The Sweet Dropper

Lewis writes this in Mere Christianity. It speaks to a characteristic of too much of our political discourse these days from pundits and talk radio. It also speaks to many of our personal relationships as well. Don’t read this if you don’t want to feel some sharp conviction:

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

In the Westminster Larger Catechism, the lengthy answer to the question ‘What sins are forbidden in the ninth commandment?’ contains these two phrases: ‘scornful contempt’ and ‘fond admiration,’ which are essentially the same sin–seeing only what we want to see in other people. ‘Scornful contempt’ is what Lewis described. It is what David experienced that he poured out to the Lord in Psalm 35:

But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered;
they gathered together against me;
wretches whom I did not know
tore at me without ceasing;
like profane mockers at a feast,
they gnash at me with their teeth…

For they do not speak peace,
but against those who are quiet in the land
they devise words of deceit.
They open wide their mouths against me;
they say, “Aha, Aha! Our eyes have seen it!” [Psalm 35:15-16,20-21]