Every person is created in the image and likeness of God and everyone deserves to be loved. By judging others, we seem to proclaim: I am better, I know more, I am perfect and therefore have the right to “weigh” the actions of others.
Human judgment can sometimes be extremely cruel. If the guilty person is sentenced, then he is an “outcast” in the eyes of the public.
Judgment and reasoning go hand in hand. Human nature is such that as soon as you look at your neighbor, you immediately make an assessment of his appearance, manner of speaking, etc. How can we see the line, having crossed which we pass judgment on someone like ourselves? If there is a bit of contempt in the reasoning, this is no longer reasoning, but real condemnation, which is sin.
“What man knows what is in a man except the spirit of man which dwells in him?” 1 Corinthians 2:11
Why can't you judge?
Condemnation destroys the personality of the condemner. Anyone who judges his neighbor provokes the same attitude towards himself on the part of others.
The more suffering a person endures, the higher his spiritual level, the more compassionate he is towards others, trying to avoid judgment.
Condemnation is a vice, a bad habit, indulging in which we waste time on “emptiness.” By judging, a person, as it were, tries on the actions of another, experiencing negative emotions that, apart from destruction, do not bring anything good.
Condemnation is associated with other sins: envy, resentment, anger. Plunging into condemnation, we indulge our pride and vanity, experiencing pleasure from the fact that we turn out to be better, more perfect (in our own eyes, of course). It is very difficult to fight condemnation, because its root lies in human pride.
What should we do if we are judged?
When it is discovered that someone is whispering behind our back, condemning words and actions, the first reaction is to condemn the offender in response, to make his negative aspects obvious.
But God does not deal with us this way. His perfect example teaches: not to return evil for evil, but to win souls with love.
God says: “I do not want the sinner to die, but for the sinner to turn to his way and live.” Jeremiah 33:11
How to get rid of judgment
It is impossible to get rid of what you do not recognize. Condemnation is a sin, and those who fear God, who do not want to upset Him, are able to see the presence of this vice in themselves. How to get rid of judgment
Anyone who has the skill to examine himself is able to notice impulses of condemnation in the soul and get rid of sin through prayer and work on himself. Getting rid of condemnation, we simultaneously learn to see the image of God in our neighbor, we learn to be forgiving of the actions of others, fulfilling the commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. By doing this, first of all, we ourselves are enriched, receiving blessings from God.
The One who had the right to judge came into this world and suffered for our sins and iniquities.
Christ said: “Judge not, lest ye be judged, for with the judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with the measure ye use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:1-2
No one except God can know the true motives of a person. Therefore, no one except God can judge righteously. Only He knows what is in a person, knows his past, present and future.
By judging others, we put ourselves in the place of the Almighty. Because of our sinful nature, we are unable to judge impartially. Therefore, in order not to sin, condemnation should be avoided, that is, one should abstain, beware, avoid. The Creator teaches this.
Post update. I would rewrite this post a little, because... It's a bit too chaotic and everything is in a heap. But I don’t have time yet, and I don’t have a coherent understanding of how best to rewrite it, so I’ll leave it as it is, there’s a lot of valuable information here.
The topic of non-judgment is one of the most difficult to implement. No matter how much it is worked on, it still spirals out again and again in new situations, and begins to spoil the mood and eat up energy.
But often condemnation sits within us for years towards a loved one - parents, children, partner, friends.
Probably, we condemn our loved ones or those towards whom we act as rescuers most often and most strongly. The most common reason is that they live in the wrong way, with the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, for ruining their lives, for not loving us enough or loving us in the wrong way. But the rescuers there have their own hellish triangle - Karmpana “Rescuer - Persecutor - Victim”, along which they can walk along the edges at least several times a day, at least once every six months. And even if at first there were seemingly harmless motives for salvation without obvious condemnation, then still later a more obvious condemnation appears, because the rescuer always considers the other to be more flawed by default. There are also twists of consciousness and psychodefense that the other person is stronger and more advanced, but the rescuer feels stronger. And often there is not only condemnation for the fact that another is leading some kind of self-destructive course of action, not for the actions of that person as such, but for the attitude towards him, the rescuer, which he does not like.
It often happens like this: people themselves mess up - they are in an imbalance in relationships, stick to someone who doesn’t want to have something in common with them, teach them how to live, start arguments, quarrels and scandals, get into the boundaries of other people, and then respond receive behavior they don't like and begin to judge that person.
The topic of condemnation has a lot to do with our external locus of control, our own egoism, categoricalness, pride (a sense of self-importance). It is connected both with our capacity and with the ability to switch.
