Archbishop Jonah urges to drop hate speech in social media
Hatred toward a virtual interlocutor is a greater sin than just hatred, because we hate a person for abstract sins, believes the UOC hierarch.
On September 2, 2019, the vicar of the Kiev Metropolitanate, Archbishop Jonah of Obukhov, urged to abandon hatred in social networks, the website of the Olshansky Monastery reports.
The hierarch reminded the parable of the unmerciful debtor (Matt. 18: 23-35) that the Lord will not forgive us our sins if we do not forgive our neighbors.
“Unfortunately, although being aware of it, we all the same constantly strive to be like not the generous Lord, merciful and unforgiving, but that madman who, with his enormous debt that has just been forgiven, has not forgiven his neighbor a meager sum the latter owed to him. In our life there are always situations when we can humble ourselves, tolerate, make concessions, cover with love the transgressions of our neighbor. But we fail to do it again and again. Again and again we gather on our heads the burning coals of the wrath of God,” wrote Archbishop Jonah.
Now this disease is also moving into a virtual plane, the bishop noted. “We often begin to hate, often fiercely, people who we have never seen in our life, but whose actions, we think, are wrong and sinful. Moreover, we assess them as wrong not from the Christian point of view, but, even more absurdly, from the political point of view,” he continued.
“Even Orthodox Christians can be heard saying, “I would kill them all!” Probably, everyone heard this from the neighbor or, God forbid, pronounced them or was close to pronouncing them. This is an even greater sin, because we hate people not for specific annoyances caused to us personally, but for some of their abstract sins about which we heard from someone,” the Archbishop noted.
He recalled that any sin of a person is actually “an occasion to feel sorry about his soul now, at the moment, for he is weak and infirm, or may be mistaken by God’s connivance and does something wrong”; “this is an occasion to pray for this man with tears, with a sore heart so that the Lord will change him, make wiser and better.”
“Only by doing so will we be able to become like a gentleman who has forgiven his debtor a great sin. We can become like the Lord, Who does not expect any decisive action from us, but loves us simply because we are, and because He Himself is Love. Let us strive to be like the Lord in everything. We will love our neighbors only because they exist, only because they are also people, also Christians, also created for paradise. And we should love them actively, praying that the Lord will have mercy on us and our neighbors,” said Archbishop Jonah.
Recall that earlier the abbot of the Trinity Jonah Monastery in Kiev, Archbishop Jonah (Cherepanov) of Obukhov said that the Lord does not send us sorrows to make us feel bad, not because He does not love us. On the contrary, he sends us sorrows and trials precisely because He loves us and wants to help us to be saved.
