Is it loving to announce and reveal the unloving behaviors of others? Should we never offer an observation, much less a criticism, of those who do things with which we disagree?
Yesterday I asked this question, and drew quite a response. One Commentor said…

Write about the things that allow us to see your loving side as in your “Conversations With God” series. I love your books, but it makes me wonder where that man is on this web site.

Oh, my gosh and my golly…I am right here. God made it very clear to me in Conversations with God that it was NOT a loving thing to simply ignore the unloving words and actions of others. I am showing you my “loving side” by writing what I write here. That is the point I was trying to make. Jesus was showing his “loving side” when he threw the money-changers out of the temple, chasing after them with a whip made of knotted rope. Jesus is quoted in the Bible as saying things like, “You hypocrites! You viper’s brood!” Do this look like Jesus allowing us to see his “loving side”? The startling answer is, yes! It is not loving to allow a despot’s behavior to go unchallenged. CWG asks, “What does that teach the despot?”
Deb Reilly asks, with eloquent clarity…

If a child throws a tantrum…
If a man abuses his wife…
If a woman uses sarcasm…
If a businessperson steals…
If a church spews hate in the name of God…
If a state discriminates…
If a nation wages war…
If a people disrespect the Earth…
and no one stands to tell the truth, the crazy continues. What is the point of that?

Wow, I couldn’t have put it any better. Yes, that is the point I was hoping to make! On the other hand, Deb says that such observations must be made fairly, and not maliciously. “If Jesus truly called anyone a brood of vipers, or Satan, or overturned the tables in the temple, he was not enlightened, and no where close to being God,” Deb said.
Gosh, Deb, here I disagree. I don’t believe I said anything about Jesus calling anyone “Satan,” but I believe he is quoted in Holy Scripture calling other “hypocrites” and a “viper’s brood.” I am wondering now, are we saying that it is not “enlightened” to use anger and to say unflattering words when dealing with people who behave in unkind ways?
A Commentor named Tracy captured this perfectly when she wrote…

Why can’t Jesus turn over a table AND be enlightened. Why can’t my anger with a preacher that lies about our president elect be okay? Why can’t I be a butterfly with a strong opinion about the way things should be?

What do you think? Please tell me–because inquiring minds want to know…
Then Deb Reilly comes back to say…

Tracy, you can be mad as hell and shout from the rooftops, “I’m not gonna take it anymore, you jerks,” but the only ones who will listen will be the people who agreed with you in the first place. And you will continue to be mad as hell, poor you, which is NOT the point of all this enlightenment stuff.
If you flit along with your butterfly self, spouting #$%@&** to some crazy with a flyswatter, you are not going to be heard. You’re going to be ignored at best, squished at worst.
A counter-attack does nothing but center you in the bulls eye. It revs up the crazies to a fever pitch, and they are less likely than ever to hear what you, in your infinite wisdom, are trying to impart to them.

Well, now, I agree with you here, Deb. If your point in offering an observation is to make the person being observed change his or her ways, you will have very little success pushing your criticisms in that person’s face. But what if your intention is simply to let others know of what a person is doing or saying? And what if the purpose of that is to wake people up to what is going on around them, so that humanity, collectively, can begin to change its course?
Are these not noble purposes? Is this not good reason to say, “Hey, look at what is happening over here!”, or…”Wow, are we really, as a society, going to condone this?”
Sometimes observations and critiques are not intended to change the mind or the actions of the person in question, but of all the people around that person. When the people in Washington and the media roundly criticized the Big Three auto executives for flying to the nation’s capitol in private jets (at $20,000 in fuel costs per flight x 3), the comment was not made to see if those executive would agree. It was made to highlight the utter impropriety of what they had done, to shed the light of public scrutiny upon it, to literally embarrass those executives out of a repeat of such behavior.
A little public embarrassment, a little chagrin, is pretty harmless and perhaps good for all of us now and then…me included.
The person posting as “Adam” hit the nail on the head, I thought, when he said…

Being enlightened doesn’t mean you can’t get angry. It doesn’t mean you can’t call a spade a spade. And it is hardly critical or insulting to tell the truth. If someone is spreading hate, demand that they stop. Now of course yelling your brains out will change nothing, but that’s rage, not anger.

Good, Adam. Very good. I like the way you delineated the difference between rage and anger. Yes, this is bringing clarity to this discussion. Nice work.
And wow, how about this closing comment from Adam…

I’m all for elevating consciousness but to not talk about the dysfunctions that take place in our society and convince yourself that inaction equates with godliness is nonsense. And to try and tell other people they must do the same is hubris.

Yikes! Couldn’t have put it any better. Whew. Well, well said. And Susan, thank you for sharing this…

“He who fights monsters must take care lest he become a monster. When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Great stuff…we are all agreed here, it seems, that unkindly pointing out someone’s behavior, or attackingly pointing it out, is not effective. But most of us seem to agree that, as Susan concluded…

In the case of this preacher, I think he was probably surprised that some of his contemporaries don’t agree with him. It was good for him to hear it.

Yes, Susan, exactly.
I wish I could respond to every comment here, but time today does not allow. Family coming in from afar, arriving any minute, for tomorrow’s wonderful holiday. Have a perfectly joyful Thanksgiving Weekend!