Usually the person whom we condemn and with whom we conduct dialogues in our heads is the one on whom we ourselves depend, the one whose figure is large enough. Some try to practice forgiveness in relation to the one they condemn, that is, to stand on top of him wearing a crown (if we speak in terms of Evolution, i.e. psychoprotection) “I am stronger,” but often they call even more strongly to the person and all this situations internal. In general, if you stand on top and put on a “white coat”, something like “objectively I’m right, he’s wrong, but I’m smarter, that’s why I won’t get to the bottom of him with my truth” - this means closing off a lot of the real truth, and not this “objective” one. And when you don’t see the truth, there’s nothing to work with. For example, why a wife condemns her husband is a huge question with a lot of nuances. But simply editing the locus and dividing the boundaries will help, even without understanding what and how things really are.
I really like this piece from Marina Komissarova:
“Why, time after time, people with borderline bugs attribute to me calls to “forgive your parents.”
I never called for this, you confused me with some kind of saint.
Are you a judge at the Last Judgment, so that your highest forgiveness is worth something?
There is no need to forgive your parents, this is also a merging of boundaries, just move away from them if for some reason you cannot communicate normally with them, if they have tormented you before or are tormenting you now. It is better to help frail parents if they took care of you as a child, this is the norm for an adult. But if you were kept in a closet and beaten, you don’t need to care about such parents, well, to hell with them.
And there is no need to forgive them either. You just need to let go.»
This is from the article “Sadistic Parents”.
This topic is also strongly related to borders.- we believe that if it seems to us that we know what is best, then we have the right to interfere in the lives of other people, to dictate something to them “from above.” Or remain silent, shy or afraid to speak up, but at the same time condemn and dictate within yourself.
And he also conveys this idea well, why there is no need to judge others (and also yourself). Why is this really not necessary in life?
Here's how he discusses this topic:
Why is condemnation the destruction of oneself?
The most important idea that Alexander Palienko is trying to convey to us is when we judge someone, we take their problems and sins upon ourselves.
We are destroying ourselves, our health, our future, and bringing our old age closer.
Instead of solving our own problems, approaching the implementation of our own planned program, we solve other people’s problems and shorten our lives.
So lately I've been trying to remember and ask myself the question - Do I really want to take on his problems right now?
In our selfishness and sense of self-importance, we believe that there is some kind of universal solution that is equally good for us and for that completely different person. And we try to bring him to him, or we simply condemn him when he behaves differently - for example, he deceives, causes pain, or otherwise, in our opinion, acts badly.
But in reality, each person has his own, unique path - which was conceived long before he was born on this planet (this I believe). He has his own genes, his own childhood, a set of his own qualities and shortcomings, which, as he develops, he must transform into advantages. Don't compare yourself to him. Everything is completely different from conception and even before. Every, every minute of his and your life.
This is his program that he follows, good or bad. His bumps and lessons. His gigantic path, which consists of millions of seconds, many even before his birth. Your own path and level of consciousness, which you have no idea about.
Ask yourself a question: Do I really, not knowing what path he took, how he passed it, what tasks he had on this earth, what people he encountered all these years, do I consider myself the right to dictate to him what to do, or simply the right to judge him?
Is it accurate? I consider myself such a global super expert that at this point in his life I would now be much better than him, and would I have acted somehow better and more effectively for the entire huge chain of his life at all stages?
Well, if yes, if you think that you think that after all this you would have acted definitely better than him in such a situation, having gone all the way... Then, probably, you have the right to get his problems and show this person and everyone how you have to go through them)
So far I have drawn some conclusion from what Alexander is talking about.
Here's from him:
"When we
condemn
let's adjust
we're offended
let's consult
making excuses
we are in a hurry (about someone)
we begin to live by the laws of this person and the one to whom we make excuses, whom we adapt to, whom we condemn.”
Stay on high frequency energy
Besides the fact that we take other people's problems upon ourselves, we are also switching to low-frequency energy- this means that we create not the most pleasant events in our lives instead of those that could have happened if we had maintained a neutral attitude and positivity.
Remember the movie "The Secret"? There is also an excellent book “Power” - I will also definitely make a separate post about it, it contains many quotes from famous physicists and Nobel laureates about how this world actually works and logically justified why you should not switch to low-frequency waves.
This is exactly what the 4th “magic” rule of Alexander Palienko is about.
“Looking for the good in everything. The ability to speak creatively and think, then the program of creation begins.”
“Our society has raised us in such a way that we are accustomed to looking for flaws in everything and condemning others. Remember what you talk about when you get together in a company? As a rule, there is an expression of dissatisfaction with everything: from neighbors to the government and the president. And the body tunes in to the energy that we constantly use. After all, if you take a cigarette from a smoker, the body will demand it out of habit, even though it is harmful.
