He goes on to consider the puzzle of how refraining from speaking truth could be a good thing for Christians, who consider themselves people of Truth, and comes up with a number of reasons for refraining from detraction. I'm interested in the second and fifth points:
We are all sinners. By disclosing a hidden fault of another, we make it seem like this person is worse than all the people whose hidden faults are not disclosed. Frequently, the person is made to seem worse than the detractor. There is, thus, an injustice when there is no special reason to disclose the sins of this individual.It's good to have a word for this thing I do too often.
[...]
When the faults of another are disclosed to sinful humans, these humans will be tempted to take an inappropriate attitude towards these faults, an attitude of judgment rather than forgiveness. Thus, detraction is not only a sin against the person whose reputation is being unjustly tarnished, but also a sin against the listener who is being tempted into sin.
3 comments:
There's a similar concept in Judaism, called lashoan hara -- "evil speech" -- that also deals with true, but negative statements. Its roots are similar to what you quoted from Pruss, but there's also a sense that you're supposed to go to a person in private, and try to help them overcome their faults, rather than try to embarrass them into it.
I should note that Pruss mentions "evil speech" in his lead-in; it was I who left it out in this post.
"but there's also a sense that you're supposed to go to a person in private"
Likewise, the Catholic Encyclopedia article on detraction talks of fraternal correction. Fraternal correction is initially private but can escalate, as per Matthew 18:15-18.
I think the closest Protestants term for this sin is "gossip", though it's not exactly the same. (If I write a newspaper article exposing someone's publicly irrelevant sins, "gossip" doesn't seem the right word.)
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