Dai­ly Reflec­tion
June 27, 2007

When I read the first four lines of today’s Gospel about “false prophets com­ing in sheep’s clothes,” I imme­di­ate­ly thought of an acquain­tance who had some par­al­lel behav­iors to the warn­ing in this Gospel. This indi­vid­ual forged friend­ships and rela­tion­ships with oth­ers – only for many of us to dis­cov­er he cre­at­ed a pat­tern of decep­tion that unrav­eled. His decep­tion has result­ed in both finan­cial and emo­tion­al hav­oc for two col­leagues in particular.

Upon first read­ing of the Gospel, I had dif­fi­cul­ty with the remain­der of the Gospel – because I made a lan­guage par­al­lel between “a good tree and a bad tree” with “a good per­son and a bad per­son.” I have a strong belief in sep­a­rat­ing a per­son from one’s behav­iors, i.e., I do not see a per­son as good or bad. Rather, I eval­u­ate behav­iors as pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. I believe we are all capa­ble of behav­iors on a pos­i­tive to neg­a­tive continuum.

So, I strug­gle with the 21^st cen­tu­ry par­al­lel lan­guage and mean­ing to the “good tree and the rot­ten tree.” One desired under­stand­ing is that the prac­tice and re-iter­a­tion of pos­i­tive behav­iors results in a “good tree, i.e., a good per­son” – which, in turn, results in more pos­i­tive behav­iors by that per­son. If we believe (which I do) in the inher­ent dig­ni­ty of each indi­vid­ual who is capa­ble of pos­i­tive behav­iors and capa­ble of change from neg­a­tive behav­iors, then one does not dis­miss any indi­vid­ual as “a rot­ten tree.”

While there is pain and grief in my two above col­leagues’ lives because of how they were deceived by the above indi­vid­ual, they live out the Chris­t­ian dimen­sion of rec­og­niz­ing his innate dig­ni­ty. While they grieve his neg­a­tive behav­iors, i.e., his “bad fruits,” they, also, make a dis­tinc­tion between who he is and what his behav­iors are. They do not dis­miss him. They pray for his heal­ing. I believe this is what I am called to do and practice.