When we live at the level of condemnation, we switch to low-frequency vibrations that form negative events. You need to learn to see something positive in all situations: the weather is sunny, a bird is singing beautifully, a passerby is wearing a great suit, etc.
By doing this regularly, we program the subconscious to be positive, and the brain begins to snatch positive events from the world around us. The ability to look for beauty in the world, embedded in the subconscious, will guide you through life.
When you come to the store, you will find the best shoes, and when looking for a job, you will choose the most interesting and highly paid one, etc.
When you learn to see the positive in life, no matter what happens, you will understand that with the bad comes good. S. Lazarev (author of the books “Diagnostics of Karma”) has a phrase: “If you feel good today, then look back. That’s where, when you felt bad, your good was laid.”
And here’s another from one of Alexander’s last speeches:
“When I looked at people who have large debts and a lot of loans hanging on them, it turned out that they have three points in their behavior: bragging, giving advice and judging. These three points drive us into loans and debts.»
Loss of energy
When judging someone, we engage in internal dialogue, walk around and say many, many times everything that remains unspoken and what we think in relation to the person. We take a huge amount of energy from ourselves completely in vain. And the more the significance of this event and the figure of this person grows, the more energy flows into this hole.
We see it in ourselves
There is also a very common opinion (which I still have difficulty understanding)). That everyone around us is mirror people. That if we did not have some quality in us, we would not see them in another. That most people in our lives appear specifically to point us to something.
Well, at least the egocentric attracts the egocentric, the infantile - the infantile - I believe in that.
And Alexander Palienko also talks about this:
“If we forgave someone, and he does it again, it means we didn’t forgive him the last time. Forgiveness means accepting yourself in such a situation. Accept yourself as the same. Accept this in yourself.
If something annoys or angers us, we become angry or condemn it within ourselves.
As soon as we work through all this, the subconscious will begin to present other situations where we need to work on our categoricalness and bring it into multitasking.”
About weak people (vampires)
It is usually extremely difficult not to judge weak people or those who constantly try to provoke you into negative emotions and are fueled by them.
“Weak people (vampires): their way of life is to complain, carry on empty conversations, talk about the past, adjust, be offended, make excuses, feel guilty, judge everyone around, feel sorry for themselves.
When we help the weak, we become weaker ourselves, and make these people even more degraded.
When we help the strong, we become stronger.
Difference between the WEAK and the STRONG. In fact, everyone who is weak but STRONG can admit it to themselves, and try to take responsibility and change what happens to them. That is, the strong also vampirize from time to time, one way or another, but they admit it slightly.
THE WEAK are those who are not going to change something, take responsibility and admit to themselves that they behave this way. They try to make excuses or blame everyone around for the fact that things are so bad for them. For the weak, this is a specific way of thinking and living, and it is from here that they draw energy for themselves.”
There will be a separate post about weak people, but for now the point is that, as far as possible, it is better to get rid of most weak people in your life. And then condemnation will also leave you. All the same, all the condemnation will not go away from life, it will be enough to work through) But life will become much easier and more pleasant.
But in general, I have a hard time imagining such a strong person who tolerates the weak and aching for a long time. Unless the strong one is wearing the crown of the Rescuer, and then this situation is quite useful for him to realize this moment. And so - you always want to get rid of it as quickly as possible and no longer communicate with such people.
What to do
So far I am drawing the following conclusions for myself:
- don’t get hung up and learn to switch quickly, learn to separate boundaries and get away from the person COMPLETELY. Accept his right to do as he pleases.
Adjusting your locus of control to internal means not relying on other people in your life and not overthinking their lives and actions, not exaggerating, not getting hung up on the influence and ALLEGED influence (which is probably much less than it seems) of other people’s actions on you. Realize and admit, voice to yourself that I blame, condemn, scold another person and stop and think about what I can do about this situation to make ME feel better
- make your life more eventful, pump up YOUR resources, so that there is no time to concentrate on the little things. Helping other people, altruism helps to reduce the degree of egocentrism
- to be aware of our infantilism and egocentrism, our desire to “climb into arms”, which perhaps someone did not like and in response we received behavior that we condemn, OUR dependence on a person, our desire to receive something from him - that is including his approval, his inappropriate behavior
- learn gratitude and respect for people and their contributions to our lives, of their own free will
- if you judge someone and cannot stop, try to remove this communication or this person from your life, if it is not useful, and if possible, switch your attention to other interesting things.
Reduce the degree of tragedy.
In general, work exclusively on yourself.
In this article I lumped everything together) Esotericism, psychology, my own conclusions. Maybe one thing will help someone reduce the number of judgments in their life, and something else will help someone else.
