Introductory Note:

Born to an upper class family in Northern Ireland, Amy Carmichael began her ministry as an inner city missionary to working class women from Belfast’s mills. After attending the Keswick Convention, 27-year-old Amy became a full time missionary to Asia and never returned home. She moved to India, where she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship—a place for women and children rescued from sex trafficking to live as family with one another. Amy was the “amma,” Tamil for mother, to hundreds of children here, and she also founded a religious order called Sisters of the Common Life. From her deep family-like attachment to the Dohnavur Fellowship Amy Carmichael gained wisdom about protecting the bonds of love when conflicts stir up unloving thoughts, shared here as a challenge for all of us as we move deeper into authentic community. 

Katelyn J. Dixon

Excerpt from In

Tenderness in Judgment

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4 – 7

We are trusted to spread the spirit of love. Tenderness in judgment, the habit of thinking the best of one another, unwillingness to believe evil, grief if we are forced to do so, eagerness to believe good, joy over one recovered from any slip or fall, unselfish gladness in another’s joys, sorrow in another’s sorrow, readiness to do anything to help another entirely irrespective of self — all this and much more is included in that wonderful word love. 

If love weakens among us, if it ever becomes possible to tolerate the least shadow of an unloving thought, our fellowship will begin to perish. Unlove is deadly. It is a cancer. It may kill slowly but it always kills in the end. Let us fear it, fear to give room to it as we should fear to nurse a cobra. It is deadlier than any cobra. And just as one minute drop of the almost invisible cobra venom spreads swiftly all over the body of one into whom it has been injected, so one drop of the gall of unlove in my heart or yours, however unseen, has a terrible power of spreading all through our family, for we are one body — we are parts of one another. If one member suffers loss, all suffer loss. Not one of us lives to herself. 

Trusting One Another

We owe it to the younger ones to teach them the truth that united prayer is impossible, unless there be loyal love. If unlove be discovered anywhere, stop everything and put it right, if possible at once. Often these misunderstandings are about the merest trifles. You let them grow and grow till your whole day is shadowed. This delights the devil, but it terribly injures your own soul, and it sorely grieves the Spirit of Love. Also, and this is serious, while you are yielding to such feelings you are unconsciously sowing seeds of unlove and distrust in other hearts — in the children’s hearts. These seeds will spring to life and grow up to your sorrow one day. 

Why don’t you keep the Law of the Family and go straight to the one who has (you think) done something wrong? You can’t, do you say? You can. Love will find a way.… Some of you remember how in the old days if a Prayer Day meeting was lifeless and we could not get anywhere, I used to stop, and we scattered, and any who were not ​“in” love met somewhere, perhaps just for a minute under a tree — and then the Spirit led us into real prayer. We are too big a Family for that to be possible now, but it is as important now as ever that all should be clear, no one out of love with any other one, no one doubting anyone. 

Loving Frankness 

O my children, if only you would make up your minds never to doubt the love of another sister or brother in Christ, but always to think the best, to take the best for granted, and never admit an unkind thought in your heart, how happy, how heavenly life would be. I could not endure it if for one minute I doubted any one of you. It would be like the sting of a wasp in my soul. Why do you endure it? Why do some of you even encourage that wasp to sting? I beseech you to have done with this. Refuse it. Hate it. It may seem like a trifle, but it is of hell. 

We are all human. We may forget things we should remember. A message may be undelivered. There may be some mistake or delay about food or some such trifle. Take it as a mistake, not as something intended. I remember once weeks of unhappiness because a certain curry was badly cooked — the cause could have been discovered in five minutes if only there had been loving frankness, and speaking to instead of speaking of the one who made that curry. Such things are absurd, but they are too sad for laughter, for they do harm. They wound love.

Questions for Group Discussion

  1. “You can’t, do you say? You can,” Carmichael assures her readers that awkwardness is no excuse for avoiding frank discussion and reconciliation. How would you feel if someone approached you about something you did or said that hurt their feelings?
  2. Amy knew that the little ones in her fellowship would be formed by what they saw adult members doing. What would a child in your own congregation observe, in public or behind closed doors, about the way your church members:
    1. deal with conflicts among themselves?
    2. speak about people of other faiths?
    3. treat enemies — those who pose a threat, say to your property or way of doing things, who disagree with you, or who are simply difficult to put up with?

From Frank Houghton, Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 1979), 349 – 350. Used with permission.

Photo by Ashique Anan Abir on Unsplash

Text First Published January 1979 · Last Featured on Renovare.org May 2024