| Finding the Way |
Chapter 22 |
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We should train ourselves to forget people’s faults. We are told that God does not remember the sins of His people. His forgiveness obliterates even the memory of the evil things we have done. Of course there is a sense in which God cannot forget, but the meaning is that He remembers as if He remembered not. We do not usually forget our brother’s faults and follies. Nor are they before our minds as if they were not. On the other hand, they are likely to be kept very much in evidence. One of the Beatitudes is, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” If we remember the wrong things we see in others, how can we expect God not to remember the greater wrong things His pure eyes see in us?
There are matters of knowledge of others which come to us in an accidental way which also should be to us as if we do not know them. Sometimes we are compelled to overhear words which were not meant for our ears, which no one supposes we have heard. The other day a friend wrote of being witness unintentionally of something which, if spoke of to others, would have led to very serious censure of the persons concerned. Advice was asked. What should this fried do with the unwelcome knowledge? There can be only one answer to such a question. Things learned in any accidental way, when it was not intended that we should know of them we are to consider ourselves as not knowing at all. There is no other honourable course. It is bad enough to divulge something which has been told us by another in great confidence, under charge of secrecy; but it is far worse to speak to any one of things we have learned in a purely accidental way, which we have no right to know.
There are things told us sometimes of others, evil stories perhaps, things which affect the good name of the persons. These stories may be the result of miserable gossip. They may be altogether false, gross misrepresentation. In this case we certainly make ourselves sharers in the sin of the original maligners if we repeat the stories to any one. He who helps give wings to a scandal is himself a miserable scandalmonger. But supposing that the stories are true, what is our duty concerning them? Have we not a right to tell others evil things about a person when we have verified the stories? What gives us the right to do this? What makes it our duty to spread an evil report even when we know it to be true? Clearly, whatever the case may be, the Christian way to deal with such matters, in whatever manner they may have come to our ears, is to be as if we did not know them.
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