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Good day, friends! Question from Elena: I was in Church, talked to Father, he told me that I should stop judging other people, he told me to pray for this. After that, I myself began to notice that I constantly judge others, even when I am alone, and this really bothers me. Help, tell me how to stop judging others?
I’ll say right away that almost all people suffer from the bad habit of judging others or themselves. Just the degree is different for everyone. Some people live only by grinding other people's bones and derive malicious pleasure from it. As a rule, this is the only thing that gives them their unclean joy.
The roots of condemning others grow from his wounded Ego and unfinished work. And the higher a person’s degree, the more prone he is to arrogant judgment of others. Let's look at the definitions and root causes of this vile sin.
What is judging other people? Esoteric reasons
Judging others – a negative habit and the undeserved right to arrogantly judge others for their shortcomings, while not seeing the merits of people and the Good in their souls.
The main motive why a person condemns others is self-affirmation, the desire to elevate himself by belittling (humiliating) others (that is, to raise his self-esteem by lowering the value of other people). To make this easier, the judge prefers to ignore the merits of other people and magnify their shortcomings as much as possible.
But such an approach to raising one’s self-esteem (at the expense of humiliating others) always leads to deep internal dissatisfaction, justification for one’s shortcomings, and an increase in internal anger. This inevitably leads a person to a dead-end life situation, when someone who judges others cannot change anything in his own destiny for the better.
To get rid of the habit of condemning, judging others, you need to understand and remove the internal root causes of condemnation.
Esoteric root causes of condemnation of people:
- Ego and pride. When one person considers himself smarter and better than others, he gives himself the right to judge everyone. It is arrogant to criticize and judge their deeds as if he were a god. But such criticism is never constructive, fair and fruitful, it does not create anything good, does not eliminate shortcomings, but only strengthens and feeds mutual negativity (generates evil).
- (the underside of pride). When a person has low self-esteem, instead of strengthening it, he tries to belittle the dignity of other people, going over and exaggerating their shortcomings and weaknesses. But this strengthens his own negative attitude towards people and his inability to see the good in them. Judging others always destroys positive connections with people and bright feelings towards them (love, respect, gratitude, devotion, friendship), and accordingly destroys relationships.
- Dislike of people (lack of kindness in the heart) and others. There are people who are negative in their essence (dark souls), and the only source of joy for such people is gloating, dark joy from the humiliation, condemnation and suffering of other people. such people are dead, dry and bitter, so they are not able to be kind, experience pure joy and love. What made their heart this way? There are many reasons. One of the main ones is accumulated unresolved issues on others, on oneself, on fate.
Judging others. Additional definitions and explanations
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not feel the beam in your own eye?...You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Other words of Christ: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
Everyone has shortcomings, and it is much easier to judge others for their weaknesses than to work on yourself to get rid of your own. We need to understand the following: if we judge other people for their sins, it will never make us and our lives better!
And the one who knows from his own experience how difficult it is to get rid of his shortcomings and weaknesses will not judge others for their sins, but will wish them Good in working on them.
Good quotes to think about:
People, having neither the power nor the competence to do so, condemn sinners both verbally and mentally. While only he can condemn, pass a sentence and carry it out. When we condemn a person, we usurp the rights of God. “Who are you who judges another?” - says the Apostle Paul. God alone can justify or condemn someone. We people must learn to “see our sins and not condemn our brother.”
Condemnation is a demonic state. The first one to fall into this was the devil himself. The devil condemned and slandered God before the ancestors, and then began to teach condemnation of people.
Of course, there are quite advanced cases when a person is literally like an automaton, like a zombie, for whom condemnation of others and gloating have become the way and meaning of life, and he, like a drug addict, can no longer live without it. In such cases, as a rule, there is an incorporation of entities and the person no longer controls himself. You can't do without good help here.
And in other cases, you can overcome the habit of judging by working on yourself on your own or with.
People judge others because they have no self-esteem and little kindness in their hearts.
- Start with your attitude , with kindness towards yourself, with the ability to see, accept and appreciate your strengths. Next, you need to learn to see and accept the good (virtues) in other people. If a person truly respects himself, loves and values his Soul, he has no need to belittle the dignity of others in order to rise above them. Study and work on the articles in the section.
- Ask yourself: why, why, why am I condemning this person? Write down all the answers that come to your mind. Analyze the reasons for condemnation: envy, resentment and revenge, low self-esteem or pride, hatred of people (desire for evil), etc. If you understand the individual internal reasons, it will be clearer to you what you need to work with. You will find a fairly large set of practices for working on yourself on the page.
- How to fight the very habit of judging others and what to replace it with.
- When you feel the urge to judge others and wash their bones, immediately take a piece of paper, a pencil, and start writing down, separated by commas, your shortcomings, weaknesses, sins, failures that prevent you from living and which you would like to overcome in yourself. This will direct your attention, mind, potential and will into a creative direction, into working on yourself! :)
- The next step is to write down all the positive qualities and achievements that you want to replace your shortcomings and failures with!
