Hey there Delilah.(mutuals)
Don't you worry about the distance (anything)
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Malice
(my annual PSA for people who are “winning” the debate, and losing their souls)
“Every man on earth is sick with the fever of sin, with the blindness of sin and is overcome with its fury. As sins consist mostly of malice and pride, it is necessary to treat everyone who suffers from the malady of sin with kindness and love.
This is an important truth, which we often forget. Very often we act in the opposite manner: we add malice to malice by our anger, we oppose pride with pride.
Thus, evil grows within us and does not decrease; it is not cured – rather it spreads.”
St. John of Kronstadt could well have written that today.
It’s easy to forget that the people we are reacting to, shouting down, lashing out at are, well, people.
Someone says something we disagree with. So we react and unload on them. With something demeaning, something degrading, something dehumanizing.
Without really thinking about it, “we add malice to malice.”
Or we rationalize that with the bile we’re copying and pasting, we’re just getting the truth out. Or just telling it like it is. Or just standing up for our rights.
In truth, we’re just fooling ourselves, while “we add malice to malice.”
The thing is, when we add malice to malice, it’s not a precision strike. We do just as much damage to ourselves as anyone else.
When we add malice to malice, “evil grows within us and does not decrease; it is not cured – rather it spreads.”
But what about all the wrong stuff that people say online? How do you ignore that? How can you not respond?
I checked with the bishop. He promised me that he did not commission you as the official responder to every wrong thing on the Internet.
But what if you just have to respond?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is clear. If we are His, then we are to be in the love of God, as God’s love is in us.
Which means what? That if we’re Christians in more than name, then we follow St. John’s advice. We “treat everyone who suffers from the malady of sin with kindness and love.”
Today’s Readings
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Source
[Image description: 3 gifs; from left to right.
A sped-up timelapse gif of someone rotating a cake while spreading a tie-dye buttercream pattern all over it (with blue, pink and purple buttercream). A gif of the same person piping the words 'RESIST FASCISM' in white icing on the top of the cake (swirly looping icing has been piped on the sides of the cake). And a gif of the same person sprinking cake sprinkles on top of the cake and around the decorations on the sides.
End of image description.]
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