"A Certain Poisoned Sweetness"

This morning I read Anthony Bradley's comments at World magazine:

Quarrels, dissension, and divisions are plastered all over the internet as Jesus followers poke passive insults at each other in the name of whatever peripheral minutiae we determine as “getting the gospel right.” For example, not being Reformed enough, or not “traditional” enough, or too traditional, or too literal, or too involved in social issues, or not evangelistic enough, and so on.

It juxtaposed well with what I had just read in Calvin's Institutes (One of my reading projects for 2009, the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth). Commenting on the 9th of the 10 Commandments [against bearing false witness], he wrote:

We delight in a certain poisoned sweetness experienced in ferreting out and in disclosing the evils of others. And let us not think it an adequate excuse if in many instances we are not lying....Indeed, this precept [the 9th Commandment] even extends to forbidding us to affect a fawning politeness barbed with bitter taunts under the guise of joking. Some do this who crave praise for their witticisms, to others' shame and grief, because they sometimes grievously wound their brothers with this sort of impudence.

Ouch!