- The third step is to write down those people from whom you can learn the virtues and achievements recorded in the previous paragraph.
This exercise will make you better and kinder, you will learn to respect other people more, appreciate them for their merits, wean you from the habit of judging others, directing your attention to your own development!
If you have any questions - !
Also read related articles
The sin of condemnation is one of the most insidious, insidious, unnoticed and therefore the most common sins. He easily disguises himself: condemning, we see in this a manifestation of our own morality, justice, as well as intelligence, insight: “I see who he is, you can’t fool me.” Unlike sins committed by action, the sin of verbal condemnation in most cases does not have directly observable practical consequences: said - so what? We can assume that he did not say. As for mental condemnation, this is a constant involuntary work of the brain, which few of us can reflect on, and chronic inflammation of the nerves, which few also avoid. Many of us are accustomed to saying in confession “I sin with condemnation” as something routine and formal - of course, who does not sin with this!However, we must think: why did the holy fathers and teachers of the Church pay such attention to this sin? What exactly are we doing when we judge others? And how can we, if not get rid of it, then at least begin to fight this evil in our souls?
About condemnation - another conversation with the editor-in-chief of our magazine, Abbot Nektariy (Morozov).
— Father Nektariy, we have already tried to determine here the reasons for the prevalence of this sin - but are there others?
— The sin of condemnation is widespread, as is the sin of lying, as are all the sins that we commit exclusively with words. These sins are convenient, easy to commit, because, unlike sins committed by deeds, they do not require any special conditions or circumstances - our tongue is always with us. It seems to me that there are two main reasons for condemnation: firstly, no matter what we think or say about ourselves, we actually feel very well our imperfection, we understand that we do not reach what we would like to be. For a non-believer, this feeling of one’s own imperfection lies on one plane, for a believer, a church-going person, on another: we understand that we do not live the way Christians should live, our Christian conscience convicts us of this. And here there are two ways: either selflessly work on yourself in order to achieve peace with your conscience, or condemn others in order to look at least a little better against their background; in order to thus assert oneself at the expense of one’s neighbor. But here that spiritual law comes into play, about which the holy fathers wrote a lot: looking at the sins of others, we stop noticing our own. And having stopped noticing our own sins and shortcomings, we become especially merciless towards the sins and shortcomings of others.
Why were the saints so compassionate towards the weaknesses of their neighbors? Not only because Divine love lived in their hearts, but also because they themselves, from their own experience, knew how difficult it is to overcome sin in themselves. Having gone through this terrible internal struggle, they could no longer condemn someone who had fallen: they understood that they themselves could have fallen or had fallen, perhaps in the past in the same way. Abba Agathon, when he saw a man who had sinned, always said to himself: “Look how he fell: you will fall in the same way tomorrow. But he will most likely repent, but will you have time to repent?”
This is one reason for condemnation, and the other is the abundance of very real reasons for condemnation. Man is a fallen creature, damaged by sin, and there are always enough examples of behavior that deserves condemnation. Another question is: who deserves condemnation? Divine condemnation - yes. And do we have the right to condemn?
- But how can you not condemn when you are faced with baseness, meanness, rudeness, savage cruelty?.. In such cases, condemnation is the natural self-defense of a human being.
- That's right - natural. And to be a Christian, you need to overcome your nature. And live in some supernatural way. We won’t be able to do this on our own, but with God’s help everything is possible.
- And cope with condemnation too, of course; but what should we do for this ourselves?
— First of all, do not give yourself the right to judge someone, remember that judgment belongs to God. This is very difficult in fact, each of us knows how difficult it is - not to give ourselves the right to judge. Remember the gospel commandment: do not judge, lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1). There is such an example from the patericon: a monk, who was considered the most negligent in the monastery, died in such silence of heart, in such peace with God, in such joy that the brethren were perplexed: how can this be, after all, you did not live as an ascetic at all, why did you Is this how you die? He replied: yes, I did not live very well, but I never condemned anyone. The fear of being judged is a barrier that you can set for yourself in order to avoid the sin of judgment.
