The Fear of Speaking About Another

Counsel Without Condemnation

“If he is free from this passion, he is not condemning anyone.”

— The Evergetinos

This saying of the Fathers reveals a refinement of heart that is almost unknown in our age.

We think ourselves justified whenever we can identify another person’s faults accurately. We imagine that if our judgment is factually correct, our heart must therefore be pure. The Fathers would have us examine something far deeper. They ask not first, “Is it true?” but rather, “From where within you does this word arise?”

The Elder may indeed know that remaining with a certain person will be harmful. Yet he trembles. He does not rush to speak. He first examines his own heart. Is there resentment there? Annoyance? A secret satisfaction in exposing another’s weakness? A desire to appear discerning? The Elder fears these movements more than he fears remaining silent.

This should astonish us.

We live in an age of commentary. Everyone has opinions about everyone else. We evaluate, diagnose, expose, and classify one another with remarkable confidence. We speak about personalities, motives, wounds, and sins with a boldness that the desert Fathers would have regarded as frightening.

The Elder possesses another spirit entirely.

He knows that a single word spoken from passion harms not only the hearer but also the speaker. The poison of judgment first passes through one’s own heart. Therefore he is willing to appear ignorant, unsophisticated, even socially awkward, rather than risk speaking about another from a divided heart.

This is not cowardice. It is purity.

At times charity requires a warning. Love may indeed demand that we counsel another not to enter a relationship, not to return to a harmful influence, not to place himself in spiritual danger. But the warning must arise from grief and concern, never from contempt. The Elder protects the soul of the questioner while simultaneously protecting the dignity of the absent person.

What extraordinary restraint.

The Fathers teach us that the opposite of judgment is not naïveté. One may see clearly and yet refuse to condemn. One may recognize danger and yet refuse to vilify. One may offer counsel and yet preserve love.

Indeed, this is perhaps one of the surest signs of purity of heart: to speak a difficult truth about another only with fear, reluctance, and compassion, and to be willing, if necessary, to bear misunderstanding rather than permit even a trace of hatred to mingle with one’s words.

How different our conversations would become if we possessed even a fraction of this delicacy of conscience.

Most of us need not learn how to discern others more accurately. We need to learn how to fear our own judgments.

The Elder scrutinizes his heart before he scrutinizes another’s conduct. He knows that the gravest danger in speaking about another person is not that he might be mistaken, but that he might speak correctly and yet without love.