Friday, March 21, 2008

Suspicion

Suspicion...is an opinion, not too well-grounded, or grounded in false assumptions, that another has an evil purpose in a certain line of conduct. A suspicious person somehow adopts the general assumption that everybody must be deemed guilty of evil until he has proved himself to be innocent. Worst of all, he must always give expression to his suspicions in the hope of making others share them with him....

An unjustifiable lack of trust hurts deeply. If you set a low value on moral worth of another, misjudge his dispositions, drag down his character, misinterpret his intentions, or torture his innocence by false suspicions and accusations, you inflict upon him one of life's bitterest trials. A trial like this caused the heart of the Lamb of God to be wrung with anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. The whole story of Good Friday is summed up in false suspicion.

Mistrust leads astray. Not only unjustifiable mistrust, but at times even well-founded mistrust is a force that drags one down into the depths. When a man is aware that he is being suspected of a sin, he sometimes experiences a desire to commit that very sin and so to take another step on the downward path.
(from Father Lawrence Lovasik's The Hidden Power of Kindness, Sophia Institute Press, 1999, p.98) Share