warboner

Every few months the same defense goes around for the way some of Orthodox influencers speak online: "The Fathers insulted their opponents. They called heretics dogs and serpents and worse. If the saints spoke that way, so can we." Look at who they were speaking to. The men the Fathers wrote against were nearly always inside the Church: priests, bishops, monks, sometimes old friends, teaching the faithful something false about God. The heat was aimed at the household, for the sake of the man being rebuked and the people he was leading. The saints spent it because the souls at stake were their brothers'. That is the order of the Gospels. Christ's hardest words went to the people nearest Him, the scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses' seat and knew the Law better than anyone. Matthew 23 is a chapter of woes spoken to them. With the centurion and the Samaritan woman at the well, He was patient and kind. St. Paul kept the same order. He called the Galatians fools, then at Athens he quoted the pagans' own poets to them with courtesy. Then he said it outright: "For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?" (1 Cor. 5:12) Much of the Orthodox internet runs this backwards. The contempt goes outward, to Protestants and Catholics, to the inquirer who asked a clumsy question, to whoever drew attention that day. And none of this contempt is remotely aimed at the ultimate salvation of the ones that words are being spoken to. They aren't saints that have been cultivated in the virtues and rid themselves of the passions speaking truth to power. It's simply content for engagement and clicks off the backs of the passions of their followers. Our own personalities sit where criticism can't reach them, and when someone names their behavior, the answer is "piety signaling." Calling out sin has become the one sin left. Mining the Fathers' polemics for permission to tear people down leaves out everything else they wrote about the tongue, and the Scripture they had by heart: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth" (Eph. 4:29).