of persons to work for the glory of God and the good of themselves and others and in the protection of their welfare in so doing; in the rights to property as a trust from God, collective bargaining, and responsible consumption; and in the elimination of economic and social distress. We dedicate ourselves to peace throughout the world, to the rule of justice and law among nations, and to individual freedom for all people of the world. We believe in the present and final triumph of God’s Word in human affairs and gladly accept our commission to manifest the life of the gospel in the world. Amen.

When people misuse a text with "Did God really say...?" to shut down someone's honest wrestling with God, they betray what seems to be their own lack of faith and humility. We ought not to be threatened by someone's searching. We ought not to try to control the outcomes in another's journey. We ought not to resort to using shame or fear or guilt to ensure others share our certainties. God can be trusted to lead those who question and struggle through prayer, his Word, their minds, and their experiences. Let's focus on encouraging one another rather than accusing and condemning one another.

Today’s law enforcement officer also faces many stresses and ethical challenges. But the issues that too often get addressed through policy and training are the legally-enforceable ones: Accepting inappropriate gifts, misuse of position, conflict of interest. Yet gaining the trust and cooperation of those we serve, dealing efficiently and dispassionately with those we pursue, using force effectively and humanely, are all reflections of the law enforcement officer’s personal ethics. Although the mission of the Marines is obviously very different from that of local, state, or federal law enforcement, their ethical construct is still appropriate for law enforcement. The Ethical Warrior, as defined by the Marines, is a “protector,” who protects and defends their life, the life of others, and all life, if possible. This concept is universally consistent with law enforcement’s obligation to “protect and serve.

Who misuses trust too often may not trust himself any more.

Worry is another way violence gets masked as caring. Worry is a lack of faith in the other and cannot exist simultaneously with love. Either we have faith in the other person to do their best, or we don’t. Worry says I don’t trust you to do your life right. Worry comes from a place of arrogance that I know better what should be happening in your life. Worry says I don’t trust your journey, or your answers, or your timing. Worry is fear that hasn’t grown up yet; it is a misuse of our imagination. We both devalue and insult others when we worry about them.

Children who grow up being put down, held back, beaten, taken advantage of, ignored, and misused or maltreated, find it hard to trust, and expect little from others except pain. They protect themselves by staying isolated and may frequently feel that as long as they don’t have to relate to anyone else, they will manage. Loneliness may become a way of life for these children. An abused child often plays alone, makes friends only with a pet, or creates a rich fantasy life.

TRUST ME AND REFUSE TO WORRY, for I am your Strength and Song. You are feeling wobbly this morning, looking at difficult times looming ahead, measuring them against your own strength. However, they are not today’s tasks—or even tomorrow’s. So leave them in the future and come home to the present, where you will find Me waiting for you. Since I am your Strength, I can empower you to handle each task as it comes. Because I am your Song, I can give you Joy as you work alongside Me. Keep bringing your mind back to the present moment. Among all My creatures, only humans can anticipate future events. This ability is a blessing, but it becomes a curse whenever it is misused. If you use your magnificent mind to worry about tomorrow, you cloak yourself in dark unbelief. However, when the hope of heaven fills your thoughts, the Light of My Presence envelops you. Though heaven is future, it is also present tense. As you walk in the Light with Me, you have one foot on earth and one foot in heaven.

