Father Alexander Elchaninov
What a man truly is, no one knows but God. Or rather, man has a changeable, pliant nature; and we, in judging another, often by some chance mark, create in our own imagination an invented, schematic image, and then either look upon it with admiration or revile and condemn it.
We must give up the view that mankind is divided into two hostile camps and that there are only the righteous and the sinful. It is not so.
We are all sinful. Sin has entered into every man, and for each of us the Lord suffered. And to the Lord each of us is precious, and therefore the final judgement belongs to Him. This is why in the Gospel the words about love are followed by the call: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1).
Judge not — and then it will be easier for you to love your neighbour; judge not — and you will have no enemies. Look upon your enemies as upon the sick, infected with a common disease; forget personal scores and remember God's judgement upon earth...
Our whole life is filled with the spirit of judging. We spare no one. Often lightly, without malice, without giving ourselves an account of it, already by habit, we judge and slander. As the autumn leaves rustle, fall, rot and poison the air, so judging destroys all our work, creates an air of mistrust and bitterness, and ruins our souls.
The mark of unrighteous judging and condemnation is anger, bitterness, lack of love, lack of repentance, an indulgent attitude to one's own person and a strict, demanding one towards others.
Judging vanishes if we remember that we are for ever debtors before the Lord. But intolerance of others, coldness of heart and cruelty take us far from the Lord's boundless forbearance and separate us from God.
The wisdom of life, and with it Christian wisdom, lies in not being demanding towards people.
The general pattern of our dealings with people is often this: a person pleases you very much, you sincerely admire him and notice nothing bad in him.
Suddenly he shows himself in something — he lies, he boasts, or he reveals a cowardly nature... And we begin to reassess him: all the good that we saw in him before (and which of course still remains in him) we cross out and cut off from our heart. This is a wrong, sinful attitude towards people.
At the bottom of this lie two unrecognised thoughts:
1. I am sinless, and 2. the man whom I loved is likewise sinless.
How else are we to explain the sharp condemning of others and our amazement when a good, virtuous and devout person sins!
And this when the norm of a Christian's attitude to his neighbour is to forgive always, without end, since we ourselves have need of constant forgiveness. And the chief thing is not to forget that the virtues which we valued in another still remain in him, though the sin too was in him, but we did not notice it.
Let us be more forbearing with one another, let us treat one another with greater love and warmth — we all have need of mutual help and love, and all our hardships and sorrows are small things before eternity.
