The Gradual Erosion of Contempt
First Published Wednesday, January 13, 2016. Revised May 8, 2026
Some people associate it with certainty. Others associate it with emotion, supernatural experiences, political alignment, doctrinal precision, or public moral confidence. Entire churches and movements sometimes define themselves by these things.
But as I have grown older, I find myself returning to a quieter possibility: maybe the clearest evidence of the Holy Spirit is unity. Not uniformity, and certainly not the absence of disagreement, but the gradual erosion of contempt between human beings.
Back in 2016, I was already beginning to sense this, though I could not yet articulate it clearly. Even then, I could feel how exhausting the divisions inside Christianity had become. Everybody seemed to be sorting themselves into smaller and smaller camps, each convinced that the other side was not merely mistaken, but somehow dangerous or corrupted.
What strikes me now is that the world has only accelerated that tendency. Everything around us seems designed to provoke outrage, suspicion, fear, and tribal identity. Entire industries thrive on keeping people angry with one another, and unfortunately Christians have often participated in that spirit just as enthusiastically as everyone else.
But when I return to the Gospels, I do not really see Jesus operating that way. He certainly speaks truth, and He certainly confronts hypocrisy when necessary. There are moments of warning and judgment. But over and over again, He moves toward the very people that others were moving away from: the Samaritan woman, the leper, the tax collector, the doubter, the outsider, even the enemy.
As I have grown older, I find myself wondering if the clearest evidence of the Holy Spirit is not intensity, certainty, loudness, emotionalism, or even doctrinal precision. I wonder if it is something quieter than that. Maybe it is the gradual erosion of contempt within a person. Maybe the Spirit is present wherever hatred slowly begins to lose its grip.
That does not mean all ideas are equal, and it does not mean discernment disappears. Truth still matters. Boundaries still matter. Some people and systems truly are destructive. But I think I understand more clearly now that there is a profound difference between conviction and contempt. One seeks truth, while the other seeks enemies.
When I think about the “fruit of the Spirit,” I notice that Paul does not list dominance, victory, rhetorical brilliance, or tribal triumph. He lists love, patience, gentleness, peace, and self-control. Those are not flashy things. They are healing things. They are the qualities that make human beings safer for one another.
So perhaps the deepest evidence of the Holy Spirit is not found in how fiercely we divide the world into camps, but in whether we are still capable of seeing one another as human beings worthy of mercy, dignity, and grace.
And perhaps the opposite of the Spirit is not doubt nearly as often as it is contempt.
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