9 Surefire Signs Your Colleagues Are Toxic Resigned specialist Greg Baer, M.D. once oversaw one of the busiest eye-surgery hones in the nation. However regardless of every one of his achievements and riches, he felt unfilled and miserable which prompted his close suicide. In his look for enduring satisfaction, he took in the extraordinary rule that have prompted the respectable mission of The Real Love® Company which he established: “We educate the genuine significance of adoration, supplanting annoyance and perplexity with peace and trust in singular lives and connections.” Presently a fruitful writer, speaker and business visionary for about two decades, the book that truly got my consideration is Real Love in the Workplace: Eight Principles for Consistently Effective Leadership in Business. In his second standard of “Individuals Behave Badly Because They Don’t Feel Loved,” Dr. Baer says that an absence of bona fide cherish in individuals, particularly those in administration parts, prompts an unfortunate quest for power and control over others. “When we can control the conduct of other individuals, we encounter an impression of energy that quickly gives us a snapshot of alleviation from our deplorable feeling of sadness.” He includes, “The vast majority of us mishandle control each day, yet we don’t remember it since this conduct is so regular in our way of life. Dangerous work practices to know. With a specific end goal to recognize the harsh practices of energy that upsets steadfast laborers and transforms the working environment into a smothering, fear-based weight cooker, Dr. Baer records a few dangerous practices that we may as of now know about, however don’t commonly connect with the power he discusses. It’s a great opportunity to give careful consideration – do any of these look commonplace? 1. Chatter. At the point when individuals discuss others behind their backs, says Dr. Baer, they’re in a position to hurt them and apply control over their notorieties. While you’re tattling companions or associates won’t let it be known, they appreciate that sentiment control and ought to be managed quickly. 2. Withholding data. Dr. Baer cautions of such a person who controls or accumulates data: “You’ve had the experience of requiring data from somebody who delighted in keeping it from you, or who distributed out one piece at any given moment. Your disappointment gave the other individual a sentiment control.” 3. Spilling privileged insights. Dr. Baer expresses, “Huge numbers of us want to share insider facts, in light of the fact that in those minutes we control the discussion.” As soon as you hear the words “Need to hear a mystery?” leave a colleague’s mouth, that is a reasonable cautioning sign you’re working with a dangerous individual. 4. Manhandle of expert. Focus on your administrator. Many mishandle their positional specialist to scare individuals into doing what they need, or to concur with them notwithstanding when the group knows there’s a superior game-plan. A few chiefs neglect to appoint intentionally to control every one of the choices, even the littlest ones. Dr. Baer says, “That approach is wasteful and a misuse of administration, however it gives the supervisor a sentiment (control). 5. Smothering inventiveness. At the point when chiefs pound the immense thoughts originating from their workers that will enhance an item or the business in some respect, it gives them a genuine feeling of energy, at the cost of withdrawing and demotivating their representatives. 6. Feedback. Dr. Baer states, “Discovering deficiency with others is such a simple hobby, and for those with a requirement for control, each twisted incurred is a wellspring of awesome fulfillment.

Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms. Many seek refuge in religious beliefs. In their weakness, they place their trust in "relics," awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves. Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people, and to be acting on their behalf, has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts. If they aren't, if they ignore or neglect that duty, claiming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of "life" are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and truth of the faithful and dangerously confusing them.

You're healing through your pain. You're healing inspite of those who have misused your vulnerability. The piece of your vulnerability that they used to gain social points is the only part of you that they could ever have. The rest of the system belongs to you. And, hereon, you are in full control of its direction. Go on, and heal.

Lord, I know you have a purpose for everything you bring into my life, and my prayer is that you would be glorified in whatever way seems best. Please teach me what you want me to learn from this so that my faith will grow. Please help me to see what your sovereign purposes might be, so that I may rejoice in your plan and rely upon your grace. But Lord, if it would be pleasing to you, I do ask that you would bring relief from this pain and healing from this hurt, for this is my desire. Either way, I trust you and I pray that your will be done. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. This, I believe, is a healthy way to pray.

(By the way, at this point in history, “trust” is probably a much more helpful and descriptive word than “faith,” a notion that has become far too misused, intellectualized, and even banal.)

The professional iconoclast is such either because he does not understand the nature of images and rites, or because he does not trust the understanding of those who practice iconolatory or follow rites. call the other man an idolater or superstitious is, generally speaking, only a manner of asserting our own superiority. Idolatry is the misuse of symbols, a definition needing no further qualifications. The traditional philosophy has nothing to say against the use of symbols and rites ; though there is much that the most orthodox can have to say against their misuse. It may be emphasized that the danger of treating verbal formulae as absolutes is generally greater than that of misusing plastic images.

This Gospel is easy to misunderstand. Jesus is not praising dishonesty. The unjust manager misused his master’s money in the past and continued to misuse it in the present when on his own authority he lowered the amount his master’s debtors owed to the master. But Jesus praises him for two things: first, for being clever on a worldly level (he notes that the worldly are more enterprising and clever about money than the otherworldly are), and second, for using money for a higher purpose than making more money—that is, for making friends. He lost his friendship with his master over money, so he used money to make new friends—namely, his master’s debtors. Jesus then says that this little worldly thing, the enterprising use of money, is an indication of a greater thing, the use of greater things, and that people who can be trusted to take care of this lesser thing, money, can also be trusted to take care of greater things than money. But then, at the end, he adds that not only are there greater things than money even in this life, such as friendship; there are much greater things in the next world and in our relationship to God. In fact, he says that it is impossible for anyone to have two gods, two masters, two greatest goods, two final ends and goals in life. You cannot give your single self to a double end, God and money. You either love God for his own sake and refuse to serve money and all the things money can buy, demoting it to a mere relative and instrumental means to that one ultimate end; or, you love money and the things money can buy in this world as your final end, your greatest good, your god, and you despise and demote God and the things of God to mere means to this other thing. Jesus is reminding us of what he calls the very first and greatest of all the commandments: to love the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul and strength—and also with your mind, that clever mind that the fired manager used as a means to the higher end of worldly friendships and that you also ought to use for the higher end of your friendship with God. After all, God created it all and owns it all, and you are only the manager of a tiny portion of his goods. It all belongs to God, not to you. No matter what you give to God—your money, your stuff, your time, your life—you are only returning to him what is his.

