Reformers Who Failed in Reform
The Destroyers
Many participated in reform movements and failed, because they did not follow a sound spiritual path in reform. Among these are:
Those who do not work at all in building; rather, their only work is criticizing the builders and trying to destroy every building…
They diminish the value of every positive work and try to hide it from sight. If the percentage of success in a work is 95%, nothing occupies them except the missing 5%. They take it as material for themselves, with which they satisfy their hobby of destruction.
Their activity includes causing harm, wounding others, spreading blame, and publishing bad news. They continually stain people’s reputations. They rejoice at any fault that reaches them, even if it comes from a lying person, a resentful one, or someone of bad reputation. Then they add stories to that news and become enthusiastic about it, rejoicing that through it they will be able to destroy the workers.
Their lives are devoid of love; therefore God does not bless their work. Their frequent harming of the workers makes them unloved by everyone. The spiritual atmosphere does not rest with them. They do not succeed in reform because they still need repentance and purity in the tongue and in the heart… The bad results of their destructive works and their effect on the common good do not concern them. Rather, what concerns them is satisfying the desire for destruction in their hearts, and for its sake they sacrifice all values and ideals.
Because of their frequent talk about evils, the words lost their power, because they do not verify the information that reaches them. Instead, the desire for destruction makes them believe every bad report and reject every defense.
In these destroyers the personal factor appears very clearly, as their focus seems to be on specific persons in particular rather than everyone. People often notice this and see that the truth is lost with these destroyers.
It is not zeal that drives them, but rather personal psychological factors. These destroyers, in reality, destroy no one except themselves.
They always try to destroy and cannot… they only raise dust that tires their own eyes.
The Scripture has said: “The Lord will not leave the rod of the wicked resting on the lot of the righteous.”
How similar these destroyers are to the saying of the poet:
Like a ram that one day struck a rock to weaken it;
it did not harm the rock, but weakened the ram’s horn.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Three), 21-1-1977.
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