The Heavy Harvest of Vice

I am trying to read works whose titles have long been stored in my memory, but have never actually read. One one those titles that I am currently thumbing through is Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Set in what is now the modern Czech republic, the novel looks at the state of different kinds of love expressed by a small ensemble of characters in the midst of the Cold War, from sordid affairs to undying passions, all against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country.

Reading through the lives of the characters, the reader will become viscerally acquainted with the contrast between “light” and “heavy” love. We see the “light” of the philandering Tomas and his friend and lover Sabina, for whom the moving from one love affair to another is almost seen as an injunction, a principle of life that must be obeyed lest they get crushed under the weight of commitment. We also see the “heavy” love of Tereza who, harbouring the hurts of a traumatic family life, is further traumatised by the “light” love of her husband Tomas, and thus longs for the “heavy” love of committed monogamy.

Reading the novel reminded me of RJ Snell’s Acedia & Its Discontents. Although not saying this in so many words, Snell speaks of the vice of sloth as presuming a lightness of love, a rebellion against order that is characterised by the consistent refusal to commit. Such a lightness, Snell suggests, reaps a harvest whose implications are ironically weighty, namely the complete overthrow of all order.

This contrast between lightness and heaviness came to mind again when I read Kenneth Howell’s long but fantastic essay on St John Chrysostom’s teaching on the vice of Mnesikakia or “the remembrance of injury”, published in Church Life Journal.

While the essay itself is wide ranging, the point that hit home the hardest related to Chrysostom’s teaching on the fruit of the vice. Basing his teaching on Jesus’ parable of the servant forgiven of the debt of ten-thousand talents, and yet unable to forgive the one hundred denarii of a fellow servant, Chrysostom warns his flock on multiple occasions on the harvest reaped by the vice, once again a harvest whose implications go beyond weighty. Indeed, so heavy is the harvest that the person caught in this vice (and I count myself as one such person), that they would be unable to bear it.

Recall that in the parable, the unforgiving servant’s master metes out a punishment whose subtlety can get lost with the attention given to the fact of the servant’s punishment. It is not simply that the servant gets punished commensurate with one act of unforgiveness. Rather, Chrysostom reads the parable to mean that the punishment commensurate with unforgiveness is nothing short of a revisiting of the punishment fitting every past sin in that person’s life. To quote Howell:

The parable appears to teach that God can revoke forgiveness once given…The shock one senses comes from the lack of any spirit of forgiveness in the servant arising from his experience of the love of God. Why has the servant who owed so much retained such anger and hatred for his fellow servant? Mnesikakia is the one sinful disposition that rots away the soul and blocks God’s forgiveness.

And this sense is reinforced by the Saint himself:

Although it is written that “the gifts of God are irrevocable,” how can it be that an accounting is called for again after the gift [of forgiveness] is given, after love for humanity has been advanced? It is because of mnesikakia. It is so that should anyone sin in a manner that is not as harsh as this sin is in comparison to others, [we may know] that all the other [sins] can be forgiven. Not only could this one [sin] not find leniency, but also it brought the others back again. So mnesikakia is a twofold evil because it has no excuse with God and because the other sins, although forgiven, are again being brought up and counted against us.

This is not to dismiss that there will be long standing hurts harboured by many Christians, a pastoral reality that John Chrysostom himself is aware of. And being the good shepherd that he is, Chrysostom does not simply surrender his flock to the passion of resentment, but provides practical spiritual guides that are laid out in the essay. Which is why I highly recommend reading this essay in full.

Click here to read Matthew Tan’s own articles on Church Life Journal.