Here’s one from the “Special Place in Hell” Department:
Three people kept a 65-year-old woman locked in a tiny room with a urine-soaked mattress to sleep on and a dog bowl to drink from so they could live off her monthly Social Security checks, authorities said.
You can usually understand people to a certain extent by realizing they are, to some extent, good guys in their own personal narrative. You find the angle where their actions are justified, and things usually click into place in terms of understanding where they’re coming from. I have no idea what kind of messed up mental contortions you’d have to do to make you think that it’s somehow “o.k.” to lock up an elderly woman for her social security check.
1. “You can usually understand people to a certain extent by realizing they are, to some extent, good guys in their own personal narrative.” That’s a nice summary of a viewpoint I’ve come to gradually.
2. These guys really do challenge it.
Your opening line alludes to a comforting and reasonable doctrine in Christianity. I’m glad that it’s in the Bible!