God of life: Lead us to Compassion

                                                   God of life: Lead us to Compassion

The question posed by the young lawyer to Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), is still relevant today as it was thousand years ago. So long as we define the neighbor negatively as a person who is foreign and alien, our humanity, our society is in trouble. So long as we divide our communities into friends and enemies, neighbors and strangers, rich and poor, we feel no moral obligations toward those whom we have already designated as outsiders. This distinction between “us” and “them” creates a dual society that shuts the door on viewing the “other” as a neighbor that deserves to be loved and be compassionate.

There is a famous saying in Arabic “a close neighbor is better than a far away brother or sister.”  To whom should you and I act in a neighborly way? To whom should we express our love and compassion? If the word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean “to suffer with?” Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish. It challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with those who are weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. It is more than general kindness and tenderheartedness’.

To love “other” so long as it is confine within a close circle of friends and relatives is natural and logical. But if there is no bond between the one who is an outsider, an alien and poor how shall we love them and be compassionate to them?  Therefore, the commandment on the natural level, for many people becomes meaningless. As psychologist Sigmund Freud says, loving neighbor is counter to human nature; if he or she is stranger to me he says….it will be hard for me to love him or her. Such a situation creates a psychological barrier with the stranger who is outside the circle of kinship.

God is a compassionate god. He is god with us, who finds nothing human alien and lives in solidarity with us. How can we make God’s compassion the basis and source of our lives? Where can God’s compassionate presence become visible in our every day live? How is it possible for us, broken and sinful human beings, to follow Jesus Christ and thus become manifestation of god’s compassion? What does it mean for us to enter into solidarity with our fellow human beings and offer them obedient service? Is compassion an individual character trait, a personal attitude, or a special talent, but a way of living together? Compassion always reveals itself in community but one of the most tragic events of our times is that we know more than ever before about the pains and sufferings of the world and yet are less able to respond to them.   

The Good Samaritan, presents to us three possible answers to the question, who is my neighbor? The first is that of the robbers. For the robbers any person outside their immediate family and friends are not a neighbor but a target and an object from which they can extort a profit. Their philosophy did not lend itself to compassion or love. Whenever we use people and love things, we are exercising the philosophy of the robbers.

The second is the priest and the Levites. Whose behavior towards others was guided by the philosophy of fear for their life as well as fear and anxiety about being contaminated that they put their religious duty above the demands of love? Martin Luther Jr. says the ultimate measure of a man and woman is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands at times of challenge and controversy. In this sense, the opposite of love is not hate but fear.

The third is the Samaritan. It was the Samaritan who acted as neighbor to the victim by stopping to take risk and come to his rescue where by the neighbor is no longer defined exclusively.

Jesus stripped the religious, political, economic and social labels that divide humanity. There is no outcaste, inferior or superior in Christ love.  As Christians it is our responsibility to keep lifting up an inclusive interpretation of the neighbor.  A.C.Lewis says, “do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor; act as if you did!” it is much better for our Christians to practice it instead of wasting time in verbal argument. Ultimately, it is in identifying with our neighbors in love that will make our society, our community different. To love and to be compassionate to an alien, poor and our neighbor is the truly radical behavior, because it lifts the person to the level of truly human as God in Christ intended us to be.