Nine Ways of Looking at Contempt

By Brenda J. Evans

I prefer not to look at contempt, but I do because it’s close. In me. What do I mean? I mean it’s what Dallas Willard said in The Divine Conspiracy: a studied degradation of another person. Add Psychologist Paul Ekman’s description: feelings of dislike for and superiority over another person, as in “I am better than you, and you are lesser than me.”

Jesus gave raca as an Aramaic example of contempt in Matthew 5:22. It is a label meaning empty-headed fool. One linguist indicates raca may have originated from the sound we make collecting spittle in our throat, so we can verbally spit on someone.

What does contempt look like? There are at least nine ways to see it for what it is.

1. Contempt exudes superiority and breaks relationships into “them” and “us” (or really“me”), an unspoken ranking system about who is better. So, I push the “lesser” person away, leave him out of my “better” circle. Paul explains that a person who dares to classify or compare himself that way is “without understanding” (2 Corinthians 10:12). This superiority mode, as A. W. Tozer said in The Pursuit of God, is a “close-woven veil of the self-life.” We may feel qualms about self-exaltation, but not openly acknowledge it, even to ourselves. Still, it is there in our interior history.

In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton approaches superiority another way. When we consider ourselves “supermen” and in fact are “rotters,” it’s both a weakness and a sin, he says—a sin that is “a fact as practical as potatoes.” Self-superiority is ugly, and we don’t like to look at it. Remember Jesus’ words about how we ignore our logs but not their specks? And there’s my mother’s admonition not to act “uppity.” Feelings of superiority are hard to acknowledge, even to our bathroom mirror.

2. Contempt is a poison, a sap that oozes through our bark and kills. Russian author Aleksandr Pushkin wrote a nine-stanza poem about a tropical Asian tree, the Upas:

Deep in the desert’s misery,
far in the fury of the sand,
there stands the awesome Upas Tree
lone watchman of a lifeless land.

The poisonous sap of the Upas is a temptation. It “oozes through its bark” and “gleams thick and gem-like in the dark.” Contempt likewise attracts and entices us, as the gem-like Upas sap did a peasant man who plucked it and brought it to his lord. The peasant quickly fell dead while his master soaked arrows in the poison and killed “his neighbors in their own domains.”

Contempt destroys both the injured one and the one who plucks its dark, “thick and gem-like” sap. The legends and facts about the Upas remind me of Moses’ various warnings in Deuteronomy 28. For example, “Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’”

Impudently practicing contempt is a similar and dangerous sin. Consequences under the law were curses, confusion, frustration, fevers, blight, losses, horror, drought, blindness, and on and on the list goes. “And there shall be no one to help you,” Moses warns at the end (Deuteronomy 28:29). We’re forewarned, but go on, casual and indifferent, assuming we are safe.

3. Contempt does collateral damage, including “friendly fire.” Botanists two centuries ago claimed virulent Upas’ poison spread to the soil and killed plants that tried to grow beneath its branches in a kind of biological friendly fire. Contempt spreads beyond its intended target. James reminds us when a fiery tongue ignites a small campfire, it may spread to the whole forest (3:5-6). My contempt can consume more than I intend.

4. Contempt plays God. It judges from a “superior” position. Jesus warned against this black art. “Judge not,” He said in Matthew 7:1. Judging is a deeply rooted human practice, even among Christians, for we are “those who are of the dust” (1 Corinthians 15:48). We “straighten out” someone, degrade, reject, or exclude them. Dallas Willard warns us to “beware of believing that it is okay for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things. It is not so simple as all that. I can trust Jesus to go into the temple and drive out those who were profiting from religion…I cannot trust myself to do so.” I am not God.

5. Contempt desires to hurt. It knifes into a person’s vulnerable heart and spirit. We Christians are not immune to it. As Willard said, it is such a “handy way of hurting people.” And, so, we speak unkindness from a position “above” our victim. We draw out his anger or pain, as well as our own shame for being the kind of person we are. Paul warns, “If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15).

6. Contempt tears down. It is demolition, not construction. Tearing down goes quickly. Building up does not. One of my dad’s jobs in the mid-1950s was tearing down old barracks at Fort Campbell, a U.S. Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. With permission from the contractor, Dad and others salvaged the good wood. Demolition took a few weeks. Later, when Daddy used some of the salvaged wood to frame up his and Mother’s new house, construction took almost a year. Building up is like that.

To knock people down, wield a 12-pound sledgehammer—wham, wham, wham—or a motorized wrecking ball. Words demolish…quick. New Testament letters urge at least 13 times to build up the people whose lives we touch—encourage, help, speak peace, bless, give grace, speak gently, comfort, speak truth, season with salt, stimulate to love and good deeds. That’s not even considering Jesus’ words in the gospels or the Old Testament Proverbs, Psalms, and Deuteronomy. Building up one another is a spiritual art we are commanded to practice.

7. Contempt is a smoldering volcano, a slit in the crust of our soul through which hot, sulfurous emotions rise like steam or smoke. Maybe there are no visible flames or flare-ups, just a slow burn or smolder that chokes off and smothers kindness and “sweet reasonableness,” as Dr. Robert Picirilli would say. Or, maybe we feel self-satisfaction and a comfortable warmth, while deeper down, a volcano waits to erupt.

8. Contempt leaves ghosts—hauntings of things I have or have not said but thought. Contempt leaves us with troubled feelings of guilt. William G. Justice, Jr. said guilt is “a painful conglomerate of emotions” that may include anxiety, shame, dirtiness, grief, loss of self-worth, the need to hide. But guilt has value. It is an “internal alarm system” of the Holy Spirit’s dwelling with me and in me, as Jesus promised. He teaches, convicts, convinces, and guides me to repent and grow (see John 14-16).

9. Contempt’s enemy is my prayer for my victim. Here’s what I mean. Pray good things for the person for whom you feel contempt. Write his or her name in Paul’s prayers in Colossians 1, Philippians 1 and 2, Ephesians 3, or others of your choice. Then pray the prayer. Be serious, mean it, because you hate your contempt.

Kneel to wash her feet as in John 13. Do it literally if COVID-19 is gone; if not, imagine you are at her feet to wash them. See how the Lord changes you there on your knees with basin and towel. Also, pray these paraphrased lines from Deuteronomy 32:1-2 and insert her/his name in the blanks: “Lord, make my words and thoughts drop as refreshing rain upon ___________ , my speech distill as dew upon ___________ , like gentle rain upon tender grass. Amen.”

About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives in Ashland, Kentucky. Contact her: beejayevans@windstream.net.