The Tares and the Wheat

Some thoughts from Phillips Brooks suggest the benefit and blessing of encouragement and the destructive force of overemphasizing the negative side.

“Your child, your scholar, your servant⎯you may fulfill him or you may destroy him,” he said. “You destroy him if you [emphasize] everything that is bad and crude and ridiculous about him. … You destroy him if you make him feel himself weak and insignificant, and drive him to despair. You destroy him if you make his… feeling about his own life to be shame. On the other hand you fulfill him… if you catch everything that is good about him and water it with judicious encouragement and praise. You fulfill him if you recognize every feeblest and clumsiest effort to do right, if you inspire him with hope, if you make him seem to himself worth cultivating and developing…. To say ‘well-done’ to any bit of work that has embodied good effort, is to… confirm and strengthen… But if you have nothing to say to your child or to your worker except… that… his work is badly done, that he is wasting opportunities and losing the value of his life, then you are coming to him not to fulfill but to destroy… you who are set in positions of superintendence and authority: Make a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your right to blame the bad…. It is so easy to give the bruised reed one blow and break it…. Never let a brave and serious struggle after truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognized….”

This was among the important messages of the Master of mankind, who said: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”

Among the greatest gifts that we can give are love, understanding, encouragement, and commendation for whatsoever should be encouraged and commended. There can be no real fulfillment of life in looking and living excessively on the negative side. Blessed are those who help to lift men’s lives.