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The Brother We No Longer Want
- Father Charbel Abernethy
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
On the Sin Beneath Judgment
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:35
The stories of Timothy and Abba Poimen in The Evergetinos are not ultimately about sin.
They are about love.
Or rather, they are about what happens when love disappears.
In the first story, a brother is undergoing temptation. Timothy advises that he be expelled. Immediately the temptation falls upon Timothy himself.
Why?
Because God is cruel?
No.
Because God wished to reveal something.
Timothy believed he understood the brother’s weakness.
He did not.
He understood the sin.
He did not understand the struggle.
He saw the failure.
He did not see the battle.
And so God allowed him to feel in his own flesh what he had previously observed from a distance.
The fathers repeatedly teach that the man who judges another has not yet understood himself.
If he truly knew his own weakness, he would be incapable of harshness.
He would recognize himself in every sinner.
He would see that the line separating virtue and failure runs through every human heart.
Not merely through theirs.
Through his own.
Yet I wonder if our greatest danger today lies even deeper.
Many people are no longer expelled because they have sinned.
They are expelled because they are not wanted.
The reasons sound respectable.
They are difficult.
They do not fit.
They are disruptive.
They are exhausting.
They do not align with the vision.
They are not a good fit for the culture.
Sometimes these things may even contain an element of truth.
But truth is not the same thing as love.
The question the fathers would ask is not merely whether the assessment is correct.
The question is whether the heart remains merciful.
Whether tears remain.
Whether we suffer for the other.
Whether we carry them in prayer.
Whether we have mourned their wounds before making judgments about their behavior.
The terrifying thing about the human heart is that it can reject another person while convincing itself it is acting for noble reasons.
A man can protect himself and call it discernment.
He can preserve his comfort and call it wisdom.
He can remove an obstacle and call it leadership - call in “pruning” as if necessary for growth, an action that will produce greater fruit.
He can abandon a brother and call it accountability.
The language changes.
The heart remains the same.
This is why Abba Poimen stands so tall among the fathers.
He saw something the anchorite missed.
The anchorite saw a sinner.
Poimen saw a wounded man.
The anchorite defended the purity of the community.
Poimen defended the wounded sheep.
The anchorite remained in his cell.
Poimen entered another’s suffering.
The remarkable thing is that Poimen never humiliates the anchorite.
He heals him too.
His little parable is devastating:
“One man left his own dead and went to mourn the dead of another.”
In other words, the anchorite had neglected the death within his own heart while attending to the failures of someone else.
This may be one of the greatest spiritual dangers of all.
To become so concerned with correcting others that we cease examining our own lack of love.
The saints were severe with themselves and gentle with others.
We are often tempted to reverse the order.
Gentle with ourselves.
Severe with others.
The fathers teach something very different.
They teach that the measure of spiritual maturity is not how effectively we identify weaknesses.
It is how much suffering we are willing to endure for another person’s salvation.
Christ did not save the world by distancing Himself from sinners.
He carried them.
He entered their shame.
He descended into their darkness.
He bore their wounds.
The closer a person comes to Christ, the less interested he becomes in deciding who belongs and who does not.
His concern becomes only this:
How can I help this brother stand again?
How can I keep one more person from despair?
How can I love as Christ has loved me?
For in the end, the greatest danger is not that we will become the brother who falls.
The greatest danger is that we will become the man who no longer weeps when another falls.
And once tears disappear, love soon follows.
Then the heart becomes capable of driving people away while imagining itself righteous.
The fathers feared many sins.
But perhaps they feared this one most of all.
A heart that no longer knows how to suffer for another.
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