Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of my favorite phrases in the King James Bible was, sadly, updated in the new translations of the New Testament. It appears this Sunday in its new form as “rank growth of wickedness” as part of the Epistle. The King James translation renders it as “superfluity of naughtiness.” While being far more felicitous and having a certain cheeky sound, the newer translation is probably more accurate in terms of the thrust of the original text.

None of us is immune to this growth of wickedness. Indeed, the people we call saints are often not immune to it. But they are aware of it.

Awareness is the key it seems.

It’s easy to justify wickedness done for a supposedly good cause. We use the phrase “the ends justifies the means” and see people say things like, “I know so-and-so is a terrible human but they will do x, y, and z that I think are important so I’ll vote for them.”

It’s a utilitarian logic that undermines our credibility. But we also know it is a part of the choices we make day in and day out that are part of getting through the day as a citizen.

There are the harder kinds of wickedness to justify—those that are simply about our own benefit at the expense of others.

This can be a direct kind of thing where we cheat or lie or the like. It can also be an indirect sort of thing whereby we benefit from some policy or decision that is an abstract good for us and an abstract harm to another that nonetheless has real consequence.

The most invidious category though, it seems, is the kind of wickedness that comes from believing we are right and denying that others might be. That’s the kind of thing that can turn us into moralizing bean counters taking note of all the ways others fail our standards.

We count our character traits as virtues and the character traits of others, that are different, as obvious flaws. The way we do things is the only way they should be done. The way we speak, pray, vote, work, or more become the ways by which we measure just how far others fall short of the full stature and measure of…us.

We become the benchmark and measuring stick.

It’s a dangerous kind of wickedness because it is so easy to fall into yet so hard to see.

Because our worldview is the one we have, it is a difficult thing to stand in the experience of another and give them not just the benefit of the doubt but the benefit of belief.

Rather than default toward assuming the best and expecting that others live and love with good intent, we assume that deviations from our expectations are not merely deviations. We assume they are actively deviant and an expression of the rank growth of wickedness.

The challenge is for us to step back from our easy assumptions and quick judgments and to take the whole person, our whole experience and theirs, into account before we decide we know what’s right.

The challenge is to avoid the deep sin of zealous judgmentalism and to let that temptation pass. Otherwise we find ourselves drawn ever deeper into a smug kind of wickedness that looks to us like being right but to the world appears being self-deluded by our lack of charity, and self-aggrandizing in our lack of clarity.

There’s right and there’s wrong, of that I have no doubt. What I do doubt is that we alone always know the difference.

And this is where we need the constant example of Christ, the persistent work of prayer, and the wisdom of community to help us see when we’re most liable to be blind.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert