July 12, 2007
Shades of Compassion
Because of my analytical personality I sometimes seem uncompassionate. I don’t want to appear hard hearted, but for me compassion has a direct correlation to how much pain and suffering is brought about because of a person’s own actions. For instance, I have a different level of compassion for someone contracting AIDS through a blood transfusion than I do for someone contracting the disease because of their lifestyle. Even though we serve a God of compassion, I really appreciate the glimpse into His analytical nature when He says to Moses, “…I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Romans 9:15 NIV
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Gail;
-----Thank you! I agree almost without reservation. Reality is limited to fact, and a God who says, “Come now, let us reason together,” Who gives wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to those who call on Him is deeply embedded in reality. Compassion derives from the Latin prefix meaning “with” (com-) and the Latin for “suffer” (pati) that is also the root for “patient.” This suffering with another really is seen in the stretch of its roots: to be a patient with another. It goes beyond feelings. It involves coming to know and understand the situation and its circumstances, as well as to incur some of the costs that a patient must incur.
-----I suppose that is why you feel limited compassion for those who make targets of their own feet. My compassion for these types, too, is different than it is for those whose feet are blasted by their neighbor. But it is still compassion. It is limited by the details of reality. I understand the problem of the double-minded man. Usually the innocent, right mind is trapped and tormented by the guilty, wrong mind. Often that mind is caught in a losing struggle, and, in those falling to their misbehaviors, I can see it being extinguished with the passage of time. That situation draws from me compassion for the captured mind, but not for the captor mind.
-----But, reality is a tether. We can not leave its side or we become lost ourselves. The captured mind is not imprisoned behind a locked door. Jesus Christ has unlocked the door. The right mind is free to walk out. So I can not be compassionate towards the foolishness of one lying on the bunk of his cell with the door open.
-----Yet, my compassion runs deep for those who have walked out. They did not walk out because they liked the cell. They walked out because of the dank and the damage done to their lives by captivity. When someone comes to that realization, they become more regretful about the outcome of their past than I do. And that calls for all the more compassion. My heart is crushed for the repentant drug or sex abuser suffering aids. The travesty certainly is his fault. But he no longer has the ability to shape his condition according to his will as he had before he made the wrong decisions of his past. Though his mind is now free to praise the Lord in truth, knowledge, and wisdom, his physical condition is in a prison cell that actually does have a locked door. To that reality his free mind is now tethered.
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