A Complete Idiot's Guide to the Internet

"Let He Who Is Without Sin"

Figure 1.

If I would correct my neighbor whom I do not love, I’ve assumed the prerogative of a friend whom I do love, which means I should also be willing to die for him.

Figure 2.

If I would be willing to lay down my life for my friend, it means I love him as myself, and in my love for him I would also be willing to correct him, since correcting him is much easier to do than giving up my life for him.

Figure 3.

But before I can provide correction for my neighbor, let alone my friend, I must first be able to see things clearly.

Figure 4.

And to see things clearly means to “see God,” in Whose image my neighbor and my friend were made. My neighbor whom I do not love is no less a living icon of God than my friend whom I do love.

Figure 5.

My friend is everyone whom I love, and my neighbor is anyone who lives in the world with me but who is not my friend. But in my pride I want to correct everyone in the world, anyone who disagrees with me: so my intention for correction is a declaration of friendship toward everyone in the world. I must therefore love everyone in the world as a friend, for whom I would lay down my life. But I can’t correct my neighbor until I can see God in him, as I do with my friend, whom I love.

Figure 6.

“... the Lord, leaning down to the ground, began to write with His finger on the ground... John the Evangelist does not say what He wrote, and the various theories offer little more than that. The most widespread of these theories is that the Lord was writing His answer to the Pharisees by writing down the specific sins of which each of them was guilty... As each remembered his own sins, many of them probably of a similar nature to the woman’s, and as each one’s conscience accused him, they started to leave, one by one, until there was no one left except the woman and Jesus Himself.”

- Archbishop Averky, Commentary on the Four Gospels