But personally, I am close to the method of combating condemnation that the Monk Anatoly of Optina spoke about. He put it into this short formula: have pity and you won’t condemn. As soon as you begin to feel sorry for people, the desire to condemn them disappears. Yes, it is not always easy to feel sorry, but without it you cannot live as a Christian. You are talking about man's natural self-defense from evil; Yes, we suffer from evil, from the sin of others, we feel sorry for ourselves, we are scared, and we want to protect ourselves. But if we are Christians, we must understand that in this case it is not so much us, but the one who does evil, who is unhappy. After all, he will have to answer for this evil in some terrible, perhaps, way. When this truly Christian pity for a sinning person is born, the desire to condemn disappears. And in order to learn to regret, in order to force your heart to this pity, you need to pray for this person. This has long been known: when you start praying, the desire to judge disappears. The words that you may still be saying are no longer filled with the same destructive power that they were filled with before, and then you stop saying them altogether. But as soon as you forget about prayer, condemnation, which has already sunk deep, bursts to the surface again.
— What else is needed, besides prayer for enemies, in order to transform aggression and anger into pity for them? Perhaps a vision of one's own sinfulness?
- Another Optina elder, the Monk Ambrose, who loved to put his spiritual lessons in a half-joking form, said this: “Know yourself - and it will be with you.” In the soul, in the heart of each of us, there is such an immense world, a world that we need to have time to deal with during our earthly life. There is so much we need to do with ourselves, and how often we find neither the time nor the energy for it. But when we take care of other people, to analyze their sins, for some reason we find time and energy. Judging others is the best way to distract ourselves from ourselves, from working on ourselves, which in fact should be our most important task.
Reading about saints, you often think: how did he, this saint, live in the very crucible of temptation, in the very thick of human sin, and besides, hundreds, thousands of people confessed to him, perhaps committing terrible sins - and he seemed not to notice everything this, lived as if it didn’t exist? And he was busy trying to correct, cleanse from sin a tiny part of this world - himself. And therefore he was not disposed to deal with the sins and infirmities of other people. And to pray - yes, I prayed for them and therefore regretted them. For me, Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov) will always remain a visible example of such a life - a man from whom it was almost impossible to hear a word of condemnation. He simply never assessed anyone! Although a huge number of bishops, clergy, monastics, and simply Orthodox lay people confessed to him. He did not judge anyone, firstly, because he was sorry, and secondly, because he was always busy mourning his own sins. Sins that were not noticeable to us, but were noticeable to him.
- However, we are all forced to talk about the people around us, judge them, understand them, and finally - this is necessary both in our personal lives (so as not to make a mess in it, not to make ourselves and our loved ones unhappy), and at work (so as to for example, not entrusting a matter to a person who cannot be trusted with it). We have to talk about someone's qualities out loud, discuss them - again, both at work and at home, there is no escape from this. Where is the line between necessary and adequate discussion - and condemnation of a person?
— Saint Basil the Great formulated a wonderful principle that determines when we have the right to say something negative about a person without falling into the sin of condemnation. This is possible in three cases: firstly, when we see the need to tell our neighbor about his shortcomings or sins for his own good, in order to help him. Secondly, when it is necessary to tell about his weaknesses to someone who can correct him. And thirdly, when you need to warn about its shortcomings to those who may suffer from them. When we talk about hiring, being appointed to a position, or getting married, this falls under the third point of this “rule”. When solving these questions, we think not only about ourselves, but also about the matter and about other people, about what harm our mistake in a person can cause them. But as for work, it is especially important here to be as objective and impartial as possible, so that our personal, selfish motives are not mixed into our assessment of a person. How fair can we be here? How fair can a person be? As Abba Dorotheos said, what is crooked is right and what is straight is crooked. There is always the possibility of error. But even if we are as objective and fair as possible, even if our judgment about a person is completely correct, we still have plenty of opportunities to sin. For example, we can talk about a person fairly, but with passion, with anger. We may be absolutely right, but in some critical situation, to be absolutely merciless towards a guilty person, and this will also be a sin. It practically never happens that we express our opinion about a person - even if it is unbiased, fair, objective - and we would not have the need to return to these words of ours when we come to church for confession.
I cannot help but say once again about Father Kirill. When he was asked questions about specific people (for example, about difficult situations involving other people), he never answered immediately; there was always a distance between the question and the answer. Father Kirill did not just think about the answer, he prayed that the answer would be correct, he gave himself time for his own feelings to calm down, so that he could answer not from his own emotional movement, but according to God’s will. There is a proverb: “The word is silver, but silence is gold.” But Father Kirill weighed his words about people on such scales that they came from silence and remained gold. Now, if any of us tries to speak about others exclusively in this way, with such a measure of responsibility, then his word will be cleansed of human passions, and he, perhaps, will not sin with condemnation, unmercy, anger, the things that we usually sin in such cases.
— Is there such a thing as righteous anger?
