Speak no Ill of the Dead?
Latin: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. English: Of the dead, nothing but good.
Dear God,
Is it true that we should speak no ill of the dead? It’s an old convention. Does that mean it’s from You?
I became interested in the saying while reading copious mystery novels where “de mortuis” was frequently invoked – though universally not followed. Apparently, the saying originated with Chilon of Sparta, one of the 7 Sages of Greece, around 600 B.C. But there are versions of it in other cultures, including a Hebrew expression: “After the death, say ‘they were holy.’” Apparently, it is a saying still widely used by morticians; it is inappropriate to speak ill of the dead as they are unable to justify themselves. (info from Wikipedia)
So, why? What on earth could be wrong about telling the truth about someone who has passed into a new life?
If the deceased person was faulty, bad, or even evil, it seems there is nothing wrong – indeed positively healthy – with telling the truth about him or her. After all, truth-telling is the theme of no-holds-barred biographies and even many therapists’ treatments. We moderns are free to say whatever we want on just about any subject. This includes a psychiatric analysis of the deceased. In some forms of psychotherapy for a depressed or anxious patient, delving into the deceased’s influence on one may actually begin a path to healing.
Your servant Corrie ten Boom (survivor of a Nazi death camp) is quoted as stating: “We mustn’t block all these memories inside. Stuffed down, they will atrophy life. We must air out the memories – cleanse them.”
But in the end, she was able to forgive even the Nazis for their heinous abuses. Another survivor – this time of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Immaculée Ilibagiza – also was able to forgive the attackers who imprisoned her and killed most of her family. Both of these women continued to talk about their experiences – whether or not the perpetrators are still alive. However, their forgiveness hallows everything they say.
There was a certain person who was important in my life who is now dead. After I became a born-again Christian believer, I worried about his salvation – he was not a believer and he was not….no, here I am, about to do it again.
In recent years, every time I start to tell “the truth” about this person, I receive a decided “check” in my spirit. (Are You, the Holy Spirit, are telling me that I am about to go down a bad path? My experience at this point includes a stiff neck, which usually means I’m doing something rebellious.)
Again, why?
I’m going to speculate here. First, I believe there are lines of connection between us and everyone in our lives: parents, siblings, spouses, friends, teachers, even acquaintances, authors, speakers and others of seemingly little or no relation to us. As John Donne said,
No man is an island of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less….any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (Donne, John, 1624, Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.)
Second, I believe that words we utter about another person, or even thoughts we hold about them, impact both ourselves and that other person. Speaking ill of someone or refusing to forgive them – alive or dead, I suspect – coarsens and deforms the bond between us. If the person is alive, we are pronouncing a judgment on them that keeps them from being all that they can be. This is one of the effects of gossip. Such negative judgments lodge in our own hearts as well, shrinking and defacing our ability for compassion and love.
If the person is dead, we are speaking of a precious soul who is in Your hands. We are not able or permitted to judge that person. Even worrying about someone’s salvation is a form of hubris – You are the one who decides, and Your mercy is greater than ours. We are to trust You; the deceased person is in the best hands possible. By speaking ill of the departed one, we are not trusting that this person may be undergoing a purgation in preparation for entering Your kingdom. We may be binding that person’s spirit – I do not know this, but I remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:18:
Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Jesus spoke these words in the context of church discipline and forgiveness – but could they not also apply to our relationship with those who have departed this life? I have long wondered about the depth of meaning in this proclamation of Jesus’. (In another musing, I ask whether You can change the past. I think You can. If so, such a change would affect a person’s eternal destiny. – Remember, readers, these are just musings.)
No matter the moral condition of the person while alive, that soul who has passed on to the next world is sacred to You – let us do nothing to diminish him, let us not rob him of dignity and worth as a human being – a being who despite all faults, was made in Your image.
I sense that I am not in Your will when speaking ill of one of Your creatures who can no longer respond or repent, whose freedom of choice to change may have been utterly cut off. We Catholics believe in the grace of purgatory, where You are still working on the deceased. Perhaps by gossiping about him – who after all is not there to defend himself – I am somehow providing a stumbling block to his progress. (See C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which may have been a portrayal of purgatory. However, – don’t get it wrong, Lord – I do know there is a hell, as indicated often in scripture. Even Your Son said there is – several times.)
I once knew a very moral and upright woman who claimed that she would never say anything about another person that she would not say to his or her face. I believed her, as she was a woman of character. I pray that I may be like her. May this practice be applied not only to the living, but to the dead as well?
In the end, no matter what I have written in this essay, the state of death remains incomprehensible to us, and must be treated with great respect. I believe we must tread lightly when speaking of those who have gone before us. Only You know the who and what and where and how of that veiled realm.
May You be blessed in all our speech, whether it be about friends and family who are alive today, or those who have gone before us into that land of mystery and hopefully, glory.