One, who feels satisfied, with one partner, it has not required the part-time companion, to misuse its trust and love.

the bishop, for instance, is the legal executive of the secular corporation that holds diocesan assets. But a bishop, a religious superior, or the chief officer of a Church-administered hospital does not own the assets; he holds them in trust, to be managed for the good of the faithful. Still, because there are few meaningful restrictions on a bishop’s legal authority over diocesan assets, bishops can and sometimes do misuse the resources that have been entrusted to their care. In the years before the sex-abuse scandal came to light, bishops routinely paid large settlements to the victims of priests’ predation, insisting that the cases must remain undisclosed. When the abuse came to light, bishops authorized additional payments of millions to victims as well as millions to the diocesan lawyers who contested the victims’ claims. In all those cases, there was precious little consultation with the laity, with the people who had donated the funds that were being so rapidly dissipated. When the frightening costs of the scandal forced the closing of Catholic parishes and parochial schools, again bishops made their own decisions about which parishes and schools would be eliminated, rarely providing opportunities for lay people—the parishioners and the parents of students in those schools—to participate in the decision-making process. More ominously, several bishops, in order to avoid prosecution for their endangering children and for failing to report crimes, entered into plea-bargaining agreements with local prosecutors. In a few cases, these agreements imposed obligations not only on the bishops themselves but on their successors; their dioceses were required to submit reports to, and clear policies with, local public officials. In other words, these bishops yielded up the religious freedom of the Church to preserve their own personal freedom. The deals they struck might be described as photographic negatives of martyrdom as, rather than laying down their own lives for the sake of others, too many of our bishops surrendered the patrimony of generations of Catholics to protect themselves. That has been one way in which bishops have betrayed the faithful in recent years.

The insidious nature of government surveillance extends beyond the violation of privacy; it corrodes the foundations of trust essential for a healthy democracy. When citizens are constantly under the watchful eye of those in power, it creates an environment ripe for abuse and manipulation. The emotional toll is immeasurable, breeding a culture of fear and self-censorship as individuals navigate a world where every action is potentially scrutinized. Examples from history, such as the misuse of surveillance by authoritarian regimes, serve as stark warnings against the encroachment of unchecked power into the private lives of citizens. The unlawfulness of such surveillance is not just a legal matter but a moral imperative to safeguard the very essence of individual freedom.

Government surveillance is a pernicious assault on the pillars of democracy, casting a long shadow over the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals subjected to constant monitoring. The damage inflicted is twofold: the erosion of privacy and the fracturing of trust. The emotional toll of surveillance is immeasurable, creating a culture of fear and self-censorship that stifles open expression. Historical instances, such as the misuse of surveillance by totalitarian regimes, provide stark warnings against the dangers of unchecked governmental intrusion into private lives. The unlawfulness of surveillance is not merely a legal matter; it is a call to protect the emotional sanctity of citizens and fortify the trust that is foundational to a healthy democratic society.

When St. John warns us not to love the world (1 John 2:15), he is not telling us to disdain art and culture. He is not denying what God’s Word already taught in creation. By “world” he means all those systems, institutions, and structures of a fallen humanity that, like the building of the ancient ziggurat in Babel (Gen. 11:1–9), trusted in human ingenuity and ability alone, thus arraying themselves against the reign and word of God. What St. John rightly warns against here are the schemes and organizations of worldly power that vandalize God’s shalom, carelessly destroy or thoughtlessly misuse his good creation, or oppress and dehumanize those Christ came to save. The Gospel is centered on a cross that promises salvation not just for souls but “far as the curse is found.”11 The fire in the earth’s future that St Peter speaks of is not one of annihilation but of purification.

The most significant misuse of funds globally occurs in the procurement of weapons. This serves as the foundation for the lack of trust between nations. Each bullet, firearm, warship, tank, and missile represents a tool for mass destruction.

thank you for showing me that trust is something that can be broken. it’s ironic really, the one thing you hold onto most can be misused by the people you never expect to rip it out your hands. don’t go breaking others too.