— An example of righteous anger is given to us by the Third Book of Kings, this is the anger of the holy prophet of God Elijah. However, we see: the Lord - although He closed the sky through the prayers of the prophet and there was no rain - wanted something else: He wanted His prophet to learn love. Mercy and love are more pleasing to God than righteous anger. St. Isaac the Syrian writes: “Never call God just, He is not just, He is merciful.” And we, feeling the rising anger, must remember this. Unfortunately, we periodically meet people who are sincere believers, Orthodox, but convinced that Orthodoxy should be with fists. These people, as a rule, refer to Joseph of Volotsky, to his views on the fight against heresies, which even led to the execution of heretics in Rus' (thank God that this was not included in the system, it remained only a separate episode, because there was a counterweight - point of view St. Nilus of Sora), on St. Nicholas, who allegedly struck the heretic Arius on the cheek (although historically this episode is doubtful), and, finally, on John Chrysostom, who called for stopping the mouth of a blasphemer with a blow. But all these examples are the exception, not the rule. And if we remember the consistent teaching of the holy fathers, we remember the Gospel, we know that everyone who takes the sword will perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52). If the blow to Arius’s cheek was indeed struck, it was perhaps a manifestation of jealousy on the part of the Archbishop of Lycian Myra - but where does a modern man, strenuously calling for “to sanctify the hand with a blow,” have such confidence that he possesses the virtues of St. Nicholas? Where did we get the idea that for St. John Chrysostom this was the norm, and not the exception, to “stop the mouth with a blow”? Therefore, we do not need to “sanctify our hands” and block other people’s mouths with blows. There is no need to beat anyone “for the Orthodox faith.” For the Orthodox faith you only need to beat your own sin. It is a very big temptation to direct anger not at fighting oneself, but at fighting others. If we fight not with others, but with our own sin, we will break the chain of evil, hatred, fear; we will not continue, but break. Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and destroy them, just as Elijah did? But He, turning to them, rebuked them and said: You do not know what kind of spirit you are (Luke 9:54-55).
“Perhaps we can say this: only a saint has the right to righteous anger?”
— Paisiy Svyatogorets said: “The more spiritual a person is, the less rights he has.” From our point of view, we can talk about some special rights of a holy person in relation to others, but the saints themselves did not count any special rights for themselves. On the contrary, in the lives we read how a saint, as soon as he uttered some word condemning another person, immediately fell to his knees and repented of his involuntary sin.
- If our neighbor offends us, causes us pain or some kind of damage, is it necessary to tell him about this, and if necessary, then how to prevent his condemnation?
“I don’t think that in such situations you need to endure in silence.” Because wordless, resigned patience with sorrows brought by others is only possible for people of perfect life. If our neighbor hurts us, why not invite him to talk, sort things out, ask him if he considers us wrong in something, or if we ourselves have offended him in some way? When both people are well-intentioned, the situation will be resolved. But if a person hurts us consciously and maliciously, there are two ways: try to neutralize him or, perhaps, endure it, if we can. If not, getting out of the way is no sin. The Savior Himself commanded: When they persecute you in one city, flee to another (Matthew 10:23). In order to protect ourselves from the evil caused by a person, we sometimes just need to stop opening up to him. Lower the visor so that it prevents him from inflicting that blow on us that will bring evil - not only to our soul, but also to his soul.
— The sin of lying and slander is directly related to the sin of condemnation. I was struck by the fact that Abba Dorotheos and other spiritual writers used the word “lie” in a slightly different meaning, not in the one to which we are accustomed. For us, a lie is a conscious deception undertaken for some (even good) purpose. For them - something that we very rarely notice in ourselves: irresponsible utterance, saying certain words that either correspond to the truth or not; saying this in the usual flow of our idle talk, we don’t even think about whether our words about other people correspond to reality. Backbiting, gossip, “washing the bones” - everything from this opera. How to get behind this?
- This is a question about the attentiveness of our lives, about how we pay attention to ourselves. An attentive person loses the tendency to make frivolous, hasty judgments. If a person lives without thinking, he moves from one confusion to another. And the Monk Isaac the Syrian called confusion the chariot of the devil: in confusion, as in a chariot, the enemy enters our souls and turns everything in them upside down. And an inverted person judges others according to his first impulse, without giving himself the trouble to think about the justice of his judgments.
We often begin to judge others out of our own weakness - we are overcome by fatigue from insults, from blows, from pain, and we break down and begin to discuss these wounds with someone. Endure it for a while, don’t tell anyone about your offense, and perhaps your condemnation will die. And relaxation will come, rest for the soul. But we do not find the strength to endure, and here another spiritual law comes into play, which the holy fathers talk about: by condemning, you are deprived of God’s help, the blessing of grace. And you almost always commit the same sin for which you condemned another person. The fear of losing God's help is another helper in overcoming the sin of condemnation. The wonderful elder Ephraim of Katunak served the Divine Liturgy every day throughout his life and each time experienced it as a unique joyful event for himself and the whole world. But one day I didn’t feel divine joy - why? “My brother came to me alone, we discussed the actions of the bishops and condemned someone,” is how he explained it. He began to pray, felt that the Lord was forgiving him, and said to himself: “If you want to lose the Liturgy again, condemn it.”
