Is It a Sin to Call Someone Evil?

[00:00:01]You know the feeling.

[00:00:03]Someone has done something so dark, so deliberate, so free of ordinary excuses, that a softer word feels dishonest.

[00:00:15]You reach for the word evil.

[00:00:18]Then almost immediately, another voice shows up.

[00:00:22]Sometimes from outside, and sometimes from your own conscience.

[00:00:28]Who are you to say that?

[00:00:30]Are you not sinning by judging?

[00:00:34]I have asked that question more than once.

[00:00:37]Online life makes it hard to avoid.

[00:00:41]Every day we watch people celebrate cruelty, excuse the indefensible, or treat another human being as disposable.

[00:00:51]At the same time, ordinary anger can turn ugly very quickly.

[00:00:57]A true judgment can become a weapon.

[00:01:00]A necessary warning can become entertainment.

[00:01:04]So is it a sin to call someone evil?

[00:01:08]Not automatically.

[00:01:10]Christ is clear about the danger of the tongue.

[00:01:14]I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak.

[00:01:22]That should slow all of us down.

[00:01:25]Words form us.

[00:01:27]They can wound a reputation, harden a community, and train the heart to enjoy contempt.

[00:01:35]Proverbs puts the same truth more bluntly.

[00:01:39]Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

[00:01:44]But scripture does not stop there.

[00:01:47]The Bible also names evil.

[00:01:50]It speaks of evil men, evil deeds, an evil generation, and works of darkness.

[00:01:59]The prophets do not describe every injustice as a misunderstanding.

[00:02:04]Our Lord himself says that out of the heart come evil thoughts.

[00:02:10]The New Testament warns that some people love darkness.

[00:02:15]If using the word evil were always a sin, large portions of scripture would be impossible to read aloud.

[00:02:24]The church helps us hold those two truths together.

[00:02:28]Evil is not a rival substance fighting God on equal terms.

[00:02:34]Following St. Augustine, Catholic teaching understands moral evil as a privation, a corruption of the good that ought to be there.

[00:02:45]A lie is speech robbed of truth.

[00:02:48]Cruelty is power robbed of love.

[00:02:52]Hatred is a will turned against the good of another person.

[00:02:57]Even a person who does monstrous things remains a creature of God.

[00:03:04]The image of God can be disfigured.

[00:03:07]It is not erased by our language.

[00:03:10]When we call an action evil, we are not saying the person has ceased to be human.

[00:03:16]We are saying that something in him has been twisted against the good.

[00:03:21]That protects us from two opposite errors.

[00:03:25]The first is sentimental silence.

[00:03:28]We become so afraid of sounding harsh that we refuse to name what is in front of us.

[00:03:35]A child is abused. A people is persecuted.

[00:03:39]A public lie wrecks the weak.

[00:03:43]And we reach for softer words because evil feels impolite.

[00:03:48]Charity does not require that kind of fog.

[00:03:52]Love sometimes needs a hard noun.

[00:03:56]The second error is the one I fear more in myself.

[00:04:00]We name the evil accurately and then we enjoy it.

[00:04:05]We rehearse the person's worst moments for pleasure.

[00:04:08]We reduce him to a slogan.

[00:04:11]We want him destroyed more than restored.

[00:04:15]At that point, the true judgment has been swallowed by contempt.

[00:04:20]Contempt is where the sin usually enters.

[00:04:24]There is a difference between saying, "What he did is evil and he must be stopped." and saying, "He is evil, so I no longer owe him truth, patience, prayer, or the possibility of repentance."

[00:04:39]The first can be justice.

[00:04:41]The second begins to play God.

[00:04:45]We may judge deeds. We may judge public patterns of behavior when the evidence is clear.

[00:04:51]What we are not given is final knowledge of another person's soul.

[00:04:57]We do not see the hidden wounds, the remaining freedom, the secret grace still at work, or the hour of death in which a man may still turn back.

[00:05:08]So, ask a smaller question.

[00:05:11]When I call someone evil, what do I want?

[00:05:15]Do I want the danger named so the innocent can be protected?

[00:05:20]Do I want the sinner confronted so he might repent?

[00:05:24]Or do I want a license to hate without guilt?

[00:05:28]If the person truly repented tomorrow, would I rejoice?

[00:05:32]Or would I feel strangely disappointed as if my enemy had escaped me?

[00:05:38]The answer tells me whether I have been serving truth or feeding something lower.

[00:05:44]Christian moral judgment is supposed to remain open toward repentance.

[00:05:49]God himself says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.

[00:05:58]That does not cancel justice.

[00:06:01]A crime may still demand punishment.

[00:06:03]A public office may still demand removal.

[00:06:07]A community may still need protection.

[00:06:10]Mercy is not the refusal to see evil.

[00:06:14]Mercy is the refusal to make hatred the final word.

[00:06:19]I notice how easily the online world trains the opposite habit.

[00:06:23]We are rewarded for the sharpest label, the coldest joke, the cleanest disposal of a human being into a category.

[00:06:32]Evil becomes useful because it ends the conversation.

[00:06:37]Once a person is only a monster, I no longer have to wrestle with his dignity or my own resemblance to him.

[00:06:44]And that resemblance is uncomfortable.

[00:06:48]While each of us may have never committed the worst things we condemn, I know quieter versions of the same movements in myself.

[00:06:56]Delight in someone else's fall.

[00:06:59]Impatience that refuses a fuller story.

[00:07:03]Prayer that asks God to vindicate me rather than convert us both.

[00:07:09]The word evil can be true about another person's action and still become poisonous in my mouth if I use it to hide from my own need for mercy.

[00:07:20]So, no.

[00:07:22]It is not always a sin to call someone evil.

[00:07:25]It can be necessary.

[00:07:27]It can protect the weak.

[00:07:30]Scripture uses the word and the saints did, too.

[00:07:35]A civilization that loses the courage to name evil will eventually lose the courage to defend the good.

[00:07:43]But it becomes sinful when truth turns into contempt.

[00:07:47]When a hard word becomes a hard heart.

[00:07:51]When we stop hoping that grace could still reach the person we have condemned.

[00:07:56]Call evil by its name when silence would be a lie.

[00:08:01]Then keep enough love in the judgment to want the sinner back.