Compassion Makes the World Go ‘Round

I’m often struck by two types of people in this world: those who exhibit a great deal of compassion and those who don’t. Most of us sit somewhere in the middle — we have our good days and we have our bad days. Often times we are compassionate when we manage to get some benefit out of the situation, such as impressing a friend or coworker.

Looking back to the life of Christ, however, I’m amazed how frequent, even constant, his compassion was. It was as if he was out looking for those to whom he could show his love and compassion. Ironically, he never had to go very far. He was always surrounded by people humble enough to admit they were in need of something — grace.

Today, we’re so wrapped up in everything that is going on in our own lives that we seldom even notice the hurting, needful people around us. Much less do we go out looking for someone whose needs we are able to meet. And then we rationalize our actions by telling ourselves, “I need this more than the next guy!” We surround ourselves with money, with possessions, with shallow friendships, thinking that in these things we will be secured from the calamity that has beset those very people Jesus went out looking for. Even worse, we learn from the day we’re born that we’ve come to planet Earth with our “certain unalienable rights”, such as the right to be a dictator over all the roadway we can see, the right to a $5 coffee every morning, the right to all the money we can possibly lay hold of (whether by legal means or not), the right to download songs we don’t own, and the list goes on and on.

And here, I believe, we begin to see the problem. Defending our “rights” means we care more about ourselves than we do about those around us. We would rather go 65 mph and cut Grandma off by blowing a red light than wait 30 seconds and restore Grandma’s hope in a courteous America. We would rather murder millions of innocent babies than to be bothered by the embarassment of admitting we’ve blown our sexual purity and the huge cost of caring for that new baby.

How does this tie into compassion? Simple. Compassion is the willingness to surrender our own “rights” and desires simply for the sake of someone else’s. We forgive wrongdoing so that someone else will be freed from guilt and judgment. We give up our coffee in the morning so someone else might get a good breakfast. We surrender our TV-watching time so that we can invest that time into the lives of those around us. And in this way, the Kingdom of God will be built, one stone at a time. And, as salt preserves meat, we, the salt of the earth, will preserve the dead and decaying world in which we live. That’s why compassion makes the world go ’round.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Phil 2:3)