Thoughts About Compassion

I was thinking about compassion the other day. I think sometimes we misunderstand compassion. Compassion is actually a compound word that comes from the Latin words for "suffer" (pati-i.e. the "passion of Christ") and "with" (com). So at its heart, to have compassion is to be willing to "suffer with" someone. I think this is very profound, but it seems other people don't find it quite as inspiring.

What gets me about that is that to have real compassion, we have to be "with" someone. Compassion requires presence. If we don't take the time and energy to be with the person-to identify with them-we may have sympathy or something like that, but we don't really have compassion.

As I thought more about it, in order for us to identify with someone, we have to understand that we are more alike them than we are different. It's very easy to look at someone on the street and see how different we are. I see the alcoholic passed out on the park bench and I don't even drink. I see the guy who robs the local Subway, but I pay for everything I take out of a store. I see the homosexual dying of AIDs but all my sins are forgivable and not really as serious as his anyway. I can find many ways to mentally and emotionally distance myself from those people. We're just different.

But ultimately we ARE the same. I fail to love people the way I should as much as anyone else. I'm tempted look at women lustfully like any other man. I may not have knocked off the Subway, but I've fudged on this and that, too. The truth is I'm not as great as I make myself out to be, at least not because of anything I've done. In fact, rather than being willing to suffer with people, I'm often the cause of their suffering. The good news is "blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God..." It means the Kingdom is accessible to everyone. Until we understand this important truth, we can't truly have compassion.

I've thought a bit about the Old Testament in this light. Much of what the law did was to separate people. The Law of Moses was there to distinguish the Jewish people from everyone else. They were to be separate and unstained by the heathen who didn't have the Law-at least that's the way they interpreted it. Yet they were commanded to have compassion on the widows and foreigners. It seems a little ironic, really.

The book of Hebrews says that the Law is only a shadow of the real thing. Of course, the real thing is Jesus. When Jesus came, He was appalled at the religious leaders' interpretation of the Law.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin, But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former."

In other words they did all the righteous things, but forgot the real purpose. What God intended was for their righteous acts not to separate them from everyone else, but actually draw them toward others and result in mercy, justice, and compassion. So in Romans 3, Paul later says that the purpose of the Law was really to show us how sinful we are.

"no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin."

In other words, the Law never made people "righteous" it only showed us how sinful we are.

I think we can distort anything. We want the Ten Commandments in the county courthouse so those people can learn to be as righteous as we are-as if posting the Ten Commandments is going to make anyone act differently. We tend to allow the Law to drive a wedge between "us" and "them." But Jesus, who is the real thing came in compassion and "suffered with" us. The Old Testament was just the precursor to get us ready for the New. Instead, we often try to re-drive the wedge even thought it's been broken down. We go to church. We read our Bible. We teach Sunday School. We don't have sex with people we're not supposed to. Those are fine things, but my question is: does that make us inherently different than the people who don't go to church, never crack open their Bible, or live promiscuous lives? It shouldn't. In Christ, we realize our sameness. In that, we can learn to give ourselves for people we never associate with before. I think that's compassion.