— You have already spoken about the abundance of reasons for condemnation. How to avoid heartfelt anger, observing what is happening to our society, to the country, knowing about the colossal corruption, observing the demoralization of society, the deliberate corruption of youth for commercial purposes? This is civil pain, civil protest, but this is also anger - do we sin with it?
— The feeling you are talking about is very close and understandable to me. And I am looking for an answer to this question for myself. The reason for the moral state of our society is in ourselves too. But if we accepted an unrighteous life as normal, if we felt good now, we would have no excuse at all. We are accustomed to dividing the history of our country into two parts: before the disaster of 1917 (this is, as it were, a good life) and after - this is our life, bad. But let's ask ourselves a question: was the religious life of the people - all of them, from top to bottom - ideal before the revolution? The people themselves left the living faith; no one pulled them away by the hand. This means that the people themselves made their choice and got what they chose. And the example of the Israeli people tells us about this: when the Jews betrayed the One God, they suffered disasters, oppression, and found themselves in slavery; when they rejected His Son, they were scattered throughout the world. Imagine if we had an ideal government now, it would thoughtfully take care of the people, prosperity would come... Would this make us purer, more righteous, closer to God? No. But if we found ourselves so far from God in conditions of at least relative prosperity, His judgment would be more severe against us. The Lord, perhaps, is sending us all this, our entire life, so that we finally understand that we should not rely “on princes, on the sons of men”—we must rely only on Him. So that from this thought we turn to Him and change for the better. The one who judges is the one who believes that he deserves a better life, a better people, a better government, who thinks: everything is fine with me, but here they are... But in fact, you have to start with yourself. Because you can’t fix anything in this world until you fix yourself.
Journal "Orthodoxy and Modernity", No. 23 (39), 2012.
If you have already read my article about how good and even useful it is not to criticize others, I offer you a publication that is a kind of continuation of the topic of criticism. This article is dedicated to gossip, its causes and consequences.
Anyone who has ever wondered why people gossip has probably come to the conclusion that the main reason for gossip is a boring, unvaried one’s own life, in which nothing special happens day after day. If a person lives a highly efficient life, knows how to work efficiently and have a good rest, he simply will not have any time, energy or desire left for gossip.
According to Ozhegov’s dictionary, gossip refers to rumors about someone or something based on obviously false, inaccurate and unverified information. Based on the presented interpretation, the conclusion is very obvious that gossip (in many, but, by the way, not in all cases) is the result of such a negative phenomenon as envy. If a person is jealous of others, feels that he is inferior in some way to other people, he has a high chance of starting to gossip.
It happens that people spread untrue information about others without intending to harm those they are discussing. Such situations often arise when, when two acquaintances meet, one has absolutely nothing to say about himself. As a result, in order not to seem boring and not face awkward silence, the interlocutor begins to discuss others, offering for discussion not only the information that he knows for sure, but also thought-out “facts.”
Speaking about what other reasons for gossip there are, one cannot help but mention a banal misunderstanding. It happens that a person simply could not understand the situation, misinterpreted the events taking place and, completely not wishing harm to anyone, spread untrue information about others.
How to stop gossiping
If you decide to stop gossiping, the first thing you need to start with is to make your life brighter, more varied and eventful. When a person is busy with business, constantly moving towards his goals, he will feel sorry for wasting time gossiping about others. In addition, an active life position will definitely put you in the forefront in key areas of your life, which means that there will no longer be a need to assert yourself by slandering others.
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Forming good habits that involve stopping gossiping is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. All that is required of you is to focus on your business and activities, forgetting, in the good sense of the word, about other people, their worries and problems.
As already mentioned in one of my articles, an excellent option for getting rid of discussions of others is to wear a bracelet, which is hung on different hands each time during “unnecessary” conversations. This action will demonstrate to you whether you often gossip or criticize others, and will certainly help to minimize or completely eliminate “dubious” conversations.
What happens if you don't gossip?
By choosing not to gossip, each of us benefits ourselves greatly. Firstly, a non-gossiping person frees up a lot of free time, which he can spend on himself, his affairs and worries. Secondly, you stop attracting lies, deceit, and powerlessness, which will certainly have a positive impact on the quality of your life in the very near future. Thirdly, a person who avoids gossip will always look more strong-willed, independent, and decent in the eyes of others, which, in turn, will also endear you to those around you even more and open up new opportunities for you.
If you decide that gossip is not for you, it is very important to be clear about how not to gossip.