WHY A CHRISTIAN CANNOT CURSE ANYONE?

Before all , three introductory texts:

"Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" ( Lk 6:28 )

"Bless those who persecute you, do not curse"

( Rm 12, 14).

“Finally, all have the same feeling, share the concerns of others with fraternal love, be compassionate and humble. Do not return evil for evil or insult for insult; rather bless, for this has been called; and in this way they will receive the blessing ”(1 P 3, 8-9).

That said, we already intuit that not cursing is practically an order. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus referred to the prohibition of cursing:  

"For I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father ..." (Mt 5: 44-45).

Someone will ask: “But what does Jesus Christ intend to say this? What love my enemies, who mistreats me, who seeks my evil? ”Yes, although it sounds absurd to human logic, this is what Jesus asks us. Moreover, if we fulfill his will, it is what identifies us as children of the Heavenly Father; It is what your children do to us, it is what invites me to recognize a brother in the other.

Fraternity is not a condition imposed from above, it is something we build every day, even among strangers, if we are really Christians. To be children of God, in fact and not in name, we already know what to do.

Things have to be done as Christ, the Son of God, has taught us by his example to be children of our heavenly Father. Being a child of God is not just having a baptismal certificate in your pocket, it is living as such. If I say that I am a child of God, I have to behave according to what I am, it is of natural law established by God. It cannot be otherwise, natural laws cannot be violated, that simple.

We have to know who our Father is to know how to behave like his children, in the Son. Now, we the baptized are spiritual beings, we are people called to conversion, to identify ourselves more and better with the divine Word and will, to be what we are 'image and likeness of God' ( Gen 1 : 26- 27).

Someone else will ask: “But is it possible to love my enemies? Is it possible to bless those who curse or persecute us? ”It is possible even if it is not easy; and it is not easy because we usually tend to react in line with the attitudes of others. They say that by every action there is a reaction; and if there is an act of aggression towards our person, it is logical, 'humanly speaking', that the first temptation (and we already know who the tempter is) is aggression as well.

But Jesus brought a new law to his people, a law that is more demanding than the previous law given by Moses. The law of Jesus, although difficult to fulfill, is very possible to fulfill because, in Him, we are new creatures of God, we are a new creation, old things have passed, all are made new (2 Cor 5:17 ).

On the other hand the Christian, who wants to follow Jesus has to fulfill what He says. Jesus said: "Whoever wants to follow me should deny himself" (Mk 8, 34). We cannot follow Jesus if we do not refuse, if we are slaves of some instincts, if we cling to a human logic that invites us to follow the expired law of the talion.

We therefore have to act according to the conditions or indications of our guide. What conditions? Let us remember, among others: Loving enemies, blessing those who curse you, doing good to those who hate you and praying for those who outrage and persecute you.

If a Christian responds to these requirements of Jesus, among the many that He proposes, for whom he has a problem, he means that he is a son of God and a disciple of Christ. But if he does not manifest them, it means that he has not yet been born to that new life in Christ.

Sacred writing, both in the Old Testament and in the new, rejects the act of cursing. And you have to be careful because cursing affects the one who utters the curse more. Cursing is like spitting up. The first harmed of evil is the one who commits it. 

Cursing is more typical of unbelievers ( Rm 3:14 ), not believers. Cursing is the fruit of a distant heart of God. There is no justification, although you can have all the reason in the world, for a believer to utter curses. 

James put it very well in his letter: “With her (with her tongue) we bless our Lord and Father and with her we curse men, made in the image of God. From the same mouth come the blessing and the curse. Brothers, this cannot be so. Can fresh water and bitter water flow from the same source? The fig tree cannot produce olives or figs, and the brackish will not give fresh water. ”( St 3, 9-12).

The thing is thus clear and simple. Just as a fountain cannot give fresh water and salt water at the same time, so neither can a believer bless God and then curse his neighbor. When a Christian has God in his mind and in his heart and feeds on God in communion and meditates on his word night and day it will be impossible for curses to come out of his mouth, because the mouth speaks of the abundance of the heart (Mt 12, 3. 4)