Quotes from Arthur C. McGill

Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demands an extraordinary redirection of the sense of life. Now to know if anyone is alive, we do not look at them; look beyond them to the mode of their expenditures and the life that they nourish and preserve beyond themselves.

The term 'violence' refers to an event or an action that 'violates' some aspect of human life. Violence, then, is always connected with suffering. But not all suffering involves the quality of violence. The pain of guilt that a person feels may be so deep and may spread through his awareness so gradually that not fore of 'violence' is detectable.

If Jesus is the revelation of the essential power and life of God, then men cannot do violence to one another for their own self-expansion within the area of his Lordship. So far as they do this, they are exercising a powerfulness that contradicts the power of God. They have turned from light to darkness.