A book cataloguing a decade of international medical – scientific achievement and a magazine article challenging the tenets of the Occupy Wall Street protest are not the most likely places one expects to read about compassion.
But at the end of a Maclean’s essay analyzing various economic factors freely tossed about in stories about Occupy protests, Andrew Coyne observes that “while there is little we can do about inequality at the top, there’s quite a lot we can do about inequality at the bottom, mostly by giving poor people more money.”
I don’t think that was meant simplistically: Coyne cites a National Council of Welfare report that says it would have cost about $12 billion in 2007 to lift every Canadian out of poverty—about what the country would raise by adding two points back on the HST.
“Alas, that calls upon us to show compassion, rather than resentment; to give, rather than to take,” he writes.
Alas, that observation is all too true.
Perhaps it was because I had just finished reading Charles Fensham’s wonderful article on p. 25 about missional spirituality. Our calling as Christians to in turn call others to share with them the message of God’s love is based on God’s persistent, loving and compassionate calling of humanity to be what God intends us to be in creation.
Compassion has two aspects for humans and especially for Christians. The one part, compassion towards those who lack the necessities of life, we address tolerably well: we—you—give generously to many charitable causes, including the church’s many outreach projects, whether Presbyterian World Service and Development, Toronto’s Evangel Hall or Winnipeg Inner City Missions.
As members of wider society, though, I wonder if we can do more to make our voice heard when our politicians are less than compassionate in treatment of the homeless in our cities or propose harsher retributive measures for criminals?
The other aspect of compassion has more directly to do with the content of our faith. Jesus warned the church of his day that they were squandering God’s generous gift of faith; guarding the laws to such an extent that the compassionate, prophetic words of God had become like buried treasure.
I wonder if we sometimes bury God’s loving call to the world under the weight of 500 – year – old confessions and politics?
That is a question that Dorcas Gordon addresses in this month’s Theology 101 series on Christ alone. As she observes, the church needs courage to rethink some of its formularies. It will not be easy. In fact, she says it may be painful. But it clearly wasn’t easy in Jesus’ time either.
To the faith leaders of his day, Jesus was a dangerous renegade. He alleged that both the Sadducees and Pharisees were misguided and the Samaritans got off track, too. But their errors didn’t mean they were irredeemable; Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and a Samaritan models God’s compassion in a parable.
Even the Canaanites, polytheistic neighbours of Israel, were not outside the scope of Jesus’ ministry, as the story of the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter in Matthew and Mark reveals.
Translate those faith groups into contemporary language and Jesus might be talking about Anglicans, Presbyterians and Romans Catholics, and it might be the story of the Good Muslim or the Good Hindu.
Interestingly, startlingly and sadly, no faith groups appear in the recently published book The Grandest Challenge. Two physicians, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer, recount a decade of working to bring the finest scientific researchers to work on some of the most important and challenging problems facing the world’s poorest people. In many of those parts of the world, churches have a major presence, yet they appear not to have been involved in finding solutions.
Let’s hope that was oversight on all sides. And let this be a call for Christians and other faith groups to find out what they can do to extend God’s compassion in a concrete way.
A compassionate God sent His son to be with us so we would know of God’s deep love for us. May you experience that love in your lives this Christmas and all year round.
All of us at the Record wish you a holy